2022 Recap part II
Poultry:
Our first year of raising poultry for sale went very well, though as usual, we learned plenty. This year we offered chickens, turkeys, and geese.
Chickens: Although we grew up raising chickens for the freezer, we’ve never paid attention to how long it takes to finish a bird or how much feed it takes, so I determined to take notes on those things for the future. I had to take semi-educated guesses though, to prevent running to get more feed all the time and to get processing appointments made ahead of time. I apologize to those who received chickens that are much larger than you’re used to; again, it was a learning curve year. Overall we were very happy with how they did in the chicken tractors, from the blistering heat of July and August to the frigid teens of October mornings. We hope to raise a bunch more next year.
Curious birds
Turkeys: We weren’t well-prepared for raising a lot of turkeys, so they eventually turned into barnyard birds, running free and roosting wherever they cared too. I’m ok with this, except when they get in the way of tractors and vehicles in the yard, and for some reason Cora objects to them pooping all over our back step. They are very friendly birds and will come flapping across the yard to greet me as I go about my farm business. This winter I hope to build a “turkey tractor” for next year’s turkeys to roost in at night, and train them to stay in portable net fencing to keep them from standing on our grill and eating our laying hen’s feed. I took notes on their growth, so hopefully next year we can raise them more precisely to the size people want to see on their Thanksgiving tables.
Geese: Although we offered geese in our order form this year, nobody chose to preorder any, se we ended up getting 6 Embdens just for fun. These were the first domestic geese to be raised on this farm, to my knowledge. The idea was for these “weeder geese” to keep the grass down in our fledgling raspberry patch (that’s for our family, NOT for for sale). Turns out they love to eat grass and don’t care to eat broadleaf or shrubby things like raspberry plants, but geese get bored, and when geese get bored, they nibble. Thus, our raspberry patch (which had had a rough start due to last year’s drought anyway), was mostly obliterated. They took a toll on our little pear and apple trees too, but hopefully most of them will pull through. Anyway, by the time we had them processed with the turkeys and last batch of chickens, demand had turned up and we ended up with only one for us to put on our own table (we’ve never had domestic goose before, so it’ll be a new culinary experience for our whole family). We’re not sure if we’ll raise any for sale next year or not, but we’ll see.
So overall it was a good year for raising organic-fed, soy-free, pastured poultry on our little farm. If you would like to be notified when we start taking preorders for next year, please send us your email address and we’ll make sure you get an email or two when the time comes.