Dropstone Farms

Our locally-raised pig was slaughtered a couple of weeks ago and was finally butchered and ready to pick up last Saturday. Yay! We put everything into the freezer but kept a package of 2 pork chops out for dinner that night, and grilled them up with my favorite not-very-local marinade — red wine vinegar, soy sauce, and garlic (island-grown).

There had just been a Dark Days email list thread about what to do with winter squash, and I thought the squash mac & cheese sounded fantastic, so I improvised. We don’t have a pasta extruder (?) so I made some short wide pastas from organic flour (Utah) and homegrown eggs, and mostly followed the recipe … except I used a homegrown acorn squash*, a homemade chicken stock cube, half-and-half (Fresh Breeze Farms), full-fat homemade ricotta from Fresh Breeze cream, Tillamook cheddar cheese (non-organic but non-rBST too) and an artisanal parmigiano reggiano imported by an independent cheese company in California. The recipe turned out great — more of a casserole than a cheese saucey slippery thing, but that’s OK with me; I like casseroles.

Rounded off with a fresh salad of greens grown by Butler Green Farms, this made a lovely warm homey meal. And pretty, too; I should get back into the habit of taking pictures.

Homegrown: squash; chicken stock; eggs for pasta
Homemade from local ingredients: ricotta
Homemade from organic ingredients: pasta (flour); bread crumbs for mac & cheese (ground up by me)
Island-grown: pork; garlic; salad greens
Local: half-and-half
Local-ish: Tillamook cheddar cheese
Happy: parm
Unknown: red wine vinegar; soy sauce; salt; nutmeg; cayenne; olive oil.

* After I cut its top off, I doubted my original idea, as the recipe calls for peeling and cubing it, and acorn squash are so deeply grooved on the sides that I wasn’t sure I’d be able to peel it effectively without wasting lots of squashflesh. Here is my current method, which seemed to work OK: I peeled what I could reach (the peaks) with a vegetable peeler. Then after cutting the whole squash in half, I used the big heavy knife to cut it along the valleys — that is, I made several spears with half a valley on each edge and a (naked) peak in the middle. Then I used a paring knife to trim the skin from the sides of each spear. It worked pretty well, and wasn’t even as fraught with danger of stabbing oneself in the hand as I had worried.

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So, we really dropped the ball on keeping everyone updated on the broiler chickens via the website. We really intended to, but it turned out that 150 chickens took up kind of a lot of time. So, here’s a retrospective of their lives …

The chickens (affectionately known as nuggets) moved to pasture the last weekend of September, just before the TWL Harvest Fair. Thousands of people attend the Harvest Fair so the chickens had a busy first day, and it seemed we prompted a lot of family conversations about where meat comes from (which I think is good). From there, we moved the tractors the hill towards the top, then over towards the orchard, then back down into some extra-delicious juicy green grass, then sideways towards the cropland area — basically in a big rectangle to avoid some trees and some really hilly areas.

By the time we got back to our starting point, about 6 weeks later, and looked at the path up the hill that we had already grazed, we realized that the grass where the chickens had been (scratching, pooping, scratching, eating, pooping) was greener, thicker, and taller than the paths we had left between the tractors. Part of the reason we do chickens in tractors — aside from the extremely important fact that it’s the most humane, safest way for the chickens to spend their lives — is the soil improvement that comes with rotating poultry through a pasture. It was really gratifying to see it in practice. We were able to re-graze them on the land they had already passed through because the soil and grass had improved so much.

One of the first times we moved them, shortly after the Harvest Fair, I noticed one chicken with some sort of morsel that he had just found, and everyone else was chasing him around to try to get it. Kids at the Harvest Fair had been running around with balloons and I heard several of them pop, so I went in to chase him around to try to get it, too, to verify that it wasn’t balloon. It was a little salamander or newt. I felt sorry for the little guy but he was already beyond help, so I left the birds to finish their game of keep-away.

Never let anyone tell you chickens are naturally vegetarian. If you see “vegetarian” on the egg carton, you know those hens were never outside.

It only took a couple of days for them to realize that when we started pulling the tractors forward, instead of running away from us (towards the back), they should run forward to the nice fresh grass that we were dragging them towards. Chickens love grass.

We lost a few of them here and there, a couple for reasons we could identify (ate too much) and a couple we couldn’t. We had one bad day when the biggest tractor blew down the hill and ran over a couple of guys partway, leaving them pinned under the end — one was gimpy but still getting around OK enough to not let us catch him easily, so we left him; the other had a broken wing and a pretty mangled leg. He was big enough to keep so we processed him and were able to keep all the meat except the bad leg and wing. Poor guy.

This weekend we processed everyone who was left, minus the one little girl who was too small and cute to process, who we will keep until she gets bigger or starts laying. We had lots of helpers (though many novices — not like we’re experts!) and we processed all day Saturday and Sunday. By midday on Saturday we got into a rhythm and everyone was pretty comfortable doing all the jobs, so we were able to take breaks and work in shifts and move around between stations for some variety. It was great to see customers again — lots of people were really excited — and to hear about how folks are going to cook them. Lots of barbecue and roasting (my favorite), and some folks with Romertopfs, plus some recipes that might get me eating liver yet … breaded and fried; sauteed; pâté …

It certainly doesn’t make for a good day, and it shouldn’t be, but it’s a day of completeness. It’s thanksgiving all the time on the farm.

Thank you, chickens.

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So the sun has been shining here, which means we’ve barely sat down at all as we scramble to get things done. This weekend was full of socializing and meeting new people as well as much farm work. In the past few days we have:

• planned irrigation for the New Farm (nothing in the ground yet there since there is no water nor fence yet);
• had our farm inspection, required to sell at our Farmers’ Market — they just want to make sure we are growing and not importing;
• met a new friend and toured his chicken tractor setup, meat chick brooding facility, and brewing/drinking space, as well as meeting the soon-to-be-mutton sheep;
• introduced the Wyandottes, who are now 4 months old, to the big wide world;
• shuffled some things around in the greenhouse to make room for the tomatoes;
• moved the tomatoes back into the greenhouse so they can grow big and strong (we will not be having nearly as many tomatoes as we had hoped);
• watered everything, and then watered again;
• fixed the hanging auto-refilling chicken/duck waterers so that they actually auto-refill;
• watered again;
• hauled much dirt all morning to fill up the flower bed;
• mucked out the chicken coop;
• permanently moved the Wyandottes into the big girls’ section of the coop;
• moved the Ameraucanas, who will be 7 weeks old this week, out into the subdivision of the coop — hooray for no more poultry in the house!!;
• showed off our chicken tractor technology to some folks who want to build one;
• drank iced tea on the porch with Garth’s folks;
• made a list of everything in the greenhouse that needs to be potted up, planted, or otherwise dealt with — it’s a big list;
• potted up some squash we got at the Tilth plant sale, which are still in the greenhouse;
• planted out a few rows of Shimonita bunching onions;
• did two loads of laundry and ran the dishwasher;
• drank a beer.

But it’s just the calm before the storm. This week is OK — some basic things need accomplished like planting out the flower bed, mulching paths and around some of the larger starts, and addressing the greenhouse inventory list, but the next week, we have 6 turkey poults (babies) arriving on Tuesday, and 25 meat chickens arriving on Thursday, and a show to go to in Seattle that same day, Thursday, and then also a chicken slaughter party to go to on Saturday. Need to prepare homes for both these batches of poultry before they arrive! And then there are plans to make about doing chickens for sale … more to come on that soon!

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Good news, everyone! Senate Bill 5350 passed in Washington state. What does this mean? Simple. Previously, it was legal to process chickens on-farm and sell them directly to customers on the farm premises without hiring a WSDA approved slaughterhouse. Thanks to the passage of this bill, the exemption is now extended to all poultry. This is great news for people that want to buy a turkey or a duck directly from a farmer. From talking to the friends and family for whom we’re raising a test batch of six turkeys this year, I can tell you that there are a tremendous number of people who want to buy poultry raised cleanly and humanely on a small farm and who are willing to pay extra for it. Prior to this, there was no way for us to legally sell farm-slaughtered non-chicken poultry to people. Frustrating.

This is a great, common sense piece of legislation because, if small-scale chicken operations don’t require WSDA inspection, why should other poultry? Conversely, if other small poultry require inspection, why don’t chickens? It’s just inconsistent. The only reason I can think of is that, when the legislation granting the exemption was originally written, they simply overlooked other meat birds. This has now been corrected. Our regulatory apparatus for food is seriously and epically flawed–I won’t argue that–but this is yet another example of how I’m seeing our state-level regulatory bodies doing a great job of improving things.

So, if you want a turkey or a duck or a goose for the holidays, let us know. We’ll see if we can raise one (humanely, happily, cleanly, and deliciously) for you. It’s legal now!

On a similar note, I posted another rant about regulations here at the Civil Eats food policy blog. I’m kind of pleased with it so I’ve reproduced it below.

“As a farmer and an eater, I believe very strongly in regulation. I just believe in good regulation.

Despite the poorly written and ill-conceived regulation that are coming out at the (usually) federal level, there are some bright spots in food safety. One example with which I’m familiar is the Washington State Department of Agriculture who, from the ground up, are coming up with some very sane regulations that both ensure safety more effectively (in my opinion) and are more small-farm-friendly than the cumbersome and prescriptive regulations that we love to complain about.

For example, at a Tilth Producers conference a couple of years ago I attended a session on small dairy certification hosted by a farmer and a representative of the WSDA. The farmer indicated that one of the challenges of certification in Washington is that the regulations specify *results*, not methods. It’s left to the farmer to figure out how to meet sanitation goals, not how to pay for the specified equipment. As an eater, I don’t care how far the domestic animals are from my greens, I care that the result of the handling is food free of contamination. A small farmer can spare the attention to detail to manage handling as intensively as a small farmer must manage production.

An example of WSDA’s sane approach to regulation is that, when a farmer found the requirement for a commercial dishwasher too onerous, he was able to demonstrate to the local inspector that a consumer model dishwasher offered the same results as the commercial dishwasher at a fraction of the cost. Thus, the inspector was (rightly) satisfied, the farmer was able to produce dairy at the appropriate scale, and the consumer was assured of a clean and wholesome product thanks to the active, critical, and results-oriented involvement of the agency as well as the diligence of the farmer in researching the problem instead of being forced to focus on regulations.”

Remember folks, good government matters and small changes can make a very big difference on the local level.

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So in response to Monday’s semi-cryptic post, the full story is that Monday I went over to Shannon’s (of Red Barn Farm) place and helped her process the batch of birds from which we’d purchased a half-dozen a few weeks before. I emailed to see if we could help with the processing and the answer was an enthusiastic yes. So I took a few days off and, with a certain amount of trepidation, drove over to the peninsula to dispatch some birds.

We set up a processing line under the guidance of Nikki of Pheasant Fields Farm. Nikki also supplied a mess of equipment and a neato keano eviscerating table. Eviscerating tables are awesome. It’s just a seamless stainless steel table with a hole in the middle you can use to wash away… let’s go with “material.” My contribution was enthusiasm and a Granton boning knife.

The transition from animal to food was surprisingly quick, I’m relieved to say. Processing chickens is an unpleasant and pretty distasteful chore, but it does not entail either cruelty or untoward angst.

Some things that I’d recommend for processing chickens:

1) Wear rubber boots. There is a lot of water sloshing around.
2) Bring more ice than you think you’ll need.
3) Bring more cutting boards than you think you’ll need.
4) Sharp knives. More humane, less work, safer.
5) Bring pliers for plucking feathers. The plucker won’t get everything.

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