INTRODUCTION
Homestead Roots Newsletter - 6/20/2024

We are back! My two boys and I joined my father-in-law and a few other guys on a Canadian fishing trip last week. We've been going for close to 10 years now. It is a remote island camp that we boat to on Rainy Lake. It is so good to get away, do something I love (fishing) and spend some time with good people. Fishing is something I absolutely love, but homesteading has stolen some of my fishing time over the years. Take a look at the last article in this weeks newsletter to hear my thought process on it.

HOMESTEAD UPDATE
Stuck Skidsteer and a New Tool

Things are going really well in the homestead. We've had a few challenges and have had to do some problem solving along the way. We've had RAIN. Which emphasizes some of the drainage issues we have on the homestead. Our main path from our house to our garden has some bad erosion issues starting and I've got a river running into my pig shelter when it rains heavy. It isn't ideal. I've tried a few fixes but haven't found a working solution just yet. Our biggest current challenge is the skid steer is stuck in our lower pasture, where I went to mow, and I can't get it back up the hill. The hill has always been tough to get up but with the wet ground it is really rough. We are going to need to let things dry up for a few days before we can rescue it. UGH.

We made a recent homestead investment to get a mower that attaches to the front of our skid steer. The mower has been fantastic and super necessary as we just have too much ground to mow with a push brush mower. We invested some good money in clearing buckthorn, now we need to keep it mowed to prevent it from coming right back. The new mower should make a big difference for us!

Life is good with our current smaller goat herd. They are just easier to manage which we appreciate. We are still getting plenty of milk for our family as well. The pigs are growing well and enjoying their mud! It is good for them to always have a little mud in their pen to help them cool off. This year they've got plenty. The chickens and ducks are doing really good as well.

We've been spending some time doing strategic planning on the homestead about building projects and what we should tackle next. Sometimes you get stuck in the planning phase and never get started. We might be getting close to that spot.🙂 Building projects are stressful because of the permanence of the situation.

The homestead garden is looking REALLY good! We are super happy with everything so far. We've been eating good out of our main garden as well and had our first tomato last night. It was a fried green tomato but we are counting it anyway!

KEEPING ANIMALS
Meat Chickens Part 3 of 3 - Butchering

Butchering meat birds is something I've done many times by this point. I have been a part of crews doing over 200 in a day. Once you get into a rhythm as a team it moves quickly and I have always appreciated watching a good team work together for a common goal.

The first year we butchered chickens it was with a rented plucker. We then did a couple of years raising meat chickens for customers and in those years we had the birds professionally butchered at a nearby facility. While it was nice to have them all done for us it was a drag driving them there and then having to return to pick them up. After that we went back to doing our own thing on a smaller scale.

Today we raise 25-30 each summer. We have created a small cooperative with other families where we buy the birds and the feed together to save cost and then we all get together to butcher together. It has worked out really well. We own a plucker that looks a bit like a washing machine with rubber fingers on the bottom and sides. After scalding the birds you drop them into the plucker and most of the time they come out looking really nice. There's always a little hand plucking to clean them up.

Here is our process: birds are brought to the kill station. From that point they are hung up side down in what we call kill cones. It is basically like a traffic cone upside down, you place the chicken inside it upside down with its head sticking out the bottom. I usually get 2 to 4 set up at a time. Once upside down the chickens basically pass out and don't struggle.

We then take a very sharp knife and slit the throat on both sides. This bleeds out the chicken quickly and is a quick and painless way to do the kill. As chickens bleed out they do convulse and flap but the cone keeps their wings tight to their body. After the convulsing is over we dip the chickens in to a scald pot. This can be any number of things, for us we use a really large canning pot on a gas burner. We shoot for a temperature of 150 degrees. We dunk the chicken and keep it moving in the pot to make sure the hot water makes it to the skin to release the feathers. This usually takes 30-60 seconds based on how close your temperature is to the sweet spot. We often will test feathers as we go to get it right. Then they get dropped into the plucker. After a quick spin in the plucker, most of their feathers are removed.

Chickens are then placed on the eviscerating table. This is where we get all their guts pulled out and clean them up for freezing. Ultimately this is a quick process for an experienced person, even inexperienced people can learn it quickly. The chickens are rinsed out and placed into an ice bath to chill.

We finish the chickens by placing them in heat shrink bags. The bags are dunked in boiling water for a second and shrink up tight to remove air from around the chickens. It is a nice way to package them.

In our butchering set up we usually have one person on the kill station. Doing the kill, dunk and plucking. We then have several people on the eviscerating section, we also often have a person checking the birds over after evisceration and cleaning them up for quality control.

We are usually able to get the work done by noon. It is a long day and everyone is ready for a shower but the benefit of having protein in your freezer makes that one hard day worth while. Let me know if you have any questions about any of this. There is great stuff on YouTube showing the way!

MARKET GARDENING
Summer Crops are Growing Well

We officially made the shift from spring to summer growing. There are some crops we just don't grow in the summer. Spinach and radishes come to mind. We also make a shift in our lettuce growing. Instead of direct sowing salad greens we now will pre-germinate our heads of lettuce inside and under lights in paperpot chains. If you don't know about the paperpot method of planting it is worth checking out. It definitely saves us a lot of time. The reason for this shift is that the soil temperatures actually get too warm and that hurts our lettuce germination. We then either sell the heads of lettuce or make a couple of cuts and sell them as salad mix.

In the tunnels our tomatoes are looking really good and we've started to harvest cucumbers as well. Zucchini is also growing nicely in the tunnel. In our outdoor beds green beans are a staple summer crop which has also been growing really well this year. They are a little painful to harvest, but the kids can be helpful there.🙂 

The stand has had a steady flow of customers and we continue to average about 100 sales per week. We've added a few items like fermented foods, and some new coffee products. We also just added meat chicken from a local producer. People are really liking that!

CLOSING WORDS
Embracing Different Stages in Life

As we found our way embracing a new lifestyle with homesteading we slowly began doing some of our other hobbies less and less. Things like fishing and hunting for me and I could probably say quilting for Ingrid. For several years I carried around a fair amount of guilt for not participating in these hobbies anymore. I put unnecessary pressure on myself to get fishing more, because it is something I love. My love for fishing hasn't changed I still love it and love to get out as much as I can but I am in a new stage of life now. And doing new and different things that I also really enjoy.

In so many ways I find the work that we are doing now much more fulfilling than our previous life. Our life before kids and with young kids while we were living in the city needed more, and we found hobbies. But buying land, building a homestead and starting a business has been an absolutely wonderful adventure, I wouldn't think of trading it in for a few more days fishing.

The bottom line is that life has phases and stages. Those who have kids know all about that! Don't give up on the things you love but know there will be seasons of life where your priorities will change. We have just a short window of time when our kids are young. And the years where we are able bodied and youthful for building a homestead are few as well. Certainly don't feel unnecessary guilt for not doing the things you love as you go through life. New experiences are what it is all about!