Lots and lots of projects on the farm ongoing! Renovating the floor of the greenhouse and transforming it into a raised bed is going well, just waiting on another load of rotten sawdust and then I'll add a 4 x 4 x 4 container of composted chicken/turkey/guinea litter and a 4 x 4 x 4 container of refined worm castings and several good scoops of composted cow manure and a couple 50 lb. bags of dolomitic lime.
Spring will allow me to know if my experiment was worth while.
We have finally moved into the world of raising rabbits, mostly for meat for ourselves, but also for sale to the local area in the coming months. We have started with two Harlequins (one buck and one doe) and a couple of mutts of pretty good size. Hoping to pick up a mini-lop and Californian from a good friend of mine. I built one 8 food 3 chambered hutch and a second six foot two chambered grow out hutch along with scraping together two 3 foot grow out hutches, I've already breed the 3 does and am hoping to see the results soon! Pictures will be posted in coming days.
In other news, I finally got around to calling around and getting hold of the "Indiana food police" as I call them to ask about poultry regulations.
I can slaughter and kill 999 birds and sell direct to consumer here on farm or deliver directly to the consumers home. Good......next year the turkey business expands, the talk at the moment between Kim and myself is for 200 a year.
Of course, we will be hedging our bets on weather the corn strains I have developed will produce the much needed grain to raise and fatten these majestic animals, I see a one row corn picker and building a corn crib in my future to say the least. Next year I plan on having four acres of dent corn production. One planted to UK Tuxpeno, One planted to Backwater, One planted to Onedia, and one split between Bloody Butcher and Hopi Blue. These will be grown in isolation to prevent crossing as we will be experimenting with each corn in controlled feeding of the poultry in both it's cracked corn form as well as in mixtures made on farm, to determine which is the best for our purposes.
We will also start selling butchered chickens next season as well.
I went today and bought a nice set of processing knives and scisors for $40.00, the name brand is nothing spectacular and the knives were slightly used, but having worked for Cutco back in the day, I can guarantee these were made by that same company given their design.
Tomorrow I will be practicing my poultry processing skills on a few extra roosters before I move on to 3 turkeys on tues. or wed. next week just in time for Thanksgiving here and at Kim's parents house.
I'm also currently evaluating my seed strains and my breeding work and looking into starting a legitamate seed company next season. Nearly all the gaps in my seed stock are filled in minus just a couple brassica types that I've been unsuccessful in producing seed stock for in previous seasons, but there is always next season to perfect that skill.
Everyone be sure to check out the Homegrown Goodness message board when you have a few free minuites, lots of good information over there and now that cool weather is setting in we expect the site traffic to pick up once again.
No comments:
Post a Comment