Turkey Time...sort of

I just found this blurb about turkeys that I had written before Thanksgiving--better late than never!
 
Getting ready for winter has kept me busy these past few weeks! Luckily, while I've been insulating the house, stacking wood, and tidying up for the year before everything gets iced over, my turkeys have been growing steadily. Yesterday was butchering day, and Yew-doggie, we've got some meat!

The Tail of Two Turkeys
It actually started with four turkeys at the end of May. I had them in a large wooden tote in their own stall in the barn. After a few days one disappeared. I'm guessing it was an ermine, since we've had quite a few ermine troubles in the past. Anyway, I put a wire mesh lid over the tote to protect the poults. The next day one poult was dead. I figure it had gotten hurt in the ermine skirmish the previous day and succumbed to it's injuries. Who knows? ANYway, so it became the Tail of Two Turkeys.
   

I wanted to keep things simple and keep the turkeys fenced in, so I kept them with our chickens. They were in the tote with a light on them until they feathered out, which was maybe a month. Afterward, they free-ranged the chicken pasture. When we raised turkeys two years ago we let them completely free range, which was good in some ways but bad in others. The good is that they really find lots of wild food to eat and that they have lots of room to hide from predators. The bad is that they are territorial and messy. We heard quite a few stories from neighbors about dogs getting attacked and joggers becoming runners because of our "guard turkeys." Also, they are prolific poop producers, and it is enormously huge and gross, so it is nice to keep it off your front porch. So, up on the hill with the chickens they went.

The turkeys ate well and grew like crazy. They ate a flock raiser ration until the middle of September, when my chickens started laying and needed to switch to a layer ration. I didn't want the hens to loose production, so the turkeys ate chicken layer mash. Not ideal, but it worked. Everyone also spent their days scratching in the pasture for bugs and plants. My approach would cause a stampede, as they all loved the buckets of Rainbow Foods produce and deli scraps they got several times a week.

One turkey was quite a bit larger than the other. I figured it was a dominance thing, but come butchering day it became apparent that the smaller one was a female, as she had egg yolks forming. It would have been neat to have a few turkey eggs, but we had other plans. 

Butchering day went very smoothly, which made it fun. Birds can be feisty, and I won't lie and say I wasn't nervous about getting pecked in the face. I bear-hugged the female turkey down to the house (without incident), where we have an outdoor table and chopping block.  I squatted, semi-sitting on its backs while I faced the rear and held its legs. I kept its wings pinched to its chests with my legs. Atlin held the head and chopped with a hatchet. The turkey pulsed for maybe 20 seconds and was done. We put it on the table, plucked it, gutted and rinsed it, then let it soak in a bucket of cold water. 


I sent Atlin up to get the male and next thing I know, he's trying to herd it down the hill. It clearly wasn't working, so I told him to just do the bear-hug method. So we get lined up for round two,  but this time, as I'm sitting and Atlin's chopping, the turkey literally bucks me off onto the ground! I could not believe the force of that turkey! Released, it ran headless into the skiff shed squirting blood like a geiser. Within a few seconds he was recaptured and hugged, where he calmly finished his day. This guy couldn't even fit in the 5 gallon bucket after much cramming.

I love this sequence of Atlin and the turkey!

Next Year's Turkeys

Every growing season gives you more knowledge to help the next season be better. I have three  improvements for next year

1. Raise heritage turkeys - The broad-breasted whites are the industry standard--they grow like crazy but lack in general vigor. They didn't fare so well with the obscene amount of rain we had this summer. They had no tail feathers and had an overall tattered appearance. Ours taste taste a million times better than a store-bought turkey, but I can't help but think that a heritage breed would taste and look even better.....
2. Start them later - When you start them in May they are HUGE by November. They-can-hardly-fit-in-the-oven-huge. 35-pounds-dressed-weight huge.
3. Raise them separate from the chickens. Turkeys eat a lot. I got really discouraged over the feed bill this summer, and I think it was mostly turkey related. Having them in the old chicken coop would allow me to accurately figure out the cost of the turkeys and also keep the books on my eggs production. I'd also be able to feed the turkeys a grower ration for their whole lives. 

Interested in growing your own turkey for the next holiday season? Go for it!--it's easy and rewarding. (I'm looking for someone to go in on an order of poults next year--the minimum is 15--let me know if you're interested)  The cost of raising the turkey might give you a heart attack, but that bird will definitely not let you down come meal time. You can't compare the cost of a fresh bird to the cost of a Costco bird--they're simply not the same thing. Liken the cost of a fresh bird to the cost of king salmon or king crab and you won't feel so bad. Raising a turkey is great--everyone should do it at least once!

Hello Again

Welcome to a new year! Three months have passed since the last post and, really, I have no excuses. I'll say I was hibernating. Here's a short recap:






October saw commercial shrimping for Atlin and Huck....tasty! 

 Every year we spend Thanksgiving week out deer hunting on Chichagof Island. This year the weather made things really tough--with two of us hunting for 7 days we only got one deer. (We saw upwards of 35 does, but only two bucks.) Atlin made jerky out of the whole thing--delicious, but meat sure doesn't last very long that way. It's a good thing we still have moose and goat in the freezer! The best part of this trip was that Huck hiked with us for 4 days. It was his first deer hunting season where he didn't have to get carried at all. Things sure are coming together now that he's four!

Dressed female turkey

November also saw the butchering of our two turkeys. The Thanksgiving female was quite a bit smaller than the Christmas male. She was about 20 pounds and he 40. They were amazingly delicious, and provided an abundance of leftovers for extended family and ourselves. I boiled the carcass down and made several batches of stock to freeze for soups, and I bagged 8 meals worth of meat. We've been eating wonderful, fresh soup with homegrown potatoes, carrots, parsley, onions, garlic, and turkey. Too bad I have to buy the celery.

 

December has been the month of eggs--I'm selling 6-10 dozen a week! When we returned from our hunting trip the refrigerator was packed with a couple hundred eggs. Luckily, this town has a high demand for fresh eggs!

 January brought me full circle with my composting co-op project--ONE FULL YEAR of community composting! It was long and hard with it's ups and downs, but I made it. About two months into the project, I thought,"Can I really do this for a year?! Now I feel like I can go on forever!

More about these and other projects in the near future--I'm going to try to get back to doing weekly posts. It maybe be winter, but the harvest isn't over!

Food Security

I live in a place that is incredibly susceptible to the crash of transportation. There are no actual, profitable family farms here--vegetable, meat, dairy, grain, or otherwise. People often talk about food security and our dependance on the barge bringing loads of food and goods to town. "Plant a garden," they say, "Raise chickens," they say. But are either of those things actually making you independent of the transportation system?

Let's take a look at the garden: 

How do you make your garden beds? Do you buy lumber from the store? Did you fill them with bagged potting soil, peat moss, and perlite? Yes, one-time investments, but still dependent. Plastic sheeting for hoop houses is almost unavoidable in Juneau....

Where did your seeds come from? Some far-away farm. Instead of buying kale all summer long, you buy a packet of seeds. That's a great start, but it's still dependent. What happens if no seeds come? You have gardening skills but no way to garden.....

How do you fertilize your garden? Bone meal, blood meal, steer manure? Well, where did those things come from? Some far-away processing facility dependent on the large-scale cattle industry. Scary in itself, and dependent.....

A look at chickens:

Where do you purchase your chicks? If you buy them locally at Swampy Acres, guess what? She orders them from the same California hatchery you could if you wanted 15 or more birds.

How do you feed your chickens? Do you grow the corn and soybeans they need to eat? Do you gather an alchemy of trace minerals for them? Buying chicken feed from Outside isn't any more "secure" then buying eggs.


It's doom and gloom, I know. It's very drastic, yes. But that's the reality of it. So, are we supposed to just eat fish that we catch with a bone barbed wooden hook? No. It's just a reality check. From that point, you can step back and try to gradually find ways out of the system. These are all things that I am trying to work on for myself. Trying to make and procure things second hand or from nature are great starts.

Here are a few ways I do or am trying to get out of the barge loop in terms of food security:


Pasturing Chickens
My chickens have lots of space to roam and forrage plants and bugs for themselves. I also feed them kitchen and garden scraps. Occasionally they get brewers grain. In the summer they eat about half as much pelleted feed as in the winter. I also keep a small bin of beach sand and ground shells in the barn. Calcium and gizzard grit in one. Why buy ground oyster shells?

Other feed ideas up my sleeve are alder catkins and plantain seeds, which both pack the protein.

Barn bedding
I buy straw and sawdust pellets, and I hate that I do that. I bought a paper shredder but it's slow and meticulous. There has to be an office somewhere full of shredded paper...Maybe dried alder leaves could work. In a dryer fall I'd like to head out in the boat and cut some beach grass into hay/straw. I could also try contacting the lumber mill in Hoonah for their sawdust. Local sand (Agpro extracts it from Juneau rivers) would work for people who only have a few chickens...it'd be like a kitty box you'd have to scoop. The down side would be that you'd be missing the browns to compost the poo with.

Saving Seed
This fall I am going to give this a try for the first time. I plan on keeping nasturium, kale, and lettuce seeds. I've let lettuce reseed itself before, which worked great. Violas are out of control in that respect--I love it!


Fertilizer
Compost, compost, compost! It's really a shame more people don't do it. It makes the best fertilizer and straight-out growing medium. Plants love growing in a compost and sand mixture. The best thing is that all the inputs are free!

Seaweed - Ever see kelp meal at the store? Oyster shell? Visit a beach and haul your own. Great for the garden and chickens!

Alder leaves - If you don't have any, someone does. Their leaves are great mixed in the garden for nitrogen and organic matter. When matted down as a winter mulch, they'll lure tons of worms to your bed in the spring. Leave the worms there or feed them to the chickens!

Spagnum moss - I don't quite understand why people here put this in their gardens. It retains moisture, which we certainly don't need. It's acidic and almost devoid of nutrients, so why add it? It provides organic matter for macro- and microorganisms to feed on, creating humus, and it improves soil texture. Why not use compost and get some fertility into your bed to boot? Anyway, if you're a believer in the spag, harvest some locally!

Bone meal - I recently read an article in Countryside Magazine about making homemade bonemeal. It was written by someone in Petersburg, Ak who steams deer bones to oblivion in a pressure canner then runs them through a grinder like grain. When we start bringing home some game this fall I'll give it a try and report back on it.


One of the books I just read is Indian Fishing, Early Methods on the Northwest Coast, by Hilary Stewart. It's an amazing compilation of photos and sketches of old fishing methods and gear. The craftiness blows me away with every page. I think I'm going to try my hand at that wood and bone fishing hook. First you put a stick inside a piece of bull whip kelp, then bury it in the ashes of a dying fire. The wood gets steamed, then you bend it into shape using a handmade mold. Rub deer tallow on it, file some bone down and wrap your parts together using spruce root......it sounds like quite the elaborate craft project that could land me some trout this winter.

Keep your gears turning and find more ways to edge yourself into true self-sufficiency!

Sucession Planting

If you plant everything at the end of May you'll be eating in August and not much outside of that. To really get the most out of local food you need to start early, end late, and stagger your plantings. I start planting in covered beds in March/April and plant continually through the spring and summer. Seed packets say to plant a new crop every three weeks, but sometimes that's a little bogus in Juneau.  Here are some sucessions that have worked for me:




Peas:  You can never have too many peas!
March 15 (or whenever hoop house soil is workable),
April 15,
May 15.
My June 25 Cascadia peas started flowering Sept 1st--we'll see if there's time for a crop!
My July 15 Early Frosty and Dwarf Grey Snap peas are about 2 feet tall and have just started flowering. Maybe chicken fodder, but hopefully peas for me. 

Lettuce: It's very easy to over-plant lettuce. If you pick only the outside leaves of each plant you probably don't need more than a dozen (or two) plants for two people. I find that the more you harvest the lettuce, the better it gets, so fewer plants is better. 
April 11
May 11
June 11 (probably not needed)

Spinach:
March 15
April 1,
bolts in May plantings and beyond.
Fall?? Forgot to plant in late July...Sept plants sprouted quickly but are still in cotyledons.

Kale:
April 15 (earlier if you start transplants inside)
June 1 - for your over-wintering crop

Carrots: They take forever here, so I plant them all in April.

Endive

escarole, dwarf grey snap peas

red-veined sorrel

At the end of July I started oregano, red veined sorrel, escarole, endive, Italian dandelion, and radicchio in my greenhouse.  I transplanted them outside August 8, and all are doing well. All are in hoop houses and some sorrel is also out in the weather. They are ready to harvest, but I am eating modestly to hold out and just see how long they can go into the winter weather. They are all recommended crops for season extension.


The key to having food to eat in fall and winter is not in the weather--it's in your summer numbers. If you plant kale in September you probably won't be eating kale in November, as it won't have time to mature. But if you plant lots of extra kale in May or June and throw some hoop houses over them in September, you'll still be munching on your mature kale until April, or whenever it runs out. The weather won't get it if it's healthy and protected by a sheet of plastic. The plants won't actually grow, but they will survive the dark and cold. The key is to plan ahead in the spring and have enough space. I have beds set aside for wintering things over, but things don't necessarily start off there. I transplant stuff from various spots in the garden into their over-wintering grounds. This way I can just worry about keeping a few hoops up year-round and close the other beds down for the winter.

Eating something fresh from the garden every single month of the year is possible, EVEN IN JUNEAU!

Get some seeds, make a map, and get to work!

Fall in Maine

I got my first moose! 

It was a wild, dark, and starry morning of coyotes howling and bats darting. It gave way to the dawn of loons calling, crows cawing, and moose grunting. A friend was cow calling and raking brush for about five minutes at first light when a bull started grunting at us. My father saw it walk out of the trees about half a mile down a logging road while I sat in a growing clear cut. I first saw it at 50 yards but because of the angle, I had no shot. I waited patiently, sure it was going to bust us and take off, but he kept walking while he stared right at me, blazing orange and wide-eyed. He was getting closer and finally I knew I had to take my shot before the bull tripped on my father. I got him steady in my scope as he took three more steps, and as soon as he stopped, BOOM!. He jumped off the road, into the trees breathing heavily. He was silent, and I could see my hunting partners wondering if I had missed, but I knew. Then we heard two heavy breaths, then what sounded like a giant tree falling, pops, cracks, boom and all. He gave his loud last breath, and then our loud excitement began. From the time I pulled to the trigger to the dying breath seemed to last forever in the moment, but it was probably 45 seconds. They say the work starts once you get a moose down, but in Maine they have things like logging roads, trucks, power winches, and skinning hoists, so it really wasn't very hard. Since it took my father 30 years to get drawn for the tag, I look forward to another moose hunt when I'm 60 and he's 90!

The weigh station where you register your moose. 668 lbs.

Home to show Huck and family.

Skinning it at the butcher's house.

 It was also a great harvest time while we were there. My aunt gave us loads of tomatoes and cucumbers from her garden and some of her homemade garden pickles and green tomato relish. We got to pick pumpkins from a pumpkin patch, buy fresh corn at a farm stand, pick buckets of potatoes behind the commercial harvesters, and pick wild apples to our heart's content.

We also were lucky enough to go on a horse-drawn wagon ride to see the leaves in their peak of oranges, reds, and yellows.

  Fall in Maine is great!