Wild Life and Farm Life

Granddaughter Grace roamed the farm with my camera the other day while I was working on peaches. Here are some of the things she found interesting enough to photograph:

Billy BB (for Bad Butt) the Rooster struts his stuff in the chicken yard. Originally named Trampoline Man because he was found on Derek's trampoline one morning, he's taken to trying to flog any small people who enter the coop. The grandchildren love to collect eggs so his ornery new habit is a problem. Our solution is to arm them with a bucket of water which he does NOT like. He goes around fairly soaked when the grandkids are here. I believe I'll be looking for a new, nicer rooster in the future.

In the turkey pen, the turkeys are growing like crazy. They are now about 2 months old and are already half-grown.

Unlike the rooster, these hens (they are supposed to be all hens and so far that seems to be holding true) are calm and tame. Except: they hate going back in their house at night. Every night Larry goes down and has to catch each one and put it in the pen. We've never had this problem before with turkeys. These girls are just stubborn. But pretty, in their turkey-ish way.

Grace was able to catch some good photos of one type of butterfly currently inhabiting the flowerbeds. This year it is not at all unusual to see five different kinds of butterflies at one time on the flowers. This one, we believe is the Great Spangled Fritillary. These butterflies have no claw on their front feet and are called "brush-footed butterflies. If you enlarge Grace's photo you can kind of see the fuzzy front feet on this one. We also have Eastern Tiger Swallowtails, Zebra Swallowtail, Black Swallowtails and Sulfur butterflies (those small active yellow ones that are so hard to photograph).

I believe the reason we have so many swallowtails is because of the coneflowers which they seem to love, and the abundance of Queen Anne's Lace in the meadow. This is one of their favorite foods.

For a long time, I thought these were Monarch butterflies, but closer inspection with my sister Theresa a few weeks ago identified the Great Spangled Fritillary. Monarchs, it seems, disdain our ridge and prefer the lower ground along the creeks.

Trampoline Chickens

The other day I wrote aboout Trampoline Man, the rooster my son found on his trampoline a few months ago. Trampoline Man is now the King of the Roost, having outlasted fifteen other contenders for that position.

A postscript to the story:

Two weeks ago Derek reported that a lone hen had found her way into his yard. His daughter Haley put the hen on the trampoline to keep her safe from their black Lab Jake, who was far too curious about the new visitor.

The next morning, the hen was clucking loudly so Haley went to check on her. She'd laid an egg on the trampoline. Scrambled eggs, anyone?

These are some of my hens, perfectly respectable ladies who know their place.

The following day, two more hens had joined the first. Jake seems to have given up. He's apparently resigned to the hen party in his back yard.



Where are the chickens coming from?



We have no idea, but apparently the trampoline is like an amusement park for poultry.




My hens know where to lay their eggs...except sometimes they miss the box. No one's perfect!

More Babies

But these babies are real turkeys--really!

At the feed store, bronze and white turkey poults mix it up.

Aunt Kate (the new Aunt Kate to baby Cadyn) carries the babies home.

In the carrier; someone is mooning us!

Mirror image?

These two are exploring their new home.
And finally settled down for the night.

Gobble Gobble

I wrote about our cidermaking over the weekend, but there was another item on the to-do list that also got crossed off: dressing out the turkeys.

Boy, did they grow! When we raised turkeys in the past we bought the poults in June, dressing them out just before Thanksgiving to be delivered fresh to our customers. But this year we bought our babies early, and by mid-August their weights ranged from 15 to 25 pounds. Time for the freezer.

It's been years since we raised turkeys, so remembering how to dress them out was not easy. But as we prepared, bits and pieces came back to me. It's not a pretty business, certainly. And the smell of wet feathers is my least favorite smell in the whole world. However, the job had to be done.

I'd hoped to be finished before our company for the day arrived, but that was not to be. Jaime and four grandkids showed up when we were plucking the third bird. Their faces were a study in disgust. EEEEEWWWW! was basically what every one of them said. They drew close in terrible fascination, like moths to a flame.

Larry's twin sister and her husband arrived soon after. At that point I went inside with the three plucked birds to begin the rest of the process--cleaning out the innards, plucking out any remaining pinfeathers, scrubbing and packaging the birds. It's no easy work with such big turkeys!

Jaime overcame her initial reaction (heck, she's a vet science grad!) and helped me by plucking the pinfeathers and burning off any remaining hairs on the birds (yes, they often have a few fine hairs on them). This photo looks odd and I have no idea who took it, but it certainly shows the amount of work going on in my kitchen.

James was fascinated by the "guts": the heart, liver and other organs that came out of the birds as we cleaned them. He stuck around for the wrapping session too.

The final product. Lovely, isn't it? As Michaela told a little friend who arrived later: "first we pulled off their feathers, and it was disgusting. Then we pulled out the guts and it was gross. Then we wrapped 'em up. And at Thanksgiving we're going to eat them and they'll be delicious!"

It's not for the faint of heart. But it's real, and if we eat meat we have to deal with this part of it. And as Michaela says, the turkeys will be delicious!

And at day's end, there's always the firepit and a glass of wine to celebrate the day's work, relax and remember.

The Turkeys are Here!

Six of them: 5 Great White and 1 Bronze. The bronze ones are beautiful to look at, but hard as all get out to pluck--they have black pinfeathers so cleaning is a chore. Uh...yeah, these will be dinner eventually.

We used to raise 15-20 a year and sell fresh birds at Thanksgiving. I'm not ready to get back into that business yet, but I have missed having fresh turkey on our Thanksgiving table. With luck, we'll have it for Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's day and a few other random times. I may even do as I did in the past, and can some of the meat. It's ready to use quickly to prepare meals when it's been canned.

Right now the little guys are in the house, waiting to get a little older and the temps outside to warm up again before we put them in the turkey house. They are very quiet, much calmer than the baby chickens were. It's fortunate that I'm off work for a while so I can get them off to a good start.