Death TO SNOW!!!!

Well here is the latest addition to my arsenal in the war on snow. Should tip the odds in my favor I think. Compared to a strong back and scoop shovel, this is a major advancement. Sort of like the cave man getting his hands on fire. Its a 1957 International 450 Farmall, with a 2001 International Loader on it. Runs ok, you can tell she's got some miles on her, but it seems to be reliable. And over the summer, when its hopefully not snowing, it should open some big doors in the self sufficiency growing my own food department.

The Mrs

Well Amanda has been bugging me saying that she doesn't get on my blog enough, just pictures of dead critters. So here is one to restore the ratio - My photographer sister snapped some vogue romantic photos of us this summer. As you might expect, I was really excited about that, but had no choice :)

Canada 07

Well I figured I should get around to putting some pictures of our June Canadian catch up sooner or later. It was a good trip this year, tons of big fish, camaraderie, and for the first time ever, a whole herd of bears savaging our cabins/coolers/ and generators. Sort of like rats on steroids really. They tore out the screens, raided the frozen sweet corn, and chewed off the fuel line to the diesel generator. Guess our cabin was on the Island of the Bears!!

Here are a couple dandy pike and my second biggest muskie ever - a 40 incher, right around 20 lbs. Also is photo of Pop's beast of the week, a 44 inch 25 pounder. We got both of the muskies in the same bay within about 100 yards or so, two different days though. Must be something in the water. Hahaha.

JZ

The end of the chickens

Well since since the chicken story was starting to take a long time to tell, I thought I would just skip to the ending, which is after all the best part. Below you can see the chickens on there big day, they ended up reaching about 7 lbs or so in like 8 weeks. My buddy Jon came down to help out with the butchering (only fair since half the meat is his). Mini turkeys really at this size. The breasts are huge. You have to fillet them in half to get them to grill up decent, but they are still melt in you mouth tender and juicy. Here is our butchering setup, the weather cooperated nicely so we just worked outside. After relieving them of their heads via the chopping block and axe, we let them drip dry a bit from the ladder on the left with some pieces of wire. A good rinse with the garden hose followed, and then off to the table in the center. (actually the table was a big chunk of plastic decking I bummed off my dad. He got a bunch of it used last summer and had some extra pieces laying around) We just filleted off the breasts, took the legs, and called that good enough. Probably like 85% of the meat or better, and no messing around with plucking feathers or taking out the guts. We tried getting some of the wings, but that proved to be more work than a few fork fulls a meat was worth. We also saved a bunch of livers, since I have heard that chicken liver is the best catfish bait around. As you can tell from the 15 gallon tub level full of meat, the yield on these little buggers was excellent. We ended with approximately 350 lbs of meat (boneless, no carcass included) at a cost of $1.78 per pound. Which is like 1/2 price of what Walmart sells chicken for, so economically, it works out well. The total amount of feed these guys ate was around 1800 lbs, just shy of a ton. You sort of realize how many resources go into meat production when you try your own hand at it. We boned all the leg meat out (yep that took a LONG time), and ran it through my grinder, making some of the tastiest, healthiest burger you can imagine. Just enough fat in the leg meat that the stuff sticks together pretty well, and it tastes fantastic. I will definitely grow some more next year.

4 week fryers

Well here are the beasts a little over 4 weeks. I forgot to shoot on Thursday. They started stinking pretty bad in the house, so I moved them outside where they belong. They were most of the way into their new feathers, so it was time. I swept out one of my grain bins, put down some shavings, and through in my monster feeders. So far the bin has been quite ideal for a coop. It didn't cost me anything, and the chickens seem to like their new home. I took a shot from above through an access hole, so you can see the layout of the bin a little better. I think the birds are edible sized now actually. The Cornish game hens you buy in the store are just really young broilers like these.

Chickens and Heroes

Well here are the beasts at three weeks. You can see the exponential growth curve starting to be realized now. I bet they doubled in weight this week. Getting pretty ugly too. They are about 75% into a set of new feathers. I snapped a couple photos of my feeder I built too. The doors are down to the feed troughs, and you can see the string (baling twine baby) that I use to simultaneously raise and lower the doors so I don't actually have to crawl in the pen and do it before work. Just swivel the 2x2 door jams out of the way (so they can't sneak a midnight snack on me) and pull the string up. Presto, feeding frenzy. Actually had one die in the fray last week. I think his buddies broke his leg and trampled him in a effort to get his share of the breakfast. They are getting pretty durable and big now, so I don' think I will lose many more. They are sort of fragile when they are really small.

What else is new around here other than stupid chickens? Well I just got a bonus at work - that made my day. A little seed money for the tractor fund (the homemade plow had its day, but real prairie blizzards and 4 foot drifts call for something with hydraulics) Last weekend I went on a "Heroes" binge big time. I had never heard of the show before, but I downloaded it for my brother inlaw (serving his country in the big sandy as we speak). Any way, it turns out, its a phenomenal show, and horribly addicting. Makes 24 look like child's play as far as the "cant' wait for the next episode" phenomena. Good thing I only had the first 11 episodes, cuz Amanda and I watched them all. I cued up 12 to 18. Have to wait till summer for the season to be over to get them all.

JZ

Chickens @ 2 weeks

Thought I would through a couple of 2 week pictures up for comparison. They are getting big enough that they don't all fit around the 3 little chick feeders I bought any more, so yesterday I built two big 4 foot long feeders with troughs on each side, a big hopper that holds approximately 100 lbs of feed or so, and lids for the troughs on hinges so I can shut down the feeding frenzy at night to stave off the heart attacks. I will throw a picture of the contraption up with week three photos

Chicken, the orginal white meat

Spring is here, and what could be better than some broiler chickens to fatten up for sunday dinners this summer. With the red meat production streamlined, I thought I would move on to some white meat. My partner in crime Jon and I decided to go in together on the project. 60 chickens for him and 60 for me. Except the hatchery folks cant count to well, so I ended up paying for 120 and getting 117. The hatchery said that males (which are what I got) will reach 7 1/2 lbs in about 8 weeks. They grow really fast. Broiler chickens are supposed to be the most efficient meat animals there are, but we will see I guess. I decided to put them in my basement until the weather warms up a bit, at which point I will move them to one of my five empty grain bins. They ought to work pretty well for low budget chicken coops.



The photos above were taken when the chicks were one day old. The photo to the left was taken when the they were 1 week old, and you can already see how fast they are growing. The little buggers drink about 3 gallons a day, and eat about 15 lbs a day or so. So far, only 2 have died. One didn't learn to drink I think, and the other one got smothered by his friends.

There's the beef

Well the deed has been done. The fat beast grazing in my backyard has been transformed into some top notch beef. My buddy Jon came down for the weekend to give me a hand.

The old 6.5x55 Swedish Mauser got the party started on Friday night. Somewhere around 2 minutes after I pulled the trigger, we realized how enormous cows are. We needed to spin her around 180 degrees
after she fell to be able to hook the gambrel up I had fashioned from some angle iron, a pulley, 1/4 inch aircraft cable, and a come-along winch.
Both of use were pulling as hard as we could, and we could only slide her like 6" at a time. It took about 4 hours to kill, gut, hang, and skin the beast so it could cool overnight. We shot her underneath a large beam in my 3 sided shed that was used as shelter for her. After pulling her up on that, we backed my flat bed trailer underneath, and then lowered the cow down onto the trailer. Drove it up to the garage, and re-hung her from roof truss. Being a structural engineer, I was a little concerned about hanging 800 pounds on my rickety old garage trusses, so I put a couple 2x6's under the joist next to the cow to take most of the weight. It took the both of us 12 hours on Saturday to cut it all up, which actually was quicker than I was anticipating. The amount of fat on a cow is incredible. We froze it all up to be recycled as chicken feed this spring (get my money back out of the stuff), and I am sure there was at least 150 lbs of blubber. I bought a couple of 8' counter tops at Menards, and a laundry sink and fashioned a butcher shop of sorts in my basement. We made bunch of hamburger patties up for summer grilling with garlic and onions ground right into the meat, and then pre-froze them out in garage, and wrapped them up.

The yield wasn't quite as good as I had hoped, about 240 lbs of boneless meat, not including the ribs. Came out to around $2.90 a pound for the finished product, for the price of the calf plus feed. Which is about what you pay around these parts for 1/4's or 1/2 beefs from a local farmer. But doing it yourself is pretty satisfying all around. The hamburger is the best you have ever tasted, almost no grease in the pan when you cook it up. The roasts are real tasty too, nice and lean. The steaks are not as good as what you get at good restaurant, or in the store. I think not being grain stuffed, and no aging probably contributed to that. While it will kill you, eating lots or marbled fat is tasty and tender. But if you marinade them good, they are quite delicious, and probably pretty healthy for you. So I think I will get another calf this spring and start the whole process over again.

Take a nail, take a board, put them together and you got a SNOW PLOW ???

Hmm well here is a fine piece of redneck ingenuity. Last week we got 8 inches of snow or so. That combined with with some nasty big drifts was making my 1200' long driveway a pretty inhospitable place for the 96' Honda civic we drive to work. I started thinking as I looked at the piles of white stuff that there had to a better way to get rid of it than shoveling for 14 hours straight. A quick survey of my resources revealed a really long 4x6 timber, some plywood scraps, a log chain, and some 2x4's, and my big old gas sucking 4x4 Dodge Dakota. I cut the 4x6 in half, and then made a big tall beam with a couple of slots for the log chain to go by making a 4x6, 2x4, 4x6 sandwich. This composite beam forms the blade. I finished off the front of it with a nice smooth piece of plywood, and then lag bolted a strip of steel sheet metal along the bottom for the cutting edge. To make it more stable I added the the outrigger off the back with the box and tube sand bag for balast. Without the tube sand, I can pick it up pretty easy, it weighs maybe 110 lbs or so. Using the log chain, and a cable with eyes on it I swiped off an old drag that was down by my shed, I was able to hook it up eccentrically to my truck's hitch so it pulled at an angle and pushed the snow to the right side. I through few hundred pounds of sand and cement in the back of the truck, and stuck her low range. It worked much better than I imagined, I was able to clear the whole driveway in little over an hour, and the whole thing didn't cost me a penny.