Incubating 6 Copper Marans Eggs Under Broody Chicken

On February 26, 2015, we put six black copper marans eggs under a broody chicken. The chicken incubation period is 21 days, assuming everything is controlled well as far as temperature. If there are cold periods, the date could be extended by as many as three additional days. 

The weather here has been pretty cold at night. On the very cold nights, we use a lamp in the coop to keep it warmer. 

I created a poultry hatch date calculation table with Google Spreadsheets. So far, we just have the chicken dates. Once we find the guinea eggs we will add formulas for that column. To use the table, just copy over the "Date Started" cell under chicken and the formula will calculate your expected hatch date.

My Goat Edna and I enjoy our Snow Day

How I Make My Feta Cheese

Making feta cheese is not difficult. Here are the steps I use to make mine. 

We are blessed by the provision of Edna, our dairy goat. She is a gentle, occasionally stubborn girl who provides our family approximately 1/2 gallon of delicious milk daily. That is the first and most important ingredient, raw (unpasteurized) local goat milk. You need to scout out a source for local goat milk if you don't have a lactating dairy goat of your own. (ha)

I use about one gallon of milk to make our feta batch. It is fine to use slightly more if you want more. But we find a gallon of milk makes plenty of feta for our use over the next month.  

The first step after collecting the milk is to heat the temperature of the milk to about 75 degrees in an enamel or stainless pot. 

If you mix 1/2 gallon of fresh milk from your refrigerator with a 1/2 gallon of milk straight from your goat, the temperature comes out nearly perfect. Afterwards, I heat the milk briefly until it reaches 75 degrees Fahrenheit.

The next step is to add animal rennet. This ingredient causes the milk to form into plain cheese. 

They say that rennet was discovered by a boy crossing the desert. He packed milk in a the cow stomach skin so he would have something to drink on the the trip across the desert. When the thirsty boy stopped to take a drink, however, he discovered the milk in the skin turned to cheese. Mmmmmm, a nice gulp of cheese. (Ha-ha.) Thus, it was discovered that rennet (from an animal stomach) would mix with the biological organisms in milk to produce delicious cheese. 

The rennet product we use is shown below. You can buy it on Amazon or at Cultures for Health (link below).

You only need  four drops per gallon. This little bottle of animal rennet is nearly gone now, but it has lasted us for about a year. And, we make a lot of cheese. 

Let the rennet and the milk work their magic for about 30 minutes.

Next, add your packet of feta cheese culture powder. The product we use is from Cultures for Health.

It is ok if the rennet and milk mixture has already started to form cheese. Just stir the powder from the packet in and set the pot in a nice warm spot. (We like to put it next to our chimney because the bricks stay nice and warm even with no fire in our stove.) The goal is to keep the ingredients around 70 or 75 degrees. Let it sit for twelve hours.

After enough time has gone by, it is time to cut the curds. I do this step by using a bread knife to cut a checkerboard pattern through the cheese in the pot. I like to use the handles as a guide for my angles, but you can use whatever you like to make your checkerboard slices. Then, I shake my pot back and forth as shown below. 

I shake the pot like that two or three times over a thirty minute period. 

Then, you are ready to drain the whey from the cheese. A lot of whey will have already separated from the cheese, but the curds are still soaked with whey and you want gravity to separate the liquid for dryer cheese. 

This is simple process. Just put a cheese cloth over a large pot, and gently pour the ingredients into the pot. Wrap the cheese cloth around the contents, and hang the cheese cloth above the level of the fluid. (See pictures below.)

  

I let my cheese drain for at least 12 hours. That is longer than some recommend. But I like to let all the liquid drip out. It is still soft even after 12 hours.

The final step is a brine cure. Mix about 1/3 a cup of salt and water into a half-gallon jar. Leave enough space so you can add your cheese! Then, it is into the refrigerator to cure for up to 30 days. Here are the final pictures.

 

I tasted this batch.  Oooh, baby! This is some good feta cheese. 

As an added bonus, we now have a 1/2 gallon of whey for our pigs. They love it!

Good Tutorial on How to Gut and Process a Deer (Goat)

Update on our American Guinea Hogs

On November 14, 2014, we bought two young American Guinea Hog gilts (un-bred female pigs) from Cathy Payne's Broad River Pastures. (Broad River Pastures is located in Elberton, Georgia.) 

The video below shows an update on the two girls. They are smart, growing rapidly, and very healthy animals! We love them.

We are function stacking with these animals. They encourage soil life on our property. We intend to rotate the pigs to different areas over time. For now, we have them rooting about in a small stand of white oak, hemlock, dogwood, pine, and beech trees. The pigs are digging in the ground for acorns, roots, and nuts, and at the same time, enhancing the soil quality by encouraging aerobic microscopic soil life. 

Improving our soil biology is just one of the functions of our cute AGHs. If you want to know about the improved soil biology that we are aiming to achieve with all of our diverse set of animals, we recommend you read the scientific work of Dr. Elaine Ingham at her blog.  

Paul Wheaton's PEP1 Certification Tasks

Paul Wheaton is a permaculture leader that created the forums at permies.com. He has developed some interesting certifications he calls "Permaculture Experience Paul" or PEP. He has created a list of tasks the permaculturist must complete to achieve the certification. Note: the "Paul" in the an acronym refers to standards created by Paul Wheaton. He acknowledges that other permaculturists may have differing standards to accomplish their own certification levels.

Paul has created an interesting list. I am reproducing the lists he created for Gardening and Chickens below. The links take you to the forums of permies where the people discuss Paul's PEP certifications.

Gardening

white belt:

- grow 30 pounds of tomatoes (without transplanting)
- grow 20 pounds of peas (without transplanting)
- grow 50 pounds of potatoes
- grow 20 pounds of onions
- grow 20 garlic bulbs
- grow 5 pounds of raspberries
- grow 5 pounds of rhubarb
- grow 5 pounds of green beans (without transplanting)
- grow 5 pounds of summer squash (without transplanting)
- grow 20 pounds of winter squash (without transplanting)
- grow 10 pounds of broccoli (without transplanting)
- grow 10 pounds of cabbage (without transplanting)
- grow 10 pounds of carrots
- grow 3 pounds of sweet peppers (without transplanting)
- grow 1 pound of hot peppers (without transplanting)
- grow 5 pounds of lettuce (without transplanting)
- grow 2 pounds of kale
- grow 5 pounds of cucumbers (without transplanting)
- grow 20 pounds of daikon radish
- grow 10 pounds of strawberries
- grow 20 ears of corn
- grow 3 pounds of basil (without transplanting)
- grow 20 pounds of sunchokes
- grow 3 pounds of celery
- grow 1 pound of grain
- grow 4 pounds of stinging nettles
- grow 2 pounds of sunflower seeds
- grow parsley
- grow chives
- grow cilantro
- grow rosemary
- grow sage
- grow thyme
- grow daffodils
- grow crocus
- grow comfrey
- grow buckwheat
- grow caraway
- grow a grape vine
- grow horseradish
- grow marigolds
- grow nasturtiums
- grow sweet alyssum
- grow sweet clover

- plant apple seeds and have 50 seedlings at least four inches tall
- plant black locust seeds and have 50 seedlings at least four inches tall
- plant nut tree seeds and have 50 seedlings at least four inches tall
- plant mulberry seeds and have 50 seedlings at least four inches tall
- plant seaberry seeds and have 50 seedlings at least four inches tall

- mulch
- polyculture
- zero irrigation, although a watering can is allowed to help seeds to germinate in a timely fashion
- hugelkultur
- mitigating deer/vole/pest problems

green belt

- grow double what was grown for the white belt, in one year
- grow enough (in one year) to feed one person for a full year (one million calories)
- grow melon
- seed saving
- encouraging volunteer plants
- chop and drop
- using rock mulch
- using sticks/branches mulch
- using straw as mulch
- using hay as mulch
- use rhubarb leaves as mulch
- using sawdust/woodchips as mulch
- sell at least $200 in food
- ruth stout composting
- zero irrigation - not even a watering can to help germination in the beginning
- grow at least two pounds of edible mushrooms

brown belt

- grow double, in one year, what was grown for the green belt
- grow enough, in one year, to feed four people for a full year (four million calories)
- sell at least $1000 in food


black belt (note that black belt is not required for PEP1 - this is put here for those that wish to pursue a black belt beyond PEP1)

- grow enough to feed 20 people for a full year
- sell at least $10,000 in food



Note: The average person needs about one million calories per year. A pound of sunchokes has about 300 calories. A pound of sunflower seeds has about 2500 calories. A pound of potatoes: 300. Tomatoes: 80. Peas: 350. Daikon: 100. Apples: 200 Nettles: 300. If a person was going to eat only sunchokes for a year, they would need over 3000 pounds.

(fyi: a pound of beef has about 1100 calories)

Chickens

:ote: I'm no chicken expert and I certainly have not done everything listed here, but this list is based on my own experiences and what I've learned from others, particularly Paul.
Feel free to split up, move around, add/remove, change stuff.

White:
-read Paul's Raising Chicken's 2.0 article
-listen to both podcasts on chickens 003 - Chickens, 014 - Chicken Presentation
-design and build a portable coop that isn't a hassle to move, is effective, and reaches a level 10 on all of Paul's grading factors.
-respectfully harvest 10 birds (Alexia Allen videos here 1, 2)

Yellow/Orange:
-raise 20 chicks as meat birds to slaughter (with respectful harvest method) with no grain feeder, in paddock shift system
-raise 20 chicks as laying hens to slaughter (with respectful harvest method) with no grain feeder, in paddock shift system

Green:
-design a year-round fodder system that is effective even in Montana
-plot paddock systems for grazing around other farm systems for mutual benefits
-raise double the number of birds as the yellow/orange belt but through natural hatching by a broody hen, without an incubator
-manage breeding colonies to ensure genetic diversity, number of hens per rooster
-sell $300 in eggs, meat, feet, other value added products from chickens

Brown:
-raise double the number of birds as the green belt using the same methods
-sell $1,000 in eggs, meat, feet, other value added products from chickens

Black:
-raise double the number of birds as the brown belt using the same methods
-sell $8,000 in eggs, meat, feet, other value added products from chickens

Greenwood Woodworking 

make 50 shakes with a froe and wooden mallet
make 5 wooden mallets out of a single piece of wood
make 5 wooden mallets out of 2 pieces of wood
Create a wooden mallet within half an hour
grind and hone 5 hand tools to shaving sharpness using only sharpening stones/sand paper
carve a spoon using hand tools only
make three greenwood benches or tables without any screws or nails used for joinery
make a pole-lathe
Bodger 4 chair legs using your pole lathe
make 5 bowls using your own pole lathe
Create a shaving horse without any screws or nails used for joinery
Make two different types of chairs (ladder back, bow back, comb back) out of greenwood without any screws or nails used for joinery

Books-
Green Woodworking- Mike Abbott
The Woodland Way, Living in a Wood in the 21st Century- Ben Law
Sweedish Carving Techniques- Willie Sundqvist

DVDs/TV-
17th Century New England Carving- Peter Follansbee
The Woodwright's Shop- Roy Underhill

Websites-
Lost Art Press 
bodgers.org 
Fine Woodworking

This is what we have to look forward to with our American Guinea Hogs!

See these links to Charleston, South Carolina, Chef Deihl's blog posts.

Project American Guinea Hog

Project American Guinea Hog Part 2

Going Hog Wild