What I learned from WSDA Food Safety Program for Shell Egg Producers Information Night

Last night I went to a meeting that the Kitsap Poultry Growers Coop had. Their guest speaker was from the WA State Department of Agriculture and he came to tell us everything one needs to know about selling eggs or slaughtering chickens in WA. These regs only apply if you want to sell eggs "off farm" (at markets or to stores) or if you want to sell your chicken for meat. One of the only positive things I walked away from this meeting with is a better appreciation for ANYONE who wants to make a living farming in any way. And this meeting had nothing at all to do with organic, he kept saying "that is a completely different department altogether". So taking these regs and building to comply with every little thing you need to do in order to sell and adding to them the regs for wanting to be organic, which from what I understand is NOT an easy thing to do, you can completely understand why organic food is so expensive. The small farmer seriously goes through an incredible amount of "bull" to be able to sell what he works so hard to produce... off the farm. We can sell our eggs on the farm, like we've been doing, selling to family and friends all we want but as we were told last night it's a"buyer beware" sort of thing because we aren't "inspected". Haha! So "buyer beware" if you buy our eggs.

The reason why I went to this meeting was to really understand what I needed to do to sell at Farmers Markets. Last summer I made a decision to completely concentrate on chickens instead of having a variety of farm animals to raise. I was always and forever turning people away who wanted to buy eggs because I didn't have enough. So I thought I could possibly make a little extra income selling eggs. I love my chickens. I love selling the eggs. Everyone who buys our eggs says they are awesome. I get lots of fun compliments all the time. Like the time my friend told me her 3 year old daughter wouldn't eat the store bought (organically raised even) eggs she was forced to buy when my husband was on a business trip and couldn't deliver to Seattle, but when she finally got our eggs again she gobbled them up. :) So I sold the goats and started on my adventure with 100 new chicks. Now that those 100 chickens are laying (and I don't even have 100 anymore but closer to 80) we are getting about 70+ eggs a day (we also still have the old flock that give me about a dozen a day)! The problem is, things aren't going according to my plan! I can't sell enough to keep up. So we are eating LOTS of eggs, donating to the food bank (which is a very good thing), and trying to advertise for more on-farm sales but we still need more sales. So I thought I'd check out this possibility of farmers markets. But the good ol' government don't make it easy.
So we'll plug along with the way things are. I'm sure Poulsbo's food bank doesn't mind me bringing eggs in now and again. We'll be butchering our old flock and donating some chickens to All-Merciful Savior Monastery (if they ever get the chicken coop done, When Fr. Tryphon???) and hopefully with a slight increase in sales (thank you to some new customers from the east side of the water) we'll even out here soon.
But I have to say...my eyes are opened a little wider and I appreciate all those small farmers all the more. ( A small farmer selling eggs is any farm with less than 3000 hens!!) I AM one of those small farmers, but I have resigned from ever trying to make something of it. I really wanted to but until I have the time to put into all the "bull", I can't. Maybe once the kids are grown and I'm not needing to concentrate on home AND school.

BUY FROM YOUR LOCAL SMALL FARMERS!!!! BUY ORGANIC!!! Seek them out! They need us! Don't know where they are? Check out this website...Local Harvest.

One more thought. Through all of this I'm regretting getting rid of the goats. I feel that for little people like us the goal really should be self-sufficiency and sustainability. This means VARIETY. Growing and raising lots of different things so that we don't need to go elsewhere, except for a very few needs. Back to rethinking how I might want to do that. For this year, it's concentrating on the garden!

Happy Spring to you all! May the sun shine on my farm a little more every day...I need it. :)

Little Bit of Heaven Here On the Farm

Yesterday was an amazing, beautiful day. Spring has truly sprung! By the afternoon the sun was high in the sky and temps were rising. I think we hit about 60 degrees. Today it is suppose to be even warmer and we started with sun! Yeah. I got to work outside, in the garden mostly, for more than 3 hours!!! Earlier this spring I set up my little Icon shelter in the east corner of my garden. The icons I put in there are from the girls. The Theotokos one Kelsey made at camp and the little one in from of it is a rock icon of Christ that Charissa made at camp.

Below the icon shelter is a wooden cross. It isn't because there is something buried there, but because one of my kids made it and wanted it displayed. :) Joseph and Charissa made that and Joseph pounded it proudly into the ground.

The chickens were really enjoying the weather yesterday. I walked out to the run and found all these chickens laying around on the ground. They were sprawled out on their sides, legs stretched, wings stretched. They almost looked dead. They were just relishing in the warmth of the sun!

This little, old flock will become food soon. They've been a wonderful flock but they need to move on to their next purpose since the new flock is finally giving back to us now. We'll start butchering tomorrow, not sure how many we'll get done in one day. We have about 30 to do.

I worked in the garden for a long time yesterday and hope to for a long time this afternoon as well. I LOVE IT! This project that I'm working on has been going for a couple months now, but here is what I'm doing. I revamped the whole layout and decided to do a "no dig" method of gardening raised beds! There is tons of information on this on the internet. One of my favorite books though is called "Lasagna Gardening". If you google lasagna gardening you will gets lots of information as well. Since I started late in the winter I didn't have time to do LOTS of layers but decided that they will build up a little each year. We'll see how it all goes. First, I started with a layer of newspaper or cardboard, THICK.

Second step was to then put a thick layer of straw. They say some straws aren't good, I think I got one that isn't good because it is starting to sprout, but there is nothing I can do about it now. I just pluck out the little sprouts and because they aren't rooted into anything it's easy.

Third step is to put on a thick layer of compost! This is the step I'm still in the middle of doing. Well, yesterday I finished 2 beds that still needed the first 2 steps done. Today I plan to haul compost all afternoon and get all 10 beds complete. I also hope to do some planting in the beds that have been complete now for a month. The 3 closest beds you see below have been ready for a month. There is a fourth one ready, you can see a tiny corner of it in the lower part of the picture. I planted lettuce, kale and spinach in that bed 3 weeks ago.

Here is my spinach sprouting!!!

A funny picture of Nicholas. Nicholas has become my inventor. He has a "laboratory" up in his bedroom and wants to be an inventor. This has really inspired his sister as well and they often invent things together. This is a blessing, because most of the time all they do is fight. But they've worked nicely together on their inventions.

The reason I mention the inventor and his sister is because yesterday Charissa was the inventor. She spent a good part of the afternoon rigging up this watering system. Hours!
When she was done and it did what it was suppose to she was SO proud of her work. I was too. The bucket fills with water, she moves the ropes to let it dump into the buck that is waiting below.

She filled the duck waterer with her new invention.

So, So, So happy spring is really here and very much looking forward to summer and hoping it is a good one, weather wise.

Quick note

I truly don't know where the time goes. I don't really have time right now to post but just wanted to let those few who still pop in here that we are still alive.

I'm headed out on vacation and need to catch a plan this morning and promise to post a farm update when I return.

Just so you know.....we have TONS of eggs. The new flock started laying and they are incredible. I'm getting 4-5 dozen a day just from them! Some days I'm washing 80+ eggs a day!

See you soon!

A New Year

Thank you, Anna, for commenting recently and reminding me how long it had been since I posted. For reminding me that there are a few people out there that pop on to read about the farm now and again. Thanks for continuing to read despite the infrequency of my posts.

Winter here in Western Washington, this year, is muddy. So the farm is muddy, the chickens are muddy and the ducks are muddy. The ducks, however, really enjoy wet weather!
The chickens could live without it.



The new flock is getting a look at their new nests that I just recently put up and trying to figure out what they are for. And I might say they better figure out pretty fast what they are for because 95 hens eat a LOT of feed. Since they aren't yet paying for it they are making me pretty anxious. Lay! I was talking to James tonight that maybe we out to do a whole lot more fencing so that they can get out further into the brush to forage. That would save on feed. Right now they have a fairly small spot to forage in and it gets depleted quite quickly.



We have one rooster in the bunch of 95 and he will not be able to keep up with all these hens. So he will be butchered soon and sold to a nice little lady who seeks rooster and only rooster for an old folk remedy she makes for her arthritis. She swears by it, but it's got to be a rooster. You can't just walk into the grocery store to buy a rooster, so she comes to us and is willing to pay a handsome price for him. :)
We also have an odd colored hen this time around. I ordered 100 Rhode Island Reds and this is red but she is a much brighter red that is a very orange red. Wonder what she is.

The old hens that are in the garden have created a barren wasteland of the garden, which is what they were suppose to do. It is now time to put them back in their other pen so that I can lay down some black plastic over the garden for a couple of months. The plastic will act as an insulator to heat the ground to help speed up decomposition of roots and chicken manure that the chickens so graciously left behind while they foraged. This will make great fertilizer!



All in all everything is going well. I am anxiously awaiting the new flocks first egg and hope that new adventure will be in full swing very soon.

Weather Update

We have not been above freezing all week. The nights have been down in the teens, daytime in the 20's. They say we should get above freezing today, we'll see.
This is highly unusual weather for these parts. I still like it!
It has made me extremely "home"sick for MN, wanting SNOW to go with the cold. It's just wrong to get this cold and not get any snow.
We do have a SLIGHT chance of snow this weekend when we transition back to the warmer, wetter weather. But it never stays and that is because we are warming up when the clouds move in. I do hope they are wrong and we get hammered. :)
We have had to bring all the water buckets to the house to fill because my outside water source is frozen solid. That's been the hardest part.
But I still love it!

Life on the farm these days!

The sun is back!! It is glorious, beautiful and emotionally uplifting! I have missed the sun more than words can say. Since the beginning of October we've had approximately 18 inches of rain here on the farm!!! We've been keeping track in our rain gauge for school. We drew a big huge chart that hangs on the wall, it was created and started on September 1st. But I know that in September we only received an inch or 2 of rain, our chart says 18.9inches of rain since September 1st. This means we've had anywhere from 17-18 inches of rain since October 1st! You might say, "You live in Seattle, that's normal!" But let me tell you, it is not! At the airport, the official measurements of anything weather, they've officially measured 14.5 inches of rain since Oct. 1st....the normal? 9.69 inches!!!!!

So, suffice it to say, I've missed the beautiful sun and I'm completely and utterly tired of the rain and clouds!

For 3 days in a row we've woken to the 20's! I love it! Why? Because that tells me it is clear! It is clear and the sun will shine! Yes, it's cold but it's bright!

This is beneficial not only for me but also for the chickens! They no longer are traipsing through ankle deep mud, but they are walking ON the mud (it's frozen). Maybe production will rise again now that the real sun is shining and it is not so gloomy out all day long.

How about those new chickens? They are now 13 weeks old! I am busily getting their nests ready because they'll start producing in about a month! I cannot wait! Today we'll finish hanging the rest of the new roosts and finish the last 8 foot section of fencing so that can go outside. Hopefully I'll get the last piece of wall up in the barn as well to extend their coop a little bit. I still have 95 birds in there but should be down to 80 by the time they start laying.
I'm selling some off.

Sorry it is so long between posts, but life is just crazy busy these days. Have a wonderful Holiday Season!

Chickens, Wind and Rain, OH MY!

We've had an incredible week of weather! Just this week (the last 5 days) we've had over 5 inches of rain. I don't think it is a secret any longer, I do NOT like rain! Yes, I know I am living in the wrong place and not like rain. It never used to bother me but 5 inches in 5 days makes for an incredibly muddy barnyard. The old chickens have a very large garden they get to eat through before January and they are now walking in mud up to their ankles. (Do chickens have ankles?) It's gross.
We've had 4 or 5 high wind watches over the last 10 days but they didn't amount to much. Big gusts and some flickering lights was about all. I'm thankful.

The new flock of chickens are growing in leaps and bounds and need to get outside. So I've got the chicken wire to surround the old goat yard with and hopefully they can get outside this week. The goat fencing holes are just too big and they can sneak out so I need to put up the poultry fence first. It'll be easy since the goat fence is in place. We are also going to finish up the interior of the barn for them. This means getting their nest boxes in place and more roosts up. As well as putting up higher walls between them and the storage section. They are "flying the coop" quite easily these days. The other night I found one in a most peculiar place! Check it out below.