Farm Fresh Eggs!

Our place has been home to chickens for many years.  Probably more years than any other animal.  When we first bought our acreage in 1999, we had no outbuildings.  Gradually my husband built all of our sheds and barns with his own hands - using many recycled materials.  The chicken coop was no exception.  

Previous owners left us a concrete pad.  It was a small rectangle shape probably used underneath a dog kennel.  My husband looked at it and decided to turn it into a chicken coop.  He extended the concrete pad and built a beautiful chicken coop on top of it.  

If you couldn't see the outdoor chicken run, you may mistake the chicken coop for a garden shed or kid's play house.  It is framed with 2X4 construction, has insulation in the walls, vinyl siding (removed from Grandma's house), a window (removed from our house), and roofing, and ventilation under the eaves. 

Our Chicken Coop

 In the picture to the left, you can see many of these features, plus our less than ideal electrical set up to run our electric fence charger and water tank heaters...  We lost one batch of chickens to a dog breaking through the screened window.  The window is now covered in a chicken wire frame that seems to work and hold up well.  It is hard to see in the picture, but we also had to screen our under eave venting to keep out small birds.  Every few years, the birds discover a hole in the screening and 20 or more small birds will be inside the coop eating the chicken food.  We shoo them out and repair the screening.

A Young Chicken Catching a Ride

Our chickens seem to do well inside the coop even during cold winter temperatures.  We are also particular about our breed selection.  We like Orpingtons, Wyandottes, Rhode Island Reds (or whites), Americaunas (actually Easter Eggers since they don't meet all the breed characteristics), and Barred Rocks (Plymouth Rock). These breeds don't seem to mind the colder temperatures.

We use supplemental light during the winter months to give our hens the recommended 14 hours of daylight.  A great way to provide this is by using a outdoor Christmas light timer.  They are programmed to come on at dusk for the number of hours you determine by turning the dial.  We check day length online and adjust the timer as needed every few weeks.

Statistically, most egg laying is completed for the day by 10am.  Around lunchtime or early afternoon we let the chickens out of their pen and attached chicken run to free range.  They put themselves back into the coop once darkness falls.  We close them in for the night around 8-9pm to keep them safe from predators.

Our Farm Fresh Eggs

The end result is happy chickens and lots of eggs!  We collect our eggs once a day (more often in colder temperatures).  One of our youngest son's chores is to gather the chicken eggs.  I wash and sort the eggs.  Our oldest son will candle any questionable eggs for me using a dark room and led flashlight.  This is by far his favorite chore!  Then after the eggs dry I will package them into egg cartons for sale.  Currently, you can purchase our farm fresh eggs at the Main Market Coop in downtown Spokane.  We deliver eggs to the coop on Tuesday afternoons and I hear they sell out fast!

Chocolate Anyone?

Christmas is almost here!  Our Christmas tree is up and covered with lights, garland, and ornaments arranged entirely by our two sons.  Even though we don't have snow on the ground right now, the anticipation of Christmas begins to build.  There is just something about snow on the ground for Christmas, isn't there?

In preparation for Christmas stockings, most people including me shop for candy.  It just wouldn't be Christmas without chocolate, would it?  However, there is a dark side to the chocolate that many of us will be purchasing over the next few weeks.  Much of the chocolate that we consume is harvested and processed by young kids who are victims of child labor.

Now there is a lot of misunderstanding about what child labor is and what it isn't.  My own kids have almost an hour of chores they must do every day.  Even though some people may see this work as excessive for kids, it does not fall under the definition of child labor.  According to Wikipedia child labor is when a child between 4-14 (over 14 is considered an adult and kids under 4 are typically not working yet) who is engaged in:

work that "is mentally, physically, socially or morally dangerous and harmful to children; and interferes with their schooling by depriving them of the opportunity to attend school; by obliging them to leave school prematurely; or by requiring them to attempt to combine school attendance with excessively long and heavy work."^[7] 

Not all work that children do is child labor. Work done that is not detrimental to children’s health, development or schooling is beneficial because it allows children to develop skills, gain experience and prepare them for future positions;^[7] these are not considered child labor.^[7]

The worst forms of child labor, related to cocoa production, are using children as slaves or in debt bondage, trafficking them, and forcing them to do hazardous work,^[8][9] which includes using dangerous machinery or tools, manually transporting heavy loads, working with hazardous agents or working long hours.^[9]

When we give our children chores to do, we are allowing our children to develop skills and gain experience to prepare them for adult life.  We don't assign our kids so much work that they are unable to attend school because of their work schedule.  The work we give them doesn't take priority over their school attendance.  And, of course we for sure don't go kidnap kids from a neighboring city to do our work for (this is one aspect of human trafficking).

Does this use of child/forced labor really exist?  I think so.  Here are a few resources to view so you can decide for yourself

• A CNN report in January 2012 documenting the use of child slave labor in chocolate production.  

• From an article from 2010:  Link to full article here.  Quote shown below:

"ADM and Nestlé are both currently involved in a pending lawsuit concerning child trafficking and forced labour launched in 2005 by two human rights organizations, Global Exchange and the International Labor Rights Fund. The suit, filed on behalf of four Malian citizens, accuses the companies of benefiting from child slave labour at cocoa bean plantations in Cote d’Ivoire"

• Hershey was just sued for alleged child slave labor use in its chocolate.  The complaint alleges that the Board of Directors has know for 11 years of child slave labor use.
• Another article about the November 2012 lawsuit against Hershey which includes this quote from the complaint that Hershey:  “has knowingly failed to fulfill its promises. Instead, Hershey has continued to produce and sell chocolate that is the fruit of child and forced labor. If the company has knowingly supported or exploited the use of child or forced labor in Ghana or the Ivory Coast, Hershey itself has acted unlawfully or aided and abetted unlawful conduct.”

So, how do you know if the chocolate you bought is harvested or processed using child labor?  The answer is:     You can look up a company at Free2Work and see if they are graded (not all companies are) on their policies and practices for child/forced labor use.  This site also includes articles about successes such as Cadbury's deal they signed with cocoa farmers including FairTrade Certification and the resulting improvements to life in cocoa villages.  You only know for sure that the chocolate is free from child/forced labor if it is Certified by Fair Trade.

Certified chocolate will cost more than the bags of candy on sale at the grocery store.  With my economics background, I am comfortable arguing that American demand for cheap chocolate keeps child labor in place.  To pay all workers requires raising prices of the end product.  Over the past few years prices for Fair Trade and Certified Organic chocolate have dropped.  But, I would never expect Certified chocolate to ever be the cheapest option available.  Instead, I encourage you to buy less chocolate and buy Certified chocolate instead.

Why would a Spokane, Washington farm family who doesn't even grow cocoa beans even care about this?  Well, we are not living in an isolated world anymore and we can see and hear what happens all across the world in a matter of seconds.  A generation ago this information would have taken months to get to us via a letter on a ship.  There was no "seeing with your own eyes" through video cameras that record images, investigative reporting, and the internet.  Once we know of oppression, we believe that we have a responsibility to bind up the brokenhearted, proclaim freedom for the captives, and release prisoners from darkness.  While we can't travel to this area and physically make these changes.  But, we can speak loudly through how we spend our money and time.  I invite you to join me in having a bite of Fair Trade chocolate this cold winter!

Cattle Escapades

Well, I must say that cows are entertainment.  Just ask my facebook friends who have already heard most of these stories.  We purchased two cow-calf pairs this fall.  Although my husband and I both grew up with cattle, we have never intentionally owned a cow in our adult lives.  We have owned heifers (female cattle that have not had a baby calf) and steers ("fixed" males)  that we fed until butchering weight then sold and ate the meet a few weeks later.

2008 Steer Crop

We did own one cow for a week or so.  That was an oops.  We were feeding a heifer until she reached butchering weight.  One morning as my husband left for work, he noticed that she was starting to calve.  He drove back to the house to tell me to watch her that day.  Later that evening she had a grey heifer calf.  We sold the calf to a couple from Idaho who needed a calf to "graft" onto a cow that had lost her own calf.  The cow was butchered for meat about a week later.  We though about keeping the cow and calf.  But, we were in the middle of a major remodel of our house where we had to completely replace our roof; trusses and all!  We were doing all the work ourselves and could barely keep up with the required work.  A cow and calf were out of the question!

Our Boys with the Grey Calf in 2009

You see, cows are a year-round commitment.  They need vaccinations.  They eat a lot of feed.  They have to be bred to a bull or artificially inseminated.  They have babies yearly and introduce the owner to newborn calf and possible calving difficulties.  They are harder on our fences.  It seems as though they can smell when the electric fence is off.  When we raise cattle for butchering (the technical name is "back-grounding") we only own them for around 6 months.  When we have cows, it becomes more complicated.

So, we jumped into the world of complicated this September.  And, it has not been with escapades.  To begin with, we noticed that our seemingly docile two cows were really one docile cow and one angry, snotty cow.  Darla is docile.  Oreo is an angry snot.  We first noticed this when we helped the previous owner and vet give Brucellosis vaccinations to the calves.  Oreo rolled her eyes back until the whites showed, lowered her head, and almost sent the vet technician airborne    My husband and I determined to keep a respectable distance from her and wished we we had noticed her "condition" before purchasing her.

Our cows and calves in 2012.  

As we loaded the cows and their calves up to bring them home, Oreo kicked my husband in the shin as she passed by.  He still has a bump on his leg from her kick two months later.  At home, I won't let the kids into the cattle pen without an adult.  I won't be in there without something to smack Oreo with if needed.

Manure present from Oreo.

It didn't take long.  After being home about four weeks, Oreo decided I was in the way of her food.  She backed me into a corner and rolled her eyes back and began kicking at me.  I fended her off with a small grain bucket becoming splattered with fresh wet manure in the process.  Thank God I had a bucket and no kids with me!

All was calm for a couple weeks until Oreo decided to try to eat the grain set aside for the calves.  We though she wasn't capable of reaching it.  But, somehow she got her massive head through a 7 inch opening. Her head went in, but was not coming out.  Oreo was stuck between a 2X6 board and the barn wall.  I tried getting her to turn her head and drop it down low - the way she got in to start with.  But, she was not having that.  Instead she threw her head around showering everything around her with snot and saliva.  Since she was wedged against the barn wall, I figured she could not flip herself over and suffocate, so she stayed stuck until my husband got home from work.

The infamous Oreo aka angry snotty cow.

Forty-five minutes, a crowbar, a piece of wood, and some nails later we had Oreo free.  My husband removed a section of the barn wall structure to allow enough room for Oreo to get her head free.  She still had to twist her head to be free.  It took prying her head up with another 2X6 temporarily nailed in place to give my husband the help he needed to twist her hear and lift it the final foot to freedom.  Needless to say, that area of the barn is no longer a favorite for Oreo, even though it is the location where I feed grain.

Darla is such a sweet cow with a nice large and tame heifer calf.  Our plan now is to eat Oreo for meat and use Darla and her calf as the base of any herd of cattle at our place.  Between our kids and location close to the city of Spokane, we can't risk ornery animals like Oreo at our place.  So enjoy the exciting cattle stories for now.  I am expecting my story bank will dry out once Oreo leaves.  You are welcome to have a good bbq'd beek steak with us at our place though!

Snowy Days in November

We have around 6 inches of snow on the ground in our area of Spokane.  Hidden under all that snow is produce just waiting to be eaten!  These vegetables were for dinner last night.  The broccoli was frozen solid, but easy to wash up with water and cook for dinner.  My youngest son loved that the broccoli had icicles!

You will find broccoli, cauliflower, turnips, carrots, beets, and kale still in the garden under the snow.  I'm not sure what the broccoli, cauliflower, and turnips will look like once they thaw.  The other vegetables won't be affected by the freezing temperatures at all.  If I had been ahead on my to-do list, my low hoop tunnels would have been over these veggies before the snow flew.

A lonely head of broccoli

Beets hiding under a blanket of snow.  Can you see the raised area?

Kale holding off the snow

Just because the temperatures have dropped, the work still continues on our small farm.  It is time to cut down the tomato plants trellised in the greenhouse.  I will need to dig the carrots, beets, and turnips before the ground freezes solid.  In not so long I will be starting seedlings for early crops of spinach ready to harvest in March and we will do it all over again!

Cider Press Harvest Party

We tried it out and the turn of the century cider press from Superior Drill company and it works great!  Jayme did a wonderful job rebuilding the press this summer. I wish we had before and after pictures.  It is attached to a pallet for ease of movement with the tractor.  This is one heavy press!

We picked all the pears from our two pear trees and make 6 gallons of pear cider.  We drank one gallon as warm spiced cider.  The other five gallons are fermenting into a hard pear cider also known as "Perry" using this recipe.  We want to share this press with our friends and family, so we had two dates that you can come out to our farm with your apples and use the cider press.  After the pressing is done, the clean up takes almost an hour, so we don't want to run just a few apples through it.

Cider pressing at our farm located just west of Spokane, WA:

Done for 2012 - Stay tuned for dates in 2013!

Bring your apples or pears and run them through our press! Bring your fruit, take home your juice. One 5 gallon bucket of apples or pears makes about 6 quarts of juice. Don't forget to bring a jug or two for your juice. We will provide warm drinks and maybe hotdogs and brats or smores. 

Also some of our produce and items from our farm will be available for sale or trade.  Feel free to just come by during the times listed above.  If you want to contact us with questions, our contact info is at the top right corner of this blog. 

Fall Harvest Time and a Cider Press

Fall is here according to the calendar, but the days remain warm.  No complaints from us about the unseasonably warm weather.  Maybe the remaining green tomatoes will turn red before our first killing frost.  My husband Jayme has been rebuilding a turn of the century cider press this summer.  Our best guess is that the cider press was made by Superior Drilling Company sometime around 1900.  The cider press was in poor shape, but with all the necessary pieces.  Jayme took it apart, cleaned and welded the metal, and replaced all the wood framing.  He still has some work to do.    

The rebuilt wood hopper that feeds the apples into the grinder is still in the the shop drying from the clear coat.  The wood press baskets are not shown in these pictures. This picture is a closer shot of the fruit grinder.  All fruit starts out by going through the grinder into a wood press basket underneath (not shown).  Then the basket of fruit mash is moved forward to the large press that screws down (the wood portion also in the shop being finished).  

When the press is finished, we plan to host an Open House at our small farm and invite people to come out We will have our remaining produce  farm fresh eggs, and a selection of jams for sale.  We encourage you to bring out apples to press too.  The handle can easily be turned by kids, so we hope you will bring the whole family out to visit.  We will give you the cider from your apples that you run through the press.  Check back for exact dates - most like one or two days of October weekends.  Start collecting those apples soon!

WIC and Senior Nutrition Program

We are an approved grower  for the Farmers Market Nutrition Program.  This means that we can take WIC FMNP and Senior FMNP checks.

If you or someone you know is a WIC participant, you can go to the local WIC office to get your Farmers Market checks.  Or, you can come to the Millwood Market and pick your checks up there.  This year, WIC participants are given $20 of checks in $5 denominations.

If you are a senior living on a low income, you may want to check out the Senior FMNP. 

• Seniors apply for SFMNP benefits through local agencies. Eligible seniors (income below 185% of Federal Poverty level, a gross income of $1,678.91 a month for one in 2011 AND 60 years and older.) ** Source WSU Extension

 Senior FMNP particiants are given $40 of checks in $4 denominations.





We accept both WIC and Senior FMNP checks.  Look for this sign to determine growers who are participating in this program.

At the market yesterday, we created a $5 special to match the amount of the WIC checks (and for anyone to take advantage of).  For $5, participants received 1 head of lettuce, 1 bunch of carrots, and one small box of potatoes.  This gave the buyer a $1 savings over buying all the items separately.

As always, contact us to purchase produce or to see when we will be at the Millwood Farmers Market.  We don't sell there every week because we have so many family obligations this summer too!

Lettuce, Radishes, and Kale

We are selling lettuce, radishes, and kale from our farm this week.  We will not be at the Millwood Farmer's Market.  We are taking Wednesday evening off since it is our wedding anniversary.  Fourteen years!

We will be open selling produce on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday this week from 1-5pm.  Come on out!

We have almost 50 heads of Red Cross Butterhead Lettuce for sale at $2/head.  This lettuce has a nice delicate texture and is beautiful to look at.

Red Cross Lettuce

Our kale is $2/bunch or $4 for a large bag.

Radishes are $2/bunch and we have two types of radishes available: a round red radish and a long french radish.

 Tomatoes and cucumbers should be available next week. Yum!

"Socrates" Cucumbers

"New Girl" Tomatoes

Pictures of cucumbers and tomatoes trellised in the greenhouse.  To see our greenhouse made from recycled materials, click here.  A recycled greenhouse was one of our projects last year.

This Week at the Market

I believe Spokane has joined the rest of the country in a heat wave. Temperatures in the 90's are expected all week. Heat loving plants like tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant rejoice!

It is hard to keep lettuce and greens looking good and not wilting at the farmers market. We are careful to harvest our lettuce very early in the morning. The roots will still be attached to allow us to keep the plant cool in cold water. We will also offer produce for sale directly from our farm. Contact us to find a time to come and select your veggies!

Our Baby Lettuce Mesclun Mix comes bagged and is ready for the salad bowl and includes many types of lettuce and other greens. Currently we use red lettuce, green lettuce, spinach, chard, and beet leaves. We don't include any spicy greens in our lettuce mix. The spicy greens are found in our Asian Greens Mix.

Available this week:

Red Early Potatoes
Adirondack Blue Potatoes (All Blue)
Garlic
Lettuce
Baby Lettuce Mesclun Mix
Radishes
Sugar Snap Peas
Spinach
Kale
Swiss Chard
Turnips
Golden Beets
Pink Baby Beets
Kohlrabi

There is still time to reserve your all natural chicken too. These chickens are guaranteed to have no antibiotics or hormones and are fed a local blend of dry peas, wheat, and barley without any feed additives.

Millwood Farmer's Market

This is our first year selling our vegetables and other farm products beyond our family and friends. Last summer, we ventured out to many Spokane area Farmer's Markets to see if this would be an option for us. We ended up applying as a vendor to only one Farmer's Market - the Millwood Farmer's Market that is held on Wednesdays from 3-7pm in the parking lot of Millwood Presbyterian Church in the Spokane Valley. We chose this market due to its smaller size and family friendly atmosphere.

We are selling vegetable starts (including tomato plants with ripening tomatoes on them!), vegetables, handmade aprons, and handmade woodworking. For the month of July, we will take reservations for our naturally raised meat chickens. Chickens are $15 each for approximately a five pound bird, or roughly $3/pound.

We are not selling at the market every week. We have a few family commitments that will keep us home on some Wednesdays. The vegetables keep growing even if we don't get to the market, so if you are looking for fresh locally grown produce, contact us! We may be able to supply your needs directly from our farm located near the Spokane International Airport and approximately five minutes from downtown Spokane.

We also are happy to host visitors or groups of kids. We have received visits in the past from preschool groups, homeschool kids and parents, and individuals.

Available this week:

Baby Leaf Lettuce Mix
Full heads of Asian Greens
Kale
Spinach
Swiss Chard
White Turnips
New Potatoes
Fresh Garlic

Also potted plants of:

Tomatoes
Bell and Hot Peppers
Kale
Cabbage
Cauliflower
Broccoli
Bok Choy
Greek Oregano

Naturally Raised Chickens!

We are raising meat chickens over the next couple of months. They will be raised without antibiotics, sulfa drugs, hormones, or anything of that sort. Hormones are not legal for use in chickens, but both sulfa drugs (not considered an antibiotic by the FDA) and antibiotics are used by large chicken operations that supply the meat at the grocery stores. We believe that the taste is so much better than supermarket chicken too!

We are feeding a local feed mixture of wheat, barley and peas from farmers in E Washington and N Idaho (much of it comes from the Palouse). This is not organic feed, but we love that it is local to this area. We intentionally are not feeding any soybeans or corn as they are both not local and also the two most genetically modified feeds in the US.

The price of the chickens is $15/each or approximately $3/pound for an average bird of 5 pounds. A $5 deposit per bird is due with your order to hold your chicken(s). The remaining $10 is due when picking up your chicken. We have a limited number of birds available. In the event that we are unable to deliver a chicken to you (death loss is possible with any animal), we will refund your deposit. The earliest orders will be filled first.

You will take home a whole "dead" chicken in a plastic bag - just like in the grocery stores. The chickens will be "bone-in" - you won't be receiving just chicken breasts. You will need to pick up the cooled and bagged chicken within 4 hours of butchering.

Butchering date is estimated at Saturday September 1 - Labor Day weekend. If you plan to be away, a friend or relative can pick your chicken up for you.

Please contact us to reserve your chickens.

Goat kids!!! TWIN POWER!!!

Another blog post by Daniel, age 10.  More pictures of our goats can be found at the Rusty R Ranch website designed by Daniel.

We have goat kids.  I like that we have more goats.  They are little and loud.

This is Baby Deer.    She is a girl.  She is a brown/black/white mix.

 This is Jackson. He is a boy.   He is oreo colored.

Poor Rayne up on the feeder.  She is up on the feeder because Pudding won't let her near her babies.













Twin power!!! Born on 3/5/12 .

More Goat Pics And A Dog Picture

Since we are a family farm, that means that family members are involved in what we do.  This post is designed and written by our 10 year old son, Daniel.   He thought the goat pictures are out of date and wanted to share new pictures.  The goats are 4-H projects for the boys.  More pictures of our goats are on the Rusty R Ranch website Daniel designed.

Rayne is the white NIGERIAN DWARF . Pudding is the pregnant black Nigerian dwarf . 

Rayne is1 in April .  Pudding will be 5 in May.  Rayne is my goat. Pudding is Jacob's goat.

Look at that udder on Pudding.  Her udder is big because she is going to have kids.   I hope she has girls because boys we have to sell. We get to keep girls.

             Rayne wants me to get out the way .                                Pudding is looking at me wanting grain . 

                                          Missy is a border collie mutt . She wanted her picture too.

Compost additions from a local food pantry

Yesterday afternoon we received a call to see if we were in need of pig food.  We aren't currently raising pigs.  But thinking of bags of grain, I decided to follow up.  Some grain products can be fed to other animals, depending on what the content is.  Well, this wasn't grain, instead it was about 20 plastic tubs of rotting food.from a local food pantry.  The food was so far decayed that it wouldn't have been safe to feed to any animals.  And, just in case you are wondering why there was so much decayed food at a food pantry, we took about a 2 month+ accumulation.  Overall, it was a small percentage of waste.  We still took it to add to our compost pile.  I will spare you the pictures.  It was a gross experience.  But, if you choose farm life, you will have many gross experiences.  It comes with the territory.   In 6 months, that will no longer be a pile of decaying vegetables.  Instead it will be beautiful black wonderful compost!  For more information on composting, email me or check out The Green Zone for more information about composting.