Monday, December 9, 2013

The Second Coming of Christ

What would you do if the second coming of Christ happened today? If you heard that Jesus was back and on his throne in Jerusalem, would you clear your calendar and make preparations to see him, talk to him, and be in his presence?  When you got there and saw him, would you recognize him, even if he came in humble form, with humble attire with humble surroundings?  Would you fall to your knees before him in worship? Would you join with the heavenly host of angels and archangels surrounding him, proclaiming "Holy Holy Holy is the Lord of Hosts"?  If He offered you his body and blood in communion, would you first repent of your sins and beg him for healing?  After visiting with Jesus, worshiping Him, and feasting with Him, would you rush out to go back home, or would you linger a while?  If he asked you to go and tell others that He had returned, that he was really here, would you do it?

Friends, Jesus is back.  He is here on earth, physically. I went to visit Him, worship Him, and feast with Him yesterday.  Just like 2000 years ago, most people don't recognize Him, even when they see him.  They expect Him to come with military might and overthrow governments.  Most people that see him treat Him casually when they see him, and only go through the motions of worshiping Him. Most visit out of a sense of obligation rather than joy, awe, or love.  Most who do visit Him leave in a rush so they can see the ball game on the networks.  Many heartfelt Christians refuse to believe that He has come back, so never even go to visit Him.

The Kingdom of God is at hand and Jesus has returned, just like the Book of Revelation describes, in the Mass.  Come and worship our King!

Tuesday, December 3, 2013

Experimenting with a Free Fodder System

Sprouting grain is a great way to stretch your feed costs and improve nutrition for your farm animals.  We recently started sprouting grain for our laying hens and meat rabbits and have had some great results.  I've also learned a lot, and thankfully I didn't invest any money in the equipment setup while I was learning.  If you're considering starting a fodder system like this, I recommend the same approach: spend as little as possible and experience the daily rhythm for a month before buying a nice setup.  I started with 21 extra "1020" seed starting trays that I had, an adjustable shelf, 2 extra 5 gallon buckets, and an extra 20 gallon tub.  If you had to buy all of this brand new, it's still relatively inexpensive compared to fodder system kits.

I watched several videos on YouTube and found these two to be the most helpful:
Sarah Cuthill's DIY Fodder System
Paca Pride's Fodder System

I'm currently growing in 3 new trays every day, letting them grow to 7 days before feeding the sprouts to the animals.  At night before bed, I measure out 4 cups of wheat for each tray that I'm planning to sprout (12 cups total) and put that in a 5 gallon bucket, then soak that with water, bringing the water line to twice the height of the grain since the grain will absorb so much of the water.  I let it soak overnight, 8-9 hours. At the same time before bed, I water the rest of the trays that are already sprouting.  In the morning, I take the oldest/tallest 3 trays of sprouts and pull the sprouts (called a mat) out of the tray, upside down on a large cutting board.  I use a large serrated kitchen knife to cut two of the mats into 8 equal size pieces for the rabbits.  I also cut one tray in half for the laying hens.  After a couple of weeks, I had extra buckets that used to hold wheat so I put the cut pieces in those buckets to take out to the animals.  We currently have 8 rabbit does, 2 rabbit bucks, and 20 rabbit kits eating fodder, plus about 40 laying hens.  The adults each get 1 square of fodder, and the kits get 1 square for every 3-4 kits.

Early on, I always had a portion of the finished trays not sprout, and the mats fell apart.  This tended to occur in the end of the tray that was downhill, near the drain holes, and more in the trays that had the worst access to light. The water runoff also had a strong odor to it, and the portions of the trays that were downhill had a white slimy film in them after I emptied the tray and fed to the animals.  I was using unfiltered well water, which we knew had high levels of iron. I also noticed that one of the trays always produced superior fodder mats, it had drain slots all along the tray rather than just in one end.  I also had tried sprouting barley that never sprouted - it just fermented. To remediate these issues, we did the following:
- added an iron filter from cleanwater.com
- spread the trays out a bit more so they could get better light access
- put the oldest 4 days of trays on top with more vertical space between shelves
- added more drain holes in all the trays
- stopped using the "flood and drain" method, started watering all trays evenly with a gentle shower setting on the garden hose nozzle, using far less water with each watering.
- ceased using the barley and stuck with wheat.  Found out that "pearled" barley (which I was using) has the germ removed, so it won't sprout.  Whole grain barley should work just fine, just don't use pearled barley.

Also, many of the videos and blogs out there make some stellar claims about reducing your feed bill.  I've validated that, but in a slightly different way.  We switched from commercial non-organic rabbit feed to organic fodder and cut our costs in half.  Our meat rabbits would eat 1 cup (4oz) of commercial pellets per day when not nursing, 3 cups per day when nursing.  The bags were 50# and cost $20.  This meant we spent $0.10 per day per non-nursing adult rabbit, and $0.30 per day per nursing doe.  When we moved to fodder, we started using organic wheat that costs $18 for a 50# bag.  Each non-nursing rabbit's fodder started with 1/2 cup (2oz) wheat, which costs 4.5 cents per day.  Each nursing doe gets 3 times this, or 13.5 cents per day.  So, we cut our feed costs on rabbits by 55% while switching to organic.  Of course, this is not an apples-to-apples comparison.  I'm guessing that if we had switched to conventional wheat or barley instead of organic, we would have seen a reduction of 75% or more in out feed bill.  What is especially important about this, as I explained in a previous blog post, is that I can now produce rabbit meat raised on organic feed for $0.53 per pound.  With these kinds of costs, organic rabbit could easily compete on price with conventional chicken.

Another thing that I learned from my free fodder system is that my laying hens still prefer the un-sprouted seeds instead of the sprouted grass.  They still eat the grass, which is great for their health and for the eggs, but because of this preference for the seeds, I haven't taken them all the way to a fodder-only diet.  They still get organic layer mash, but half the portion they had been getting.  So I've only seen a reduction of 20% or so in my chicken feed bill.

Monday, December 2, 2013

Chickenomics vs Frugalibbits

We raise laying hens and meat rabbits and I've been doing some projections for starting meat chickens next year.  After a lot of analysis and thought, I've decided that I still want to raise meat chickens, but a lot fewer than I originally thought.

The typical meat chicken is a hybrid (32 levels deep in hybridization) between Cornish and Rock, also called a Cornish Rock, or a Cornish Cross.  Chicks by mail from Murray McMurray hatchery cost $2.25 each when you buy 25-49 chicks in a straight run, which is a mixture of males and females.  These birds gain weight fast!  In 6-8 weeks, you can butcher them as fryers and get 3-4# dressed weight from them.  That means they gained about 6-8# live weight in 6 weeks.  Amazing!  We're shooting for 600# of meat for the year (we have a big family!) so we'll need 150 chickens to do this; again this is assuming a full 4# dressed weight and no mortality.  In those 6-8 weeks, they will also eat an amazing amount of food.  One fellow blogger estimates 3# chick starter plus 21# chick grower.  We don't want *icides in our feed, so we buy organic feed at $0.60/lb so this adds up to $14.40.  We plan to put our chickens on pasture, which will replace 25% of their feed, so our feed cost is down to $10.80.  If we're optimistic and have no mortality (ha!), our cost of feed plus chicks is $13.05 per bird, or a total of $1957 per year; if we are optimistic and get the full 4# dressed weight from these birds, our cost is $3.26/lb.  Wait, we haven't included the cost of the equipment yet.  We can do this is three batches of 50 birds each or 6 batches of 25 birds each.  For economy of labor, the 3 batches of 50 birds sounds better.  We can get all 50 birds in a 10x10 pasture pen, so we only need one of those, and we estimate it will cost $300 between caging material, watering system, and feeder.  To process this many birds at once, there is no way I or my family will pluck by hand or manually keep scalding water to the right temperature, so a plucker and scalder are needed.  We already have the freezer.  The plucker from Premier 1 costs $1060 and the scalder costs $1390.  2 kill cones should be sufficient, at $30 each. We have knives and a processing table already.  Total one-time equipment cost comes to $2780.  If we split this cost between all the birds for the year, we're looking at an additional $18.53 per bird.  Total cost for our family (equipment, chicks, and organic feed) would be $4737.50.  Again, if we're optimistic and have no mortality and a full 4# dress weight per bird, this will cost us $7.89 per pound plus labor. The second year, we pay only $1957 for the chicks and feed, or $3.26/lb.

Switch gears with me.  Let's take a look at rabbits instead.  Instead of buying baby animals every year, we keep the moms and dads around and breed them ourselves.  This costs us extra money to feed the parents, but then there we get baby bunnies out of the deal, so they pay for themselves.  The kits (baby bunnies) are weaned at 6 weeks, and grow out to 12-14 weeks on grass alone, which means no feed costs.  We feed the rabbits organic feed, as well, in the form of sprouted organic wheat (grown 7 days into a nice green grass).  Bucks eat 2# fodder per day, or 730# per year.  Does eat 2# fodder daily while they are not nursing, and up to 6# fodder daily during the 6 weeks when nursing.  We breed three times per year and give them a break in the winter, so the does require 18*6 + 36*2 = 1260# fodder per year. The kits dress out at 2.5# each in 12-14 weeks, and we aren't concerned about how it takes to get to slaughter weight since the feed is free.  To get the same 600# of meat, we need to produce 240 kits.  Each doe can produce 8 kits per litter on average, so we need 10 does to produce this much meat. So we need 2*730 + 10*1260 = 14060# fodder per year.  To produce 1# fodder, it takes 1oz organic wheat, which costs $0.36/#.  So to produce all our fodder for a year takes 14060/16 = 879# organic wheat, which costs $317.  The equipment to house 2 bucks and 10 does year round, plus 10 litters in separate pasture pens is estimated at $2,500.  Processing equipment is a little more reasonable since a plucker and scalder are not needed.  I use a processing station that I describe in another blog post, which cost me $10.  So our total cost the first year is 2500+10+317 = $2,827, or $4.71/lb.  The second year, we only pay $317 for feed, or $0.53/lb.  Note that the second year, I'm my feed cost is a sixth the cost of chicken feed.

Here's a summary:
150 Chicken 240 Rabbit
Capital - caging, brooder, watering $300.00 $2500.00
Capital - processing $2450.00 $10.00
TOTAL Capital $2750.00 $2510.00
Operating - chicks $337.50 $0.00
Operating - organic feed $1620.00 $317.00
TOTAL Operating $1957.50 $317.00
TOTAL First Year $4737.50 $2827.00
TOTAL Second Year $1957.50 $317.00
First year cost per pound $7.89/lb $4.71/lb
Second year cost per pound $3.26/lb $0.53/lb


So regardless of whether you look at this from a start-up cost perspective or a operating cost perspective, rabbit meat appears to be significantly lower cost.  We also have been optimistic in both of our analysis.  In reality, it is highly unlikely that there will be no mortality with chickens or rabbits.  However, in our experience with rabbits and seeing friends raise Cornish Cross meat chickens, the mortality rates in the chickens seem to be much higher.  It is equally unlikely that all the chickens will reach slaughter weight in 6 weeks, while rabbits can always reach slaughter weight since we aren't concerned if it takes them an extra 2 or more weeks to do so on free grass.

Now, back to my conclusion that we're still planning to produce meat chickens next year.  The fact is, we like the taste of chicken just as much as rabbit, and we like variety.  If we do smaller batches of birds, and possibly limit it to one batch per year, we could probably eliminate the cost of the scalder and plucker, or find some DIY projects like the Whizbang Chicken Plucker.  We're also going to experiment with feeding the chickens some sprouted grain fodder to replace some (if not all) of the organic chick starter and grower feed.  We are skeptical that we can replace all of it; our laying hens currently like the fodder, but really prefer the grains to the sprouts and they mostly ignore the root mat.  I'll try to post again in a year with the actual results and I'll include actual mortality rates and recorded dressed weights of both types of animals.

Sunday, August 4, 2013

Transition Towns


I’m brainstorming what would be needed to make my town a Transition Town.  Food production is a big part of it.  Construction, mechanical, automotive skills are already here.  More bicycles are needed.  What about tires, clothes, shoes, electronics, silicon chips, communications systems?  We can learn poultry and sheep processing, natural bakery, and candle making.  But the amount of effort to convince an industrial town to switch to solar or wind energy seems almost impossible.

Instead, maybe it would be fun to start a sustainable skills group that gathers regularly to exchange skills, train each other, and build human networks. 
 
Here are some ideas for meeting topics:
  • Rocket Stoves
  • Rocket Mass Heaters
  • Chicken breeding
  • Chicken processing
  • Build a chicken next box
  • Make your own chicken feed
  • Timber-framing
  • Rabbit breeding
  • Rabbit processing
  • Build Rabbit nest boxes
  • Build Rabbit cages
  • Build Rabbit underground shelters
  • Build Rabbit tray cleaner funnel
  • Build a Rabbit butcher station
  • Permaculture Design Course
  • Herb Gardens
  • Raising Sheep
  • Candle making
  • Soap Making
  • Hugelkultur
  • Milking cows
  • Guns
  • Build a top-bar bee hive
  • Home brewing beer
  • Home brewing cider
  • Straw bale housing
  • Bee keeping
  • Honey processing
  • Goats
  • Energy conservation

Other Events that we could host
  • Documentaries
  • Book discussions

Thursday, July 25, 2013

House Progress

The house is progressing well, though not as fast as we had hoped.  Our next child is due in 7 days, and the electrical work still has to be re-done.  Yep, re-done.  I put romex directly inside the strawbales, which is common practice, but my building inspector won't pass it unless a licensed electrician puts it in conduit or replaces it with armored (MC) cable.  Not too big of a deal, just a few thousand dollars more than we had planned on and it has set us behind by about two months.

When that is finished, we can finish stapling the 2"x2" welded wire mesh to the top and bottom nailers, then plaster the straw.  We're using natural hydraulic lime (NHL) from http://www.limeworks.us/ in three coats and it takes a while to apply, especially the first coat. 

The interior walls are standard 2x4 construction with sheetrock, and they are up with sheetrock on one side (until the electrical inspection passes). 

So, the hopes are to be finished with the first floor enough to move in by the end of September.  I'll post some pictures sometime soon.

Friday, January 25, 2013

Wear Red in Support for Ending Heart Disease?

I just got an email from my employer: "Wear Red in Support for Ending Heart Disease".  Wearing red doesn't end heart disease.  What if we stopped eating grains instead?  Jerry Brunetti did a lot of research when he was diagnosed with terminal cancer over 15 years ago, and he found that the consumption of grains causes all kinds of problems in our bodies and leads to many imflammatory diseases, including heart disease, cancer, and arthritis.  I stopped eating grains last November, replacing the grains with nuts and potatoes, and I found that I've lost a lot of weight, as well.  I haven't measured it, but I suspect that my intake of carbs, calories, and fats has actually *increased* but I've lost 18 pounds so far.