Chicken Processing

Remember these guys?

You might also remember them when they looked like this. The chicks I mean, not the adorable children. 

So far, we've gotten three batches of 100 broiler meat chickens, sent to us in the mail! We start them out in the brooder hoophouse until they get big enough to be put out on pasture. 

From start to finish, these chickens live about 10 weeks. And yesterday was our first chicken processing day, which will now happen monthly until October. 

I was the only one of the apprentices who had never participated in killing a chicken and I have to admit that I wasn't avidly looking forward to Thursday. 

We started out by hauling the fully grown chickens from the pasture to our on-farm processing unit. 

Of course, there was also a lot of cleaning and sanitizing to be done beforehand, making sure all the equipment was in line with regulations. 

Daniel is a veteran at all this, so he explained the system to us and by 7am we were in the thick of things.

Although there won't be any graphic pictures shown here, I do want to explain how the chickens are processed. From the yellow crates they are put upside down in silver cones with their heads sticking out. 

Daniel cut their throats and allows the blood to drain into the black container you see on the ground. The chickens are then placed in the scalder which loosens their feathers which are then removed by the plucker. 

After Daniel's work is through, the rest of our team, plus some volunteers, set to work taking off the heads and feet and removing all the organs. We were all novices pretty much, so the going was slow at the beginning. We definitely got faster though as the day wore on and had all 95 chickens processed, bagged, and labeled by nightfall. 

It was one of the more exhausting days I've had on the farm so far, but it was also a really good experience. Meat of all sorts is so ubiquitous in our lives that often there can be a very real and sometimes damaging disconnect when we aren't aware of where our meat comes from. 

Thursday definitely taught me to be very aware of the real price of meat and to remember its true value. 

We will have fresh chicken available from this slaughter through the weekend and then frozen for the rest of the season. The price is $4.50/lb, with most birds weighing between 4 and 6 lbs. Stop by the farm or come to the Scarborough or Portland farmer's markets if you're interested!

Virtual Farm Tour

This past week I met a lot of you CSA'ers walking around the farm, a bit disoriented. 

Which I completely understand. There are a lot of things growing that don't necessarily look like what you'd expect them to yet, plus we're constantly moving the animals around to new edges of the farm.

Today I'd like to take you on a virtual farm tour; just in case you ever decide to take a stroll around the farm, you'll have a general idea of what is where. Above you see our driveway, usually packed with cars on Tuesdays and Fridays between noon and 8pm. The three apprentices live in the part of the house where the porch entrance is and Daniel lives in his own section directly below the chimney.

The Frith Farm sign is surrounded by our perennial pick-your-own herb garden. Once we get around to taming (weeding) this beast, you'll be able to find herbs like chamomile, lemon balm, oregano and sage here.

This is your view from the barn where you pick up your shares (normally not featuring Daniel digging a trench). Behind Daniel and his shovel is our pick-your-own annual herb garden. Here you'll find loads of basil, cilantro and several dill forests. The plot in the left foreground is our pick your own flower plot, which is just about ready to be plucked!

Behind the flowers you'll see two greenhouse-looking things, neither of which are actually greenhouses. The one closest to the barn is called the henhouse and it's where we raise our baby chicks who later are put on pasture and then processed here on the farm. (Our first chicken processing is this Thursday and fresh chickens will be available Friday the 28th!)

Behind the henhouse is the high tunnel where we have planted our heirloom tomatoes. We planted them inside to attempt to save them from a pest that only comes out at night.

If you decided to venture beyond the chicks and the high tunnel tomatoes, you would see our eggplant and pepper plot on your left, followed by our kales, collards, cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower. On your right you would see several succession plantings of lettuce, mustard greens, bok choi, turnips, kohlrabi, and rutabaga. The green bushy plot following all that is potatoes and in the far back right you'll see five beds of brussels sprouts, my personal favorites!

 After you've exhausted one side of Frith Farm, you can always head past our chicken processing trailer on the right and through the wall of blue spruce trees to the other half of the farm.

From this vantage point you see our huge bed of garlic on the left, four beds of beets on the right with carrots finishing out that plot. Past the beets on your right there is an entire plot of onions and way in the far back is our spinach, swiss chard, sugar snap pea plot. You can make out the bright red Eggmobile next to the peas as well. We move this weekly though, so chances are it's already changed positions.

Finally we have our actual greenhouse; this being the place where we start our seedlings and keep them warm in the chilly Maine spring (and summer!). Behind this we have our cucumbers, summer squash, lettuce heads and more onions.

We also happen to have these little guys back at the edge of the woods. Although they are particularly skittish when they're young, if you walk up to them slowly and quietly, you're sure to catch a glimpse. Just look for the white electrified fence next to the big blue barrels of pig feed.

As an additional reward for reading all the way to the end of this pretty word-y post, I'd like to ask for name suggestions for the grey kitten above that we've decided to keep. At the moment his name is Tim,  for lack of any better alternative. Make your suggestions fast in the comments below or in person this week, before he's doomed to be Tim forever!

Eating on the Farm

After meeting some of you this week at our first official CSA share, I got the idea that it might be of help to hear what your farmers eat on a regular basis (though I'll warn you, it's not all pretty!) 

I was really proud on Tuesday of all the hard work that the four of us have put in so far this season to provide such an excellent first CSA share. This week we offered lettuce heads, kale, collards, bok choi, swiss chard, radishes, kohlrabi and turnips and all of these things have been in our own personal cooking repertoires lately. 

First I should probably say a word about how meat eating is viewed here at the farm and for me personally. I have to come clean and say that before moving here in March I had been a vegetarian for somewhere around six years. That said, I was ready to start eating meat again as long as it was responsibly and humanely raised and sparingly eaten. 

At Frith we eat meat rarely, mostly because we are aware of the expense of it, not just in monetary terms, but in the time and care we put in to raising our animals. As a result we usually eat some form of meat once a week. (Although as a side note and so this post doesn't get that "high and mighty" sounding, we were all raised eating meat at least once a day, and none of that was local or responsibly raised!)

Also just to bring us down to reality, there are days (usually at least twice a week) when all I eat for supper is a massive bowl of cereal and usually it makes me immensely happy! 

But that said, we do have access to this awesome supply of vegetable goodness and there are a lot of fun things we do with them. 

One thing I've been enjoying recently are different variations of veggie tacos. I stir fry some garlic with turnips, turnip greens and some spinach, heat some (corn!) tortillas in the broiler and then mix it all together with some garlic hummus I made last weekend. More often than not I'll throw a fried egg on top for extra protein too. 

Josh does a lot of legumes and grains in his rice cooker, quinoa, rice, lentils and black beans are frequently found in his diet. Thrown over some bread with cheese and some sautéed greens. Josh also takes some kitchen risks that I really respect, like trying out homemade mayonnaise and kale chicken salad. 

Will is probably the most adventurous of the three of us (he's the one who dashes out to the herb garden in the evening to get fresh chamomile for his tea) and is also the one who uses the most produce I would say. He stir fries a lot of vegetables, kohlrabi, turnips, radishes, kale and collards, then stirs some eggs into the mix. (He also rendered lard earlier this season and has been using it as his stir-fry lipid of choice.)

Daniel will be the first to admit that he eats a lot of cheesy bread, peanut butter apples and his homemade granola. But he also has mastered some pretty tasty dishes, including quesadillas with stir-fried veggies. He is also the recognized authority in the house on meat cooking; his nights at the head of our Monday night communal meals have featured pork, lamb and chicken! 

And speaking of those communal meals we share each week, I wanted to put up some links that might help some of you in using up your farm produce, eggs and meat shares. 

These are both excellent vegetarian suppers that just beg to feature our eggs:

http://smittenkitchen.com/blog/2010/04/shakshuka/

(add caramelized onions to the following for a sure winner)

http://smittenkitchen.com/blog/2006/10/ah-ha-ha-come-and-take-my-hand/

For one of the best chicken dinners in recent memory (use turnips instead of sweet potatoes):

http://www.thewednesdaychef.com/the_wednesday_chef/2013/04/melissa-clarks-chicken-curry-with-sweet-potatoes.html

Coconut milk-braised collards and your Frith Farm bacon:

http://food.meltingonline.com/greens-with-coconut-milk-and-bacon/

And this is on my "to-cook" list for next week, good to use with our eggs and some greens from your share:

http://www.notderbypie.com/cypriot-greens-and-cheese-pie/

And for those of you wondering what to do with kohlrabi....Will eats it raw right out of the fields and yes, it is reminiscent of a really juicy apple. But you can roast it, puree it, sauté it, or just read the following blog post for other ideas:

http://www.simplyrecipes.com/kohlrabi/

Enjoy your first week of produce everyone and please let us know if you find a particularly successful recipe. Hope to see you all at the Frith CSA Brunch on Saturday morning!

CSA Begins + Baby Animals

I'm not sure if the boys here at Frith would agree, but it's been a doozy of a week for me at the farm. 

The days have gotten much longer, which means now work starts at 6am for us, yikes! That sounds a lot earlier when I write it than it actually does when we wake up though. The sun rises around 5:10 now, and our animals, especially the layers, want their breakfast on time! 

This week was special though because it was our first CSA share pick-up! We were glad to be able to give a smaller share one week earlier than planned, consisting of kale, collards, bok choy or swiss chard, and spinach. 

It was good for us apprentices to see how the CSA works and the preparation needed to harvest what we offer every Tuesday and Friday. 

We were all really excited to get to meet and talk to so many of you as well. Most of our days on the farm are just the four of us and having 70 new people come every week just might turn in to the highlight of our week! Above you'll see two of our Tuesday CSA-ers who agreed to let me photograph them with their fresh produce. Thanks ladies!

Also this week Daniel came home with some new piglets for the farm! They are now tucked in to their new home at the edge of the forest behind our fields, foraging through the leaf layer and dirt for tasty treats to supplement their feed. 

Also I thought it might be a good idea to give a kitten update and to let any potential kitten-seekers that we have one little one available!

They're basically the cutest things ever and brighten our day whenever we walk by them. 

Make sure to stop by and pick one up if you need some TLC this coming week!

I know I do on a regular basis!

Last but not least, I wanted to give a big thank you to the friends and family of Frith Farm and the four of us who live and work here. We have been the recipients of a lot of love so far this season, in the form of baked goods usually, but this week we were also given some pints of Ben & Jerry's by Daniel's father Stuart and it definitely made our week! We really do appreciate all of you who get your produce, eggs or meat from us and we hope you enjoy the weeks and months to come of this season!

P.S. Each week starting now, I'm going to attempt to throw out some links/a link to recipes related to our CSA share produce. This week we gave you some collards and this link here is the recipe I was dreaming up to try this weekend, we'll see if I actually get to making it or not!

Chores & Carpentry Skills

This week has been a busy one, but oddly enough, the focus of our time and efforts hasn't been directed at our plants. 

One of the things that all three of us value about our apprenticeship at Frith has been the extremely varied opportunities we get, to learn, not just about growing plants, but about planning and building everything from Eggmobiles to broiler shelters. 

This week we were working on two bigger projects that have been looming over us for quite awhile it seems. 

Above you'll see Josh, constructing the frame for two additional broiler shelters that were needed to put our meat chickens out to pasture. This year we will ultimately be raising 500 broilers in all, and so now we have four shelters on pasture, each fitting 50 chickens. 

For me, constructing anything at all is a new experience as I was not brought up with many power tools and handsaws lying around. I'm quickly learning the difference between a socket wrench and a regular wrench, along with how to use a circular saw and Great Stuff! 

Above you'll see Will putting chicken wire along the perimeter of the broiler shelter with a staple gun. And below he's working on the walk-in cooler that is becoming more and more necessary with the 90ºF weather we've had the past two days. 

This walk-in will allow us the luxury of not waking up at 4:30am every Wednesday morning to harvest for the Portland market! When it's completed we'll be able to harvest on Tuesday evening and wake up like normal farm workers at 5:30am. 

And speaking of the early mornings, I wanted to shed a little light on the chores that Will, Josh and I are responsible for each work day. Every month we switch, so for the month of May, I was in charge of our laying chickens, Josh our meat chickens (also called broilers), and Will the pigs and sheep. 

Although this changes throughout the season, our chickens currently require the most time and energy to care for. 

The layers not only eat a lot of food, but the eggmobile must be moved weekly and then there's those eggs!

In case anyone is curious, this is what 164 eggs looks like. We get around that many each day, hand wash them, and put them into egg boxes with the Frith Farm logo. For an experienced egg washer (like myself, now that May is almost over!) this process takes roughly an hour and a half, beginning with collecting the eggs from the nest boxes, feeding and watering the chickens, then washing eggs and boxing them up. 

The other chickens now require special attention as well. Each broiler shelter must be moved twice a day to give the chickens fresh space to fertilize and new grubs to eat up! Moving a shelter of this size single-handed is an art in itself, but a perk of the job is that the broilers are located in a picturesque pasture a short bike ride down Ash Swamp Rd. 

Saturday is June 1st, meaning that all three of us will be switching up chores once again! The past few days have felt like summer has finally arrived to Maine, so it feels right that a summer month is about to begin. Enjoy the summer weather everyone!

Harvesting (at last!)

This coming week marks the end of the second month that Will, Josh and I have been at Frith. When we arrived there were still piles of snow on the ground and we could see our breath in the mornings in the kitchen when we were having breakfast. But no longer!

Now everywhere we look there's lilac in bloom and this past week saw us harvesting our own produce for the first time this season!

The rows above are four different kinds of kale, to the right is a row of collards. Add to that the radishes and turnips that are begging to be pulled from the soil and two rows of spinach below and we're up to our eyeballs in freshness!

We've actually got more than we know what to do with at this point...the CSA doesn't start up til June 11th and there's only so many greens we four can eat on any given day. 

This week we did sell a bit of everything to our local natural foods store, Lois' in Scarborough and for the Portland market on Wednesdays. So we got to harvest, wash and pack everything to learn the ropes of that process. 

We were all so starved for green things (after eating mostly eggs, bread and cheese for the past two months) that we all devoured a fair bit of kale, raw straight from the fields. It really is that good!

Next we learned how to set up the wash station at the barn and how to pack everything in bunches and into crates. 

I'm sure we'll all get sick of harvesting at some point this season, but this week at least it really was extremely gratifying to see the end product of all the hard work we've put in so far. In the midst of the daily grind of composting, seeding, transplanting, raking, weeding, watering and feeding animals, it sometimes slips my mind what exactly we're doing here at the farm and that the result of all this hard work really is worth to me, and to Will, Josh and Daniel as well. 

Then there are other valuable moments for all of us on the farm that come about just because we are always outside, close to nature and interacting with our environment on a daily basis. 

On Friday we were all kind of stunned to see a hawk chasing a smaller bird into the barn. 

Onza (our cat) quickly relieved the hawk of his prey and promptly ate the bird, which only added insult to injury because the hawk then couldn't figure out how to get out of the barn. 

Even though the hawk wasn't happy about its situation, for me it was one of those cool moments on the farm, to find myself watching a hawk at very close range and getting to see its beauty and power up close. 

And, yes, the hawk did eventually get out of the barn and hopefully trapped another bird for its supper. 

Full Bloom

On Wednesday evening we had a perfect thunderstorm. Work was done for the day and whatever we had planted that day got a good soaking before the sun set. 

All the rain has made our trees blossom and bloom. 

And we're definitely enjoying some color in the trees and hearing the wind (constantly!) in the leaves. 

Our asparagus and rhubarb patches have been showing themselves and we've gotten our first taste of green this week as a result!

We've mostly been eating it raw, right out of the ground!

This became a cake, baked by yours truly, and four pies, baked for us by a very generous CSA'er!

If you've been out and about in the past few days, you might have noticed that the dandelions are in full bloom at the moment. In fact, the peak of dandelion madness at Frith was somewhere around Tuesday. 

According to Daniel (and other people too I'm sure), when dandelions are out in their fullest force, it's time to plant potatoes, so on Thursday morning, we planted ours, all twelve beds!

Our potatoes will be pink, purple and yellow beginning in August!

Below you'll see the potato plot that had been recently tilled. And since we're on the subject, this would probably be a good time to explain how tilling works at Frith. 

At the vast majority of farms, tilling up the soil is a part of the normal process of preparing a bed to be seeded. It's a conventional wisdom that has been accepted for years.
For a number of reasons though, Frith only tills in rare instances, such as when a plot has been in pasture and is being cultivated for the first season. 

Although tilling introduces a lot of oxygen into the soil and encourages a lot of growth initially as nutrients are released, the soil loses a lot in the process mostly in terms of the rich ecosystem that has been created and maintained underneath the soil layer we can see. Wormholes are destroyed, root systems are upended and the respiration of millions of microorganisms is increased, sending soil carbon up in the atmosphere. 

To add to all that, weed seed is stirred up by tilling and you often wind up with more weeds than you started with. 

So why did we till up this potato bed?
Well, unfortunately, there just hadn't been time at the end of last season to properly mulch the beds before winter and the weeds were out of control by this week when it came time for potatoes. Tilling isn't something that this farm labels as evil, but it is definitely something that we strive to minimize when possible. 

Tilling and tractor work in general are not something that we rely heavily on here on the farm. In fact, today Josh and I were saying that our expectations of other farms we may work on in the future is going to make us realize how spoiled we are here this season!