Chicken Thistle Farm CoopCast

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075 Soggy farm pastures, waterlogged tomato plants in the garden, judging a farm as a consumer Jun 19, 2013

Show notes

In our updates this week we lament about the nedless rain on the farm, the wet pastures and the sorggy gardens. Our pigs have even taken to finding new places to walk and eat since thing sare so muddy. On the upside we have a lot of them sold with our pre-order process. We took advantage of a break i nthe rain to get the pastured broilers out and the pens are moving across fresh (but wet) ground. In the vegetable garden the tomatoes have not been so happy about the endless rains but the greens are gowing like weeds - absloute extremes in the garden for sure. This week we also ruminate around a great question from one of our listeners about how you know you can / should trust the quality of a local farm based on things you see on the surface. Does a dirty farm mean a bad farm? How do you know how a farm operates? Som really good questions posed and we we talk through the question at hand.

074 Egg eating chicken, waterlogged vegetable garden, building a greenhouse for your farm Jun 12, 2013

Show notes

This week on the farm has been marked by more rain than we need - over 2" above average for the month. Becasue of that we have been trying to find a time to get those Cornish X chickens out to pasture. We also discovered an old layer hen that the weather made blue - so she started eating eggs. On the piglet front we have noticed a big differnce in sow nursing capacity Katniss vs Hermione nursing 6vs 11. Part of farming is then selling the good you raised - so we talk a little about the pork ordering and our approach this year. We also talk about the gardens and the rain... and the fact we have decided to start the vegetable CSA this year (remember to check out www.chickenthistlefarm.com every Tuesday on the Farm Blog for the latest fresh in-season vegetable recipes!) In the CoopCast Community we field an indepth question about the decisions behind our greenhouse. We answer the questions about why we chose a dirt floor vs cement. Extra heat vs. no heat. And home built vs manufactured.

073 Hog heritage on the farm, starting the CSA, managing the garden and succession planting Jun 05, 2013

Show notes

Updates this week include a discussion about the new piglets and the genetics / lineage in them and what decisions we migth be making in the comming months. We talk about the Cornish X broilers and the efforts to line up chicken helpers for the July processing day. The heritage turkeys are doing well in the brooder and Farmer Andy loves the chick wagon - dreaming of a farm of all mobile wagons. In the Veggie Patch segment we wander all over the gardens - from the greenhosue to the pasture to our haying operations. We also share some of Farmer Kelli's tips and tricks; like using a whiteboard for lists, using an iPhone for lists, using scraps of papers for lists and then making lists of lists of things to put on lists on the farm! Things like using a pencil to write on old mini-blind tags, the usage of mulching and how we are going to try and maximize our broiler fertilizer this year. This coopcast is a little crazy - just like life on the farm!

072 Piglet mania! (and turkeys and chickens too), Memorial Day pistol range time, row covers in the garden May 29, 2013

Show notes

With the farrowing behind us this week we can talk about the 17 piglets running around the pasture and the mayhem that ensues! Mama pigs are doing great and we also share the final castration update for the season as we finish off that chore. We also talk about the broiler chickens that are here. Our Cornish X chicks arrived early and we're not ready!! In the CoopCast Community we give a nice thank you to our listeners who helped us by sharing their experience and letting us know we were not alone. It was a cool feeling! We also mention a great comment from a US Veteran on our Memorial Day post on Facebook. Ohh, Andy shares a gun range story about some not so savvy pistol shooting (smack talk - the shooting was great!). Finally we tour the veggie patch and talk about row covers and hoops. Kelli shares some of the pros: Protect from cold sun and bugs, Better growth on some stuff and some of the cons: Hard to see in-Need to check in on plants, Blowing off, Getting torn

071 A sow in distress while farrowing on the farm, piglet castration and temperature extremes in the vegetable garden May 22, 2013

Show notes

This has been a week of extreme conditions on the farm physically as well as one of the most emotionally challenging weeks of farming yet. The vegetables have had to deal with a freeze of 28F one day and 90+ a few days later... any way you look at that, it's a challenge. On top of the wild weather we had to navigate piglet castration when the mama wants nothing to do with humans and icing on the cake was a proven sow who has issues while farrowing and needed help delivering 8 more piglets! While we try and keep it clean it's been exhausting and the description of farrowing a castration topics made us thing the "use caution around small children" label was appropriate for the "more sensitive" listeners. One resource we mention in this episode is the Perdue livestock "Difficult pig farrowing" guide here - Anyone who ever said farming was easy should live a week like this then come back and see us :)

070 A discussion about pastured pig farrowing and an agressive sow May 16, 2013

Show notes

This was a busy week on the farm. In fact, we don't even have time to talk about the vegetable gardening this week! Our gilt, Katniss, farrowed her first litter of pigs and we take you through the experience from noticing her first signs of farrowing all the way through dealing with mom and piglets post-farrowing. We reflect on this farrowing experience versus our first farrowing with our sow last year - and there's quite a difference! Share in our joy and disappointment as we deal with an aggressively protective mom and how that behavior is affecting our ability to care for the animals. We await the next farrowing coming later in the week. We also briefly touch on the arrival of turkey poults and egg layer chicks this week as well.

069 Preparing for hog farrowing, farm interns, GMO's that are good for you May 09, 2013

Show notes

This week we talk about our new YouTube series we will be publishing over the next several months called "". We set up some new fencing for the pigs and Andy longs for more permanent fences on the farm. We are getting ready for piglet farrowing in the next week and we talk a little about the new pig waterer we built. We briefly stop by the veggie patch to talk gardening and asparagus and raspberry plants. The CoopCast Community has a followup on the "Milk Rant" from CoopCast 067 and the listener response in CoopCast 068. We also respond to a suggestion from a listener regarding farm tours and interns. This weeks concludes with a Rumination about GMO's. We challenge the listener to consider that the concept of a GMO is not categorically bad - there are some really good things that come from GMO's in the world and we touch on a few of them.

068 Vegetable Gardening begins, a top secret farming project, how to find GMO's in your food May 02, 2013

Show notes

Things around the farm have been getting busy as the vegetable gardening season is off to is start. Finally we have the peas planted - sugar snap and snow so far. We have also been picking from the asparagus patch and enjoying some fresh spring vegetables. We talk about a trip to the Amish greenhouse and Amish WalMart. At the same time we have been fighting rats in the barn with increasing urgency as we are just a few weeks away from chicks and poults brooding in the barn.Then in the CoopCast Community we tease a little bit about the fact we are building something that we hope will really help out on the farm... to see what it is check out our Facebook page. We talk about some "quiet criticism" our last CoopCast received and rant a little. We also answer Luke's question about owning vs buying pigs for meat production.Finally we conclude with a Farm U all about GMO's and the testing of food for the presence of genetically modified organisms. This segment is not opinion or discussion based noise about GMO's rather a factual "from the lab" discussion of how Dr. Farmer Kelli is actually testing foods for GMO corn and soy.

067 Worm Worshiping Hippies, vegetable gardening and soil blocks, farm transparency vs the farmers privacy Apr 24, 2013

Show notes

This weeks farming updates show that things are quickly picking up speed as spring marches on. We started last week offering our pastured broilers up for sale and had them all accounted for in 2 days. We also have been fixing some of our permanent fencing that winter was not kind to. As part of the fencing work we opened a spring pasture for the pigs and will be moving them for farrowing in another week or so. Updates include a quick stop in the vegetable garden section of the farm where we have been busy making soil blocks and starting seeds in the greenhouse. Up next is actually getting peas planted in the garden!The CoopCast Community this week is a rapid fire segment... Where we discuss how "nice" it was that some of the Boston police brought a homeowner with children some milk...We respond to a listener that asked about the new names the pork and beef producers are putting on meat.#farmerandy riffs on customers who ask the question "is there soy in your feed".Brent from CT is happy we aren't "worm worshipping hippies" and so are we.And Jon pointed out that taping farm cruelty is now a crime here in NY.Our final segment is a Rumination on balancing transparency with privacy. Where do you draw the line when you farm is also your home? It's a more difficult question than you might think.

066 Pasture chicken orders, Diagnosing a sick pig, Disease resistance and breeding Apr 18, 2013

Show notes

This weeks farming updates include a lot of rain and finally a little warmth. We were about to get the snow fence down and watch the pastures start to turn a little green. We started allowing customers to pre-order pastured chickens this week and we are almost already sold out. We found a dead chicken in the coop... looks like a heart attack. In the green house we have been potting up tomatoes and making soil blocks.The Farmers Choice segment this week answers the question we posed in CoopCast 065 about how do manage a sick pig. In the segment we:Follow up on pig illnessShare some of the thoughts our listeners had like call vet, ask Walter, check poopShare what the farmers did which included emailed Walter, posted on boards, called who we bought from, talked to large animal vetWe found that the Pigsite and Merck vet manual were quite helpfulPenicillin and tetracycline - when antibiotics and the farm work together.In a Farm U segment we talk about the notion out there that you can "breed resistance" to disease into your animals and how that's not really accurate.Resistance to disease/ building a better herd has a role in breeding but genetics isn't the whole story. The stauts of host- Nutrition, stress, normal flora, etc all impact the likelihood of an animal getting sick when exposed to the pathogen. In most cases it's less about genetics and "resistance" and more about infectious dose of the organism.

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