The Cost of Raising Pastured Poultry

We went to the Grange Co-op the other day to pick up our ton of organic poultry feed. The price had gone up another 25% (now up 75% since last year). $718 for a ton of organic poultry feed! We were shocked! Needless to say, we only bought half a ton.

We’ve been trying to figure out what to do. We love raising poultry and would like to expand our poultry operation (despite the predators and the labor), but these rising feed costs are pushing us out of the poultry business. We pride ourselves on our organic pastured eggs and we have such loyal customers, but we are currently charging $6.00/dozen and after doing the math, we have to raise our prices to $7.50/dozen to even make the smallest margin of profit. We’ve been informing market customers of this change. Some have been supportive, some will buy eggs from other producers. While we have the only certified organic eggs at the farmers’ market, the problem is that other egg producers don’t charge very much for their eggs (even when the chickens are fed conventional feed, which is just as expensive too), so we are sort of up against a wall. Essentially, we are going to be priced out of the market. I’m curious whether these other producers are doing the right math–are they really making any money by charging $4.00/dozen? They just can’t be. Raising poultry on a small-scale, especially if you are pasturing hens and rotating them, is expensive and labor intensive. $4.00/dozen just doesn’t cut it.

We were planning on ordering another hundred layers this November, but we are seriously considering slaughtering most of the flock and just keeping a few chickens for our family. I’m not sure I see an end in sight for cheaper grain prices what with all the investment into biofuels and ethanol. Speculators have said that it is going to be a great corn year for the Midwest–the best ever–and millions of acres are coming out of the Conservation Reserve Program (which means that these farmers will most likely put corn back into production with the high prices they can get), so perhaps we will see a decrease in grain prices, but I’m not sure it is that simple. Check this out–Rich from Mossback Farm–has a link to a video (see Junk Food journal entry) from Wall Street Journal about how feedlots are mixing in candy from M&M factories into their corn silage for their beef cows because they can’t afford to buy regular feed corn. Woah. Woah. Do people know that the feedlot beef they are eating is being fed candy? That isn’t good. Not for the cow and not for us.

Anyway, we are in quite a dilemma here about our poultry operation. We have some serious thinking to do about the sustainabilty of raising organic eggs from pastured poultry. On a more positive note, we are participating in a grant with Oregon State University and Washington State University, in which they are going to look at formulating alternative poultry feeds grown in the Northwest for various small-scale poultry farms in Oregon & Washington. I’m looking forward to participating in that and seeing what they come up with. They will basically pay to feed half of our flock with alternative feeds to see how the poultry do on their rations. Josh and I are also going to start doing some research on our own about formulating our own organic rations and what that would take. Oy vay. Are we really that dedicated to this? I think so.

The hardest part, I guess, is communicating to our customers why we have to charge so much for eggs. We’ll see what happens in the next few weeks. We may be eating a lot of eggs and slaughtering a whole bunch more than just our broilers in October.

In other news, the broilers are happily ranging on pasture in their beautiful chicken tractor that Josh built. I went out to take pictures this morning and of course, the battery was dead on the camera, so stay tuned. I’ll have some soon. We’ve lost 16 to predators so far, so we are down to 34 chickens. We’ve made some adjustments (basically putting steel claws on every side of the chicken tractor as well as flashing red lights to keep predators away), so we haven’t had any more losses in the last few days. We also caught a skunk in the live trap last night, so the whole farm smelled like skunk this morning as did Josh when he came in for breakfast. Yuck!

The broilers are quite happy and have had no health problems at all. I have heard so many horror stories about leg problems and heart attacks with the Cornish Cross breed, but we’ve had none of that yet. We went with two slow cornish breeds, so I think that’s helping. We also add an organic supplement–a Fetrell Kelp mineral product–that helps with leg problems and nutrition. Anyway, we’ll only have a few to sell at this point with so many losses, but at least we will have a freezer full for ourselves and be able to cover our costs. We’d like to do a whole lot more on the broiler scene next year, but that all depends on grain prices. I’ll be eagerly waiting and watching the grain market in the months to come.

Farming

I cook dinner for everyone at the farm on Wednesdays. I look forward to it each week. I get to be creative and have fun with everything we grow on the farm. Usually, we are too busy to cook very detailed meals each night. I’m writing now on a very full belly. Here’s what the menu was tonight:

• Zucchini Feta Pancakes (with feta cheese made by our neighbor)
• Yogurt Dill Garlic Sauce (for the pancakes with goat yogurt also from our neighbor)
• Brown Rice with Coconut MIlk
• Herbed Lentils with Summer Savory
• Sauteed Green Beans with Basil & Walnuts
• Salad Greens with Sesame Viniagrette and Flax Oil
• Dessert: Baked Peaches (from Rolling Hills Farm) with Coconut Ice Cream
• A bottle of red wine from Bridgeview Vineyard

Wow! You can’t get better than that. Most everything was produced here at the farm or at neighboring farms and vineyards, except for, of course, those things we do not produce in the Rogue Valley like oils, rice and lentils. We may work hard and long, but at least we can say we eat very well.

Here’s a picture of today’s CSA box. Patrick used his artistic skills to display all the produce in the basket. Nice job.

In the box this week:

• Chard
• Carrots — Variety is Ya-Ya and they are just so flavorful and sweet.
• Strawberries — Mmm…finally, after all our problems with herbivores.
• Eggplant — A Japanese variety and quick cooking too.
• Basil
• Purple Beans — These are a variety called Royal Burgundy from Seeds of Change. They are really tender right now and taste so good. They are also very beautiful, but change to green when cooked.
• Bok Choy
• French Breakfast Radishes
• Spinach
• Fennel
• Walla Walla Sweet Onions — Coming to an end here soon.
• Garlic

Here’s a picture of all the farmers at Barking Moon with the farm’s namesake, our dog Luna and including our future farmer (if he so chooses), Everett, playing with his rake. You definitely don’t want to mess with this crew. I like Josh being very serious with the seeder and Patrick looking very rebel like with his soil blocker. And that’s Katherine, our resident chicken and cat whisperer with the fork. We are a funny bunch of people.

Josh and I have decided that we have been too boring lately and every day needs to be infused with some sort of fun activity. Yesterday, we cut off all my hair (well, actually, we cut it off after the stylist at the salon gave me a fluffy mullet that looked terrible. What you can’t tell in this picture is that my hair is totally short in the back after Josh took the scissors to it). Today, we took pictures in the barn when it was really, really, really hot outside. Who knows what sort of fun we will have tomorrow?

The New Agrarianism — Thoughts on our Rural Lives

This is something I wrote recently for our local newspaper, the Applegater and will appear in their September/October issue. I have a bi-monthly column called Farm Talk in the paper. It is a fun and creative thing I get to do every other month. Enjoy and thoughts, please…

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There is an emerging desire in a new cross-section of people here in the Applegate Valley and in other parts of the country. It is an urgent yearning to re-connect with ancestral land values, a yearning to renew relationships with human and natural communities in ways that are sustaining and nourishing. These yearnings lead them to be interested in rejuvenating community relationships and values through farming, trading, conversation, family interactions, home place, ecological responsibility and appropriate land stewardship. This yearning has a name. It is called agrarianism in much of the current literature on land, culture and community.

My in-laws once asked me what they should call me and my husband to their friends or family. “You aren’t hippies, right?” they asked. Well, it depends on your definition of hippies and they said “Well, aren’t hippies lazy and don’t they do drugs? You guys aren’t like that.” I thought about this for a moment, exchanged knowing glances with my husband and then thought about all of our human tendencies to identify ourselves as someone or something. In general, I thought it was a funny question, but I could just imagine the conversation that might have taken place between my in-laws and their friends. “You know, they are like nature people. They like plants, gardens and recycle, go camping and hiking, preserve their own food.” Or something like that. Right around the time I was having this conversation with them, I had just finished graduate school, moved to Oregon and landed on what is now our farm on Thompson Creek Road. I had just finished studying agriculture and community food systems and was now starting my own farm. I knew just what to tell them. “Call us agrarians if you like.” Of course, a short conversation ensued in which we explained who agrarians are and what they do. I’m not sure if they fully understood what we explained or how we defined agrarianism. There are others more articulate than I at defining the subject, such people as Wendell Berry, Wes Jackson, and Gene Logsdon to name a few, so I looked them up and did some reading.

Agrarian comes from the Latin word agrarius, which means, “pertaining to the land.” Wendell Berry is probably considered the most famous of the agrarian thinkers. He continually challenges us to think in new terms about our rural lives and to celebrate the world in which we live. He validates our choices as farmers and homesteaders, helps us remember why lives lived on the land are meaningful in so many ways. I like this—he says: “I am not bound for any public place, but for ground of my own where I have planted vines and orchard trees, and in the heat of the day climbed up into the healing shadow of the woods. Better than any argument is to rise at dawn and pick dew-wet red berries in a cup.” Yes.

I think it suffices to say that most local agrarians will talk about aspects of their life in terms of quality—of family life, land relationships and general well being. Agrarians share in a few common things—the land is the heart of their existence and passion. It is where they begin and where they end. All of their economic transactions (or most of them) come from the land. They raise their families as part of this and develop community relationships centered on everything that comes from the land, i.e. sharing food and preservation, growing gardens, raising animals or even creating social gatherings on the land. Everything is measured by the land and its virtues. There is permanence here—agrarians are interested in creating a robust life that has some sort of stability and resilience, something that will last into the future, a good life to be remembered by all the folk that continue on. Most agrarians would agree that they are seeking a life that is balanced, fair, happy, simple and good.

An agrarian can live in the urban setting too, raising ducks in the backyard or canning flats of peaches for the winter. It is all a matter of values and then, action reflecting those values. But really, farming is at the heart of agrarianism. And it is more than just the physical labor of farming. In 1905, Liberty Hyde Bailey said, “Every piece of farm work is also an attempt to solve a problem, and therefore it should have its intellectual interest. It needs but the informing of the mind and the quickening of the imagination to raise any constructive and creative work above the level of drudgery.” So often, my father asks me, “How could you possibly like to farm? It is so mundane.” I often am at a loss to answer his question eloquently. I usually blurt out, “But farming and working on the land is an intellectual pursuit as well as physical.” But I can never articulate why. I like this quote from Bailey. It answers my father’s question about the qualities we need in order to survive and flourish in our rural lives, to be agrarians: imagination, problem solving and a quick mind. I think I’ll use this the next time he asks.

In general, I’m so encouraged by this “new agrarianism” that is budding everywhere I go especially in the Applegate Valley. I’m particularly grateful for the new interactions and relationship with agrarians I am developing through my work life. I am continually amazed at the dedication and passion of each one of them. As I work with these new agrarians and hear their stories, failures and triumphs, it feels like we are all moving in the same direction with the same values, but each path is a different variation or color of agrarianism. Whether it is through conservation of our forests or through small-scale dairying, each one of us is establishing a life built on hope, trust, creativity, responsibility and preservation of a life that could quietly disappear if we let it. On a regular basis, I get stuck in my day-to-day life of work, farming and motherhood and sometimes only focus on the stress of balancing these three “jobs”, but when I remember what I’m doing here and take a moment to cherish the life I’m creating for myself and my family, my heart bounces. We are all doing this in some manner—changing the landscape (physical, intellectual and emotional) for the better, impacting the way we all live and work together from the ground up.