Fame and Hypocrisy

I'm famous! But wouldn't you know it? On the day I get my picture in the paper as a winter cyclist, I drove to work.

Slider

Our curling club just hosted the Masters of Curling (officially the 'A Capital One Grand Slam of Curling Event: Masters of Curling). One of the many requirements was that they needed a volunteer to dress up in 40 lbs of foam rubber and prance around like a fool. For no particularly good reason, they thought of me.



Lots of fun, and hot as hades in there.

Grand Slam 2008

No more fresh eggs

325 eggs later, and our chicken farming is done, at least for this year. Overall: a great experience, and we're eager to do it again next year. Next time we'll probably raise them from chicks, starting in January or so.

As for Butter, Marsala and Dumpling? Yes, I did the deed. Had some help from a farmer in the region. The slideshow isn't gory, but it is explicit...click at your own risk.

Chicken Dinner

Dinner was tasty, though the chicken itself was rather chewy. I'm pretty sure I was over-careful, and roasted it too long...there isn't much meat on these birds.

No qualms about eating a bird I raised. As long as I'm going to remain an omnivore, I'd be a hypocrite to ignore that meat comes from living animals, and I'm convinced my hens lived a happier (and longer) life than the chicken you get at the supermarket. Plus I know that they were killed humanely. So I'm at peace with it.

Megameter

Last night marked my 1,000th recorded km on my bike. My actual biked distance is higher than that, since I occasionally let my GPS batteries die, or forgot to turn it on, or it lost a signal. However, it is close enough.

First off, a map of everywhere I've cycled. Not surprisingly, there is a lot of overlap, particularly on the Iron Horse Trail between home and work.

(Click to Enlarge)

Start Date: December 15, 2007
Total Distance: 1,008 km
Total Time: 66:28:24
Average Speed: 15.2 km/h
Max Speed: 52.6km/h
(Northbound on Victoria St. This exceeds the speed limit. Yay!)

1,000km is roughly two tanks of gas, at say $60/tank, or $120. Which means riding my bike for an hour saves me on average $1.80 in gas. No wonder it's hard to get the general population to ride to work...the incremental money savings are negligible.

Alternatively, if you assume that my riding a bike saves us from having a second car, and you figure even a modest $500/month in total cost of ownership for a second vehicle (insurance, payments, gas, parking, maintenance, etc.), then I saved 9 x $500 = $4,500, or $68/hour when I ride my bike. Of course, this assumes my bike is free.

Up, up, and away

Went for a Hot Air Balloon ride last night. Thanks to my trusty GPS, I can show you where we went:
Went directly over a few of our friends houses, and moderately close to our own.



The whole trip was a little over an hour, and we travelled 13.85km, with a peak height of 1400m or so. Lots of fun.

Because we Can

Our little vegetable garden is producing a very large number of tomatoes. Making things even more interesting is that our weekly CSA veggie box has been providing a steady stream of tomatoes as well. Our counter and fridge are overflowing.

On the suggestion of some friends who actually know what the heck they're doing as mini-farmers, we decided to start canning. Attempt #1: Tomato & Corn salsa.

• 12 cups of diced tomatoes
• 8 cups of corn
• Cider vinegar
• Magic spice packet from Bernardin

We haven't tried eating the salsa yet, that will likely happen tonight.

Surprisingly, at least to me, you can get 12 cups of diced tomatoes from very few tomatoes. I was hoping this would use up our stockpile, but it didn't even come close. Next up? Probably some sort of tomato sauce.

Century Egg

We got our 100th egg this morning.



The one on the left is the 100th egg, the one on the right is the 1st. At this point our eggs appear to be roughly the size of a "Medium" egg you'd get from the store

Eggonomics

We just finished out first 50lb bag of chicken feed. To date, we've collected 92 good eggs, and had 5 bad eggs laid. 97 total. So if you'll allow me a little creative license, assume that the last bit of food from bag #1 went into the feeder today, and that will provide us with 3 eggs tomorrow. Which means egg-actly 100 eggs from a 50 lb bag of food.

What	Cost
Coop	$250.00
Feeder	$20.00
Food (50lb)	$13.00
Oyster Shells (50lb)	$15.00
Hens (3)	$23.16
Food buckets	$16.00
Pickle Jar for Water	$5.00
Shavings container	$6.00
Food (50lb)	$18.00
Total	$366.16

So if you assume $18 for a bag of chicken feed, and label every other costs as fixed, our ongoing cost for an egg is $0.18, or $2.16/dozen. Not bad, though it does require that you ignore startup costs, and peg our labour at $0/hour.

More Helby Pictures

Our Summer Vacation

What did we do? We raced slugs!



Our slug, Emma, came in 5th. A very poor showing.

Smash and toys

So my friend bought a Nokia 810, which is just made to live blog stuff like: his fender bender.

No one was hurt, and it was all the other guys fault.

This toy is very cool.

Bird Bath

Chickens like to take dust baths, where they dig a hole in the dirt, and then fluff it all over themselves to scrub out any bugs/mites/etc that have taken residence in their feathers.

So our girls were digging holes in our yard for their baths, which kills off the grass and makes the lawn look funny.

The internet recommended that we provide them with a dedicated dirt box. Best is something a little bigger than a hen, with handles to make it easy to move. The answer seemed simple, and Dumplin seems to like it.

Alternative Chicken Herding

After the disaster that was day #2. Day #3 it was time for a different strategy.



The do nothing approach works rather well.

Chicken Escape

By popular request, we tried to make a video of me wrangling the chickens to bed. I'm pretty sure it turned out exactly as people hoped.



That poor child wasn't hurt, but he did get a rather unfortunate scare.

Day One harvest

Had to force the hens into their coop around 9pm last night. It'll take a little while to train some birds raised in a factory environment to live in our little tractor.

Around 10 o'clock, I went back out to check on the hens, and found another egg. This one appears to have been laid by a hen sitting on a roost, and it cracked when it hit the bottom. You can somewhat see the crack at the top of the egg on the right.


The first egg is being saved for when Tracy gets home, but you can't keep a cracked egg, right? So I had my first ever uber-fresh egg...certainly less than one hour old.

It was delicious. I sincerely think it was noticeably better than a normal egg...but I'll wait until we can do some blind side-by-side taste tests to be sure. It's all in the name of science.

Chickens!

We have chickens! Three beautiful Shaver Reds. Sadly they have trimmed beaks, but they are very pretty anyway.



Not only that, but I am the greatest chicken farmer in the history of the world: we picked up the chickens at 1:15pm, got them in the coop around 1:45pm, and had our first egg by 2pm!



Brittany thinks the egg is more interesting that the chickens.

Cedar Shingles & Winter Eggs

Our chicken tractor is looking nearly complete:

From Chicken Tractor

We still need to shingle the far side, put fencing over the door, and build a lockable inner door to keep the chickens in at night.

Good news for our more sensitive friends and relatives: it looks like we might be able to keep the chickens over the winter, rather than just cook them up as originally planned.

Chicken Tractor

Our chicken tractor is well underway. Sure, we could have just used a dog crate in a fenced in area, like many people do, or bought the plastic Eglu...but that just wouldn't be Tracy's style.

Chicken Tractor

(Click for more pictures)

With luck, we'll have our chickens next week.

Goodbye Shed

We decided to get rid of the old ugly shed at the back. With a double garage that we don't park in, we already have lots of extra storage, and the shed was rotting away at the bottom.

Pictures

Rachael has posted some pictures from the roast:



You can see more here

2005 vs. 2008

Compare the 80lb pig in 2005:




To the 112lb pig on 2008:




The roasters are different, and I can't confirm if they are the same length or not, but I would guess they are very similar.

Success!

We had to dodge two big storm fronts, but the power of the pig kept the worst of the weather away, and everything came off pretty smooth.




Thanks to everyone who came and joined us for the pig roast! We had a great time! Extra special thanks to Andrew and Kate, who both worked like demons to make this a success.

Heck, even Fred the Pig looked happy.



If you took pictures, please send them to me, and I'll post them here for everyone to see.

Round and Round she goes

Looking good. The one side is clearly heavier than the other, so we're getting a slightly odd orbit.



Notice his poor nose rubbing against the bar on each turn. Andrew and I managed to fix that with a little muscle.

The black stripe came when we had to stop it for a few minutes to make some early adjustments. Fred burns fast.

Pig on!

I think we dodged a bullet. Some light sprinkles, and thunder in the distance, but no major rain here. And the radar makes it look like the worst is past.

So pig on! Official start time: 6:25am.

Meet Fred

We have our pig! He's very cute.


The ladies at the store named him Fred. He's borderline too long for our roaster, but we can find a way.

Sir Piggy

Just got a call from Rob Brady, my wonderful butcher. He was unable to get a 100lb pig, so he got me a 112 lb pig instead. Yikes! That means an extra hour of cooking, and an extra early wake up for your dedicated chef.

Weather is looking mildly better. Down to a 60% chance of rain, mostly in the morning. Winds gusting up to 50 km/h though. Flying pig anyone?

The Pig Goes On

Well, the weather forecast for Saturday is less than ideal. But: the roaster is booked for Saturday, and Mr Pig....well, let's just say he's already ready for the party.

The good news is that we have 4 shade tents for the backyard, and Doug is exactly dumb enough to roast a pig in the rain (under a tarp mind you).

So the party will go on. Quarters might be a little tight if we all end up in the house, but with the fine group of friends we've invited, I'm sure we can make it work.

Just as a reminder, please bring:

• A lawn chair or two
• Something for the potluck, we need:
• Nibbles for before dinner
• Side dishes that go well with pork-on-a-bun
• Sweet things for after

We have beer, pop, juice, and water. If you want to drink anything else, please bring that as well.

The pig starts cooking at 6am, and should be done around 4pm. So 3pm is a good time to show up, but feel free to come any time.

Check back with this blog for updates, particularly Saturday morning/afternoon. I'll add parking details later tonight.