Colonel’s Blog, Earthdate 27 September 2024…
Hey Y’all!!
Good evening and happy Fast-jet Friday from Air2Ground Farms! The fast jet today is the Mighty-Mighty F-15E Strike Eagle taking off after dark from RAF Lakenheath, UK. I’ll point out a couple of things. First, notice the rings in the blue flames of the afterburners. The afterburner (AB) works by injecting fuel into the exhaust gasses as they leave the engines. The fuel is injected from rings as the exhaust leaves. The fuel leaving each ring, or stage, of afterburner ignites and adds thrust to the engine. The cockpit throttle position determines how many stages of AB are selected. Second, notice the blue line on the wing tip. That is a formation light. There are three formation lights on each side of the aircraft and they are all Night Vision Goggle (NVG) compatible, meaning they don’t cause the NVGs to wash out due to the light they emit. A wingman is able to fly in very close formation at night with no other references other than those three lights. If you keep the three lights in the right spot, you are in position, about 6-9 feet away, even if that’s all you see of the other jet! The weather here on the farm turned cool and we are currently getting rain from the hurricane. We’re very happy for the rain, but are thinking of those who are being devastated by the storm. We processed batch 10 of beef chickens this week leaving only one batch remaining! As I mentioned last week, we processed the turkeys along with the chickens. More details below. We were very happy to have Hannah “HAIL” Slayton, our second daughter, visiting from RAF Lakenheath where she flies the F-15E. After a moment or two of not so quiet reflection (after she grabbed the first chicken by the head and realized it was still warm), she assumed the assembly line position responsible for removing the birds’ heads, feet, and preening gland…and she did a great job! The top pic is of one of the groups of feeder hogs. There are 15 in that group and the first 4 will go to the processor in a few weeks. The remaining 11 will go 3-4 at a time beginning in December as our butcher only processes deer in November during hunting season. The next group of 6 feeders are doing well and are growing nicely. The breeder hogs and piglets are also doing great! We have 2 more females that will have piglets in about 3 weeks and that will be all of the piglets until spring. We will keep Tex, the boar, separated until December so we don’t have piglets in the dead of winter. The ram lambs are growing and will be ready to start going to the processor in December also. The steers that we moved to the 10 acres nearby are growing like crazy! They, too, will start going to the processor in December. We may need a bigger livestock trailer just to make trips to the processor! Overall, the farm is falling into a routine of producing amazing meat.
I promised a debrief of our experience with raising turkeys, so…. Bottom line: turkeys will definitely be a part of the routine of producing amazing meat next year. The turkeys were on the farm for 19 1/2 weeks, just under 5 months. From the time they were in the brooder, they were very low maintenance. From the brooder to the pasture, they were fun to have around. They are very social birds and would follow you as you passed their area. They are very observant and warned the other birds on the farm when aerial predators were around. The last couple of weeks, the 3 males began to fight a bit and the lone female was definitely the center of their attention. The males actually got big enough that when they fought they were able to push our poultry netting to the ground and just walk out of their pen. Although that only happened a couple of times, it became evident that it was time to process them. As I lifted and carried the first one over to our processing area, I knew I had underestimated their weight. That first bird weighed close to 50 pounds alive! They were definitely too big to fit into our kill-cones so we used a plastic feed bag to restrain and calm them, which worked fine. That biggest one was a bit too big for our scalder and plucker so I had to rotate it around a bit. We also had to do a bit of hand plucking to get the remainder of the feathers off because the plucker just couldn’t quite get it done. The other 3 were a bit easier. The top 2 turkey pics show a bit of the process. The last pic is the biggest one bagged and on the scales…31.2 pounds! Between the 4 birds, we put 103 pounds of meat into the freezer! That said, Shelley says these guys were too big so we will shoot for a 15-20 pound bird next year which means we should process them closer to 16 weeks than 20. Our plan for next year is to get a list of interested folks through the spring and early summer so we will know how many to start in mid-July so Thanksgiving turkeys will be ready by mid-November. Recap: we liked having the turkeys and will definitely raise more next year!
This week’s video was all about water on a farm…to include a look at what happens when things go wrong! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oECKUII2oY0
In this week’s Dust’er Mud Podcast we discussed the hype surrounding the Farm Bill this year; “No Farms, No Food…No Food Security, No National Security.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shqhIwPha2M
Cheers!
Psycho & Shelley
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