Green Eats

Bountiful Backyards has just released the schedule for their Fall 2010 Workshop Series, and, man, are there some good ones!  I’m particularly interested in “Learn How to Grow Edible Gourmet Mushrooms” and the “Raw Live Food Workshop with Alice Loyd”. There are also workshops on how to plant a “food forest”, urban goat husbandy, and vermicomposting (among others). Check out the schedule and sign up today!

Bountiful Backyards is a Community Based Enterprise that works with individuals, neighborhoods, groups, schools and community organizers to create abundant, low-maintenance and beautiful edible gardens. You can learn more that their webiste, www.bountifulbackyards.com.

Orren Fox is officially the coolest kid in school. I learned about him, his chickens and bees, and his advocacy through an article that he wrote for Civil Eats. I won’t rehash the article here, but suffice it to say this kid rocks. In a world full of Happy Meals and Lucky Charms, it is incredibly refreshing to find a young person who takes the time to think about where food comes from.

Check out Orren’s blog, Happy Chickens Lay Healthy Eggs, and follow him on Twitter: @happychickens & @happyhoneybees.

Photo by Libby DeLana

Happy Monday. In case your day got off to a bad start, enjoy this video of piglets at Circle Acres Farm.

The North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service and North Carolina State University have just made available online a new manual entitled “Keeping Garden Chickens in North Carolina”. The manual covers a variety of topics including breeds, feeding, housing, and flock health. While by no means comprehensive, the manual is a great place to start for anyone who is considering starting their own backyard chicken operation.

Keeping Garden Chickens in North Carolina (pdf)

When someone asks me for an example of a multi-platform, sustainable farm I always reference Fickle Creek Farm. Ben Bergmann and Noah Ranells have built something that most people struggle to attain, a pasture-based, rotational system that incorporates sustainable farming (both with livestock and produce) with agroforestry and permaculture practices while virtually eliminating the need for conventional inputs. I visited Fickle Creek recently and was very impressed with what I saw. Here are some photos:

Ben Bergmann explains the basics behind one of Fickle Creek's chicken tractors

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Photo by David La Spina for The New York Times

The New York Times Magazine has a great article on the Modular Harvest System, a new portable slaughterhouse operating in the Northeast. I think its high time we had one of these here in North Carolina! Check out the article and let me know what you think:

Field Report: A Moveable Beast – NYTimes

Here’s a fun little tidbit from my final exam in my Sustainable Livestock Management class – a barrow is a castrated male pig. (I definitely got that answer wrong). The more you know!

This bit of news just flashed across my phone via Tom Philpott’s Twitter page and courtesy of the Green Inc. blog at the New York Times:

The board of directors of McDonald’s has recommended that the company’s shareholders vote against a proposal to require that 5 percent of the eggs purchased for the chain’s restaurants in the United States be the cage-free variety.

The proposal was advanced by the Humane Society of the United States.

Some major fast food companies, including Burger King, Subway and Wendy’s, and the retailers Wal-Mart and Trader Joe’s, have already made some level of commitment to purchasing or selling cage-free eggs.

But the McDonald’s board said on Friday that the science was not there to support a switch.

“As we have examined this issue over the years, we have deter­mined that there is no agreement in the global scientific com­munity about how to balance the advantages and disadvantages of laying hen housing systems,” it said in a proxy statement.

I must say that while I’m not entirely suprised, I am disappointed that McDonald’s has consistently refused to acknowledge what other corporate giants (Wal-Mart, Subway, etc.) have already come to realize – that battery eggs are just plain wrong, and that the American consumer won’t stand for them anymore. Hopefully this announcement will garner enough negative press to make the McDonald’s Board reconsider, but I honestly doubt that will be the case.

On a recent field with my class we visited NCSU’s Meat Goat Research Farm in Raleigh. Lucky for us they were in the middle of kidding, so there lots of baby goats to entertain us. They actually time their goat pregnancies so that all the kids are born within the same few weeks, so by the end of this month they could have upwards of 150 kids! But before I get ahead of myself, here (according to NCSU) is what their facility is all about:

Interest in meat goat production in North Carolina has increased steadily during the past ten years because of the increased demand for goat meat by ethnic groups who prefer goat meat in their diet. USDA statistics indicate that 3,363 metric tons of goat meat were imported in the USA in 1999, for a total value of $7.85 million. In the year 2000, It is estimated that a total of over 180,000 goats were sold for meat in NC, representing receipts of over $7.5 million. In addition, it is estimated that the NC meat goat breeding stock inventory totals 122,000 animals for a total of 3,000 farms, or an average of 39 goats per farm. The above breeding stock inventory represents a capital of over $12 million.

The South African Boer goat has provided great incentive to the development of the NC meat goat industry, resulting in the founding of the North Carolina Meat Goat Association in November 1993. Since then, membership has been steadily increasing to approximately 575 members. In addition, the successful establishment of meat goat shows at the Mountain and the NC State Fairs in 1996, the implementation of graded goat sales in certain areas of the state to supplement weekly auction market sales, and the opening in 2001 of a meat goat farmers’ cooperative for direct sale of fresh goat meat to restaurants and retail stores all attest to the rapid growth of the industry. (Source)

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Turn Old Pallets Into A Chicken Tractor! – More DIY How To Projects

Check out this great video from Instructables about how you can turn old shipping pallets into chicken tractors. The accompanying article and supply list can be found here:

Instructables – Turn Old Pallets Into A Chicken Tractor