I like snakes. Lucky for me, plenty of different species call my Osage county Kansas farm home, including the dreaded Copperhead and at least one member of the rattlesnake family – I’m quite certain it’s the Massasauga. I’ve had several encounters with the rattlers, all of them quite amicable; all in the spring. There’s nothing like the buzz of a rattlesnake on alert to make you realize that there’s still some wild left in this land.

Although I haven’t seen a Copperhead yet, the vet was pretty sure that a small one bit Lucy, one of my dogs, on the lip a couple of years ago. That little West Highland White Terrier was a little under the weather after the encounter, all it took to get her through the night was a bit of benadryl and some bed rest. Her recovery was nothing short of amazing to me – and a huge relief, of course.

The farm is also home to several varieties of Ribbon and Garter snakes, Black Snakes (some version of the Rat Snake) that occasionally raid the bluebird boxes, assorted other Rat Snakes, King Snakes, and the like.

Until recently, my snake encounters have been quite random and outdoors. But just a few weeks ago, as the weather turned to a decidedly fall-like crisp, I was drawn out of the book I was reading in the living room by an odd thumping sound coming from the kitchen. When I finally decided to investigate, I discovered that my cat Callie had squared off with what appeared to be a young King Snake (Prairie King Snake is my best guess). The snake was coiling and looking quite ferocious for its diminutive stature while Callie repeatedly wound up and smacked it with her right front paw.

Snake lover that I am, I shooed Callie off. Self preservationist that I am, I thought to grab a pair of kitchen tongs rather than getting up close and personal with a snake whose identity I wasn’t at all certain of. All I can say is that little snake was a ferocious one and after I teased it a bit – and snapped a couple of portraits with my phone – I took it outside and released it out of sight of my Border Collies, Gus and Clover.

I won’t go so far as to say I love having snakes in the kitchen. But hey, what do you expect when you live in a 102 year old farmhouse built on a stacked limestone foundation? If it’s the right kind of snake that infiltrates the crawlspace, Callie will have some help with mouse control this winter and she might need it considering her two confirmed kills this past week. Then again, I’m not so sure the snakes will be on patrol during the cold months – even if they are indoors. Either way, I look forward to the snakes I might encounter in the grass next year.

I’ve been trying to get some GRIT hats ordered for as long as I’ve been here. All my nagging finally paid off – 140 of the most awesome ball caps I’ve ever seen arrived here just the other day. I argued that we needed the hats to hand to special folks we meet at shows and that we needed hats to wear when we were out in the world. I secretly wanted a hat stash because I am a hopeless cap collector – it started with seed companies and moved to machinery makers. I have Caterpillar caps, International Harvester caps, DeKalb, Pioneer and Producers caps. I even have Mother Earth News caps – but until now, I never had a GRIT cap. 

I love my GRIT cap so much that I do chores in it, go to town in it and even forget to take it off while I’m at work. I have even whittled down our original GRIT cap inventory sufficiently to supply the entire GRIT team – they declined my offer to take a group photo – my family and a few friends. So today there are many fewer than 140 GRIT caps in stock (and I am more dollars than I want to admit poorer even though they are only $12 apiece) because of my obsession with great fitting and good looking headwear. I even have a couple of caps stashed away – out of the light and in a crush-free zone – so that I will have a fresh GRIT cap to wear when our one-time inventory runs out.

The powers that be told me not to expect another batch of GRIT caps anytime soon, since we aren’t in the apparel business. I told them that members of the entire GRIT community would really dig GRIT-branded gear – they just smiled uncomfortably like I was some homeless guy explaining the beauty of alley cat culture to an invisible audience. I didn’t mention that I was hoping for a full line of work wear with the GRIT barn and tractor logo prominently displayed.

So, if you want to get one (or ten) of these great looking and great fitting GRIT caps, you need to act quickly. If I am right that you all like this stuff as much as I do, the caps won’t last – and when they are gone, I suspect they’ll really be gone.

It took daughter Alaina and me a while to get to the place where we really felt like eating one of the broiler chickens we processed last week. We finally succumbed to the idea of a succulent, moist, broiler – slow cooked in the oven – on Saturday. Alaina had the presence of mind to put the bird out to thaw early in the morning. By the time I had beaten myself to a tired, sore mass from working around the farm all day, I didn’t have the energy to smoke the bird in the Orion smoker, which was our original plan. We’re both glad now that the smoker never got lit.

I’m a firm believer that awesome food can stand on its own; I find that holds true particularly with clean, healthy, home-raised, free-range meat. I don’t put sauce on my steaks and as much as I like smoked chicken, I love heavy broilers roasted simply too.

Since I was out of steam and fading fast, I took the thawed bird, gave it a quick rinse and patted it dry with a paper towel. I took one fresh lemon, cut it in half and squeezed the juice onto the breast-side of the bird and rubbed it in a bit. I then stuck the lemon halves into the broiler’s body cavity. Normally, I would chop a few cloves of garlic and some rosemary, mix it with olive oil and put it under the broiler’s skin – but I was just too beat to mess with the garlic and we didn’t have any fresh rosemary around so I just skipped that step. Ah, the life of a bachelor – no recipe police in sight.

Even though I knew there wasn’t any rosemary to be found, I cruised the fridge for something green and found a small bundle of almost done cilantro. Yep, I just stuffed that bundle of flavor into the cavity behind the lemon halves. The last seasoning step was to sprinkle a little Kosher salt over the entire broiler. I don’t know why I do that, but I have always done it. Perhaps it’s my way of rebelling against my physician – he’s always brooding about my blood pressure.

I don’t have a proper roasting pan so I set the works into a 12-inch ceramic pie plate (the tail stuck out and made a bit of an oily mess in the oven) and shoved it into a 350-degree oven. And there the broiler sat until the juices ran clear and the meat thermometer that Alaina stuck in the breast said the meat was safe to eat. I can’t report on the actual temperature because it just says chicken on the thermometer’s dial.

Once we let the broiler rest for a spell – while picking and tasting beautifully golden morsels – we served ourselves some generous helpings of the most delicious meat. Light or dark, the broiler’s gift was one of juicy, pleasing sustenance. We managed to eat about half the bird on Saturday night.  It really went well with the squash soup and spinach salad that Alaina made earlier.

On Sunday we cleaned the carcass of the remaining meat and boiled the bones. The meat went into the crockpot with a mess of dried herbs (poultry seasoning, sage, and some other grey-green stuff), a pinch of salt, one yellow onion diced and half-dozen stalks of celery sliced. Next we dumped a cup of long grain rice into the slow cooker and added sufficient chicken broth (from the boiled bones) to cover the works. We set the crockpot to high for a few hours and then to low. We forgot to time it – but it was on low overnight. The rice was a little on the soft side, but it reminded me of chicken dumplings a bit. In any case, the slow-cooked chicken and rice was positively delicious – no doubt because of the broiler and not my slow-cooking prowess.

As I reflect on the entire raising, processing and eating of that broiler chicken, I can only conclude that it was entirely worth it. Alaina and I both agree that home-raised broilers are positively delicious. With food that good, it’s not a chore to use it up, which makes me feel like that creature’s life was well celebrated and not wasted. I know we’ll smoke one of those broilers soon. Stay tuned.

Photo: iStockphoto: adlifemarketing

The GRIT and MOTHER EARTH NEWS Community Chicken project came to closure last Sunday when 8 people gathered at my Osage County Kansas farm to kill and clean the commercial broilers we had been raising on range for the past 12 weeks or so. The event brought together a most unlikely group of editors, spouses, advertising sales people, teacher, librarian and medical intern. Most of these folks had never taken a vertebrate animal's life with their bare hands. Most had never felt the slickness of warm offal. Most had never been that up close and personal with the animals whose lives help sustain us.

MOTHER EARTH NEWS Sr. Associate Editor Troy Griepentrog and I took responsibility for raising the birds and supplemented their diet of bugs and clover with an antibiotic-free grower ration, which is part of the Homestead line offered by Hubbard Feeds. We kept the birds enclosed, and safe from predators with electric net fences and chargers supplied by Kencove and Premiere One. Feeders, knives, fowl catchers, waterers, chicks, hatching eggs and a vacuum sealer were all supplied by the various advertisers listed prominently on the Community Chickens website.

Killing any animal with your bare hands, is never easy – at least when you don’t do it every day. When I demonstrated a humane way to nick the birds’ jugular, using killing cones supplied by Featherman to restrain the birds, there was a hush among the group as folks reflected on what it means to take (and honor) a life and accept the animal’s gift of sustenance. When the blood flowed freely, some people turned away. My daughter, Alaina told me later she thought she was going to cry. To paraphrase Joel Salatin, it isn’t good to kill chickens too often, because you run the risk of becoming desensitized and of taking their lives for granted. That definitely was not the situation at the farm on Sunday.

Once their life blood ceased flowing, we dunked the birds in a beautifully constructed, thermostat-controlled, propane-fired scalder provided by the Featherman Equipment Co. We found that several brief dunks (5 – 15 seconds long depending on bird size) (each followed by a test pluck to see how easily we could remove tough flight or tail feathers) helped us get the scalding just right. From the approximately 150-degree water we placed two birds into the Featherman drum plucker for a 30 second ride that removed the feathers easily and virtually completely. The Featherman drum plucker is nothing short of phenomenal.

The next step in the process was to remove the birds’ feet, crops, heads and oil glands, which was followed by opening the abdominal cavity and removing the viscera. Check GRIT Assistant Editor Caleb Regan’s blog for more on that activity. Alaina kept the fresh water flowing throughout the process and gave the birds a final rinse before we placed them in an ice-water bath for rapid cooling. Beautiful broiling chickens were then packaged in plastic and packed in coolers for the rides home.

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank my colleagues Troy Griepentrog, Caleb Regan, Megan Phelps and Steve Sabran for their participation. I’d also like to thank Troy’s wife Sue and Megan’s husband Nate and my daughter Alaina for taking ownership of the process as well. I know I will kill chickens again next year and I hope that it will be in the company of such thoughtful and careful folks. I also hope to have access to the Featherman cones, scalder and plucker – they definitely made the entire process easier.

Photos courtesy Suzanne Griepentrog.

Just when I was hoping for a mild fall and an easy, down-on-the-farm winter, the hot off the press 2010 Farmers’ Almanac shows up on my desk, heralding frigid winter weather for my part of the world. In  2010 Farmers’ Almanac Managing Editor Sandi Duncan’s words, we should expect an “ice cold sandwich” when winter finally settles in. I wonder just when it will settle in, down here in Kansas. Judging by this week’s highs, I think it might be sooner, rather than later.

 “With the economy still shaky, and people keeping an eye on their spending,” reports Peter Geiger, Philom., 2010 Farmers’ Almanac Editor, “the winter weather outlook is more important than ever. Many folks are looking to the most respected sources for long-range weather outlook–the Farmers’ Almanac–so they can prepare for whatever Mother Nature may send their way.”

Last year, the 2009 Farmers’ Almanac predicted an exceptionally long, cold winter for most regions. As promised, bitter cold and heavy snow punished much of the nation, coming on early in the season and lingering through the start of spring. When spring finally did arrive, it came bearing heavy rains, with twice the annual average falling in many regions.

The 2010 edition of the Farmers’ Almanac warns that this winter’s frigid forecast offers no respite, especially for states in the center of the country. “Very cold and bitterly cold” is how the 2010 Farmers’ Almanac describes the winter in the Great Lakes, Plains, and South Central states, while temperatures on the East and West Coasts will be more in line with average to normal winter conditions. For residents of the East Coast, who bore most of the brunt of last winter’s fury, this may be good news.

While nearly three-quarters of the country is expected to experience near or below average precipitation this winter, significant snowfalls are forecast for parts of every zone. Residents of Mid-Atlantic and Northeast states can expect some a major snowfall in mid-February, with possible blizzard conditions in New England.

“People on the coasts shouldn’t think they’re off the hook just because we’re predicting milder winter weather for them. Shovelry is most certainly not dead,” Geiger says.   

The 2010 edition of the Farmers’ Almanac offers more than just the publication’s famous long-range weather forecasts, though. It also contains invaluable tips on how to save money and energy, plus practical ways to live a simpler, more sustainable lifestyle. The 2010 Farmers’ Almanac is filled with more thrifty and smart living advice than ever before, with articles on the economics of going green, the dirt on fighting germs naturally, tips on reusing household items, and reducing our dependency on convenience items.

There are also dozens of pages of practical home and garden advice, including proven tips on stretching your meal budget, easy instructions for canning fresh fruits and vegetables for the winter, a list of the top five easiest vegetables to grow, a list of steps to take now for a better garden next spring, as well as the Farmers’ Almanac’s beloved calendar of Best Days to quit smoking, find a new job and more, the exclusive Gardening by the Moon Calendar, and valuable outdoor advice, including average frost and peak foliage dates, and tips for safe hunting and fishing.

Weather is the most talked about subject on earth, which makes the 2010 Farmers’ Almanac weather predictions a hot topic. Fans of the Almanac say its famous long-range forecast is accurate between 80 and 85 percent of the time. The predictions are based on mathematical and astronomical formula that dates back to 1818, and each new edition contains 16 months of weather forecasts for the contiguous United States.

The 2010 Farmers’ Almanac retails for $5.99 in stores everywhere and online. I keep copies of the Farmers’ Almanac handy … both at work and on the farm. I consult its pages for everything from when to plant my potatoes to the best days to go fishing. If you don’t yet have your copy of the 2010 Farmers’ Almanac, you quite simply aren’t prepared.

I’ve been a fan of propane-powered internal combustion engines ever since I saw how clean the inside of an old propane International Harvester tractor’s engine was when a friend had one apart in his shop. So imagine my delight when I learned that one of my least favorite (due to noise and exhaust) tools to use, the 2-cycle string trimmer, was finally available with a quiet propane-fueled 4-stroke engine on it. Imagine also my surprise when I learned that this new machine was built by a company I had never heard of before – LEHR Incorporated.

 LEHR is the brainchild of Captain Bernardo J. Herzer who spent many a long night converting gasoline engines to run on propane, while cruising the North Sea aboard the vessel Sea Surveyor. Captain Herzer is committed to the application of environmentally friendly technology and finding green energy solutions for retail and commercial products. LEHR products are affordable but definitely not throw away junk.

Over the past couple of months I have been able to spend some quality time with both the curved- and straight-shaft versions of the LEHR Eco Trimmer – thanks to LEHR the string trimmer is no longer my least favorite tool to operate. The LEHR Eco Trimmer is quieter than the 2-cycle versions of the string trimmer that I have experience with and it vibrates less, so my hands don’t buzz for an hour after trimming the road ditch. But the most noticeable and delightful aspect to the LEHR Eco Trimmer is that it emits no smoke and since propane readily combusts to carbon dioxide and water, there isn’t any hydrocarbon smell spewing at you either. And come to think of it, fueling the LEHR is as easy as strapping in a propane canister and attaching the fuel line. Only a very small amount of propane escaped during the process that I never even smelled it – try that while mixing and pouring 2-cycle engine fuel.

Make no mistake the LEHR Eco Trimmer is a heavy duty unit that’s capable of motoring its way through heavy grass and the 40 or 50 species of coarse-stemmed weeds that grow along the corral fence at my farm.  The trimming will be easier for me next time because with the LEHR Eco Trimmer I am much more likely to actually stay on top of the job rather than avoiding it, which I did with the 2-cycle trimmer that’s hanging in my barn. I prefer the LEHR Eco Trimmer because of the lower impact it makes on my immediate environment while operating it. The machine is quiet and not smelly. But as it turns out, the LEHR Eco Trimmer is easier on the broader environment too. And I don’t care what you think about climate change, where’s the harm in helping keep hydrocarbon vapors and other nasty stuff out of the air and soil?

If you are tired of smelling like an oily smoke bomb and tired of having your hands vibrate and tired of mixing gas, then you most definitely want to check out the LEHR Eco Trimmer. You can find them online and at some lawn and garden centers. You can also get a Craftsman-Branded LEHR Eco Trimmer at your local Sears outlet. Go for it and we’ll all get to breathe a little easier.

August isn’t the month that I usually start thinking about winter, but with the lows in the high 50s last night, it definitely felt a bit like fall. And fall does get me thinking about winter preparations – and wondering how much snow we’ll get this year. Snow makes me think of snow handling tools and there’s nothing quite as satisfying as blasting the stuff out of your lane with a tractor-mounted snow blower.

To help with this year’s snow wrangling, Deere and Company’s Frontier Equipment group has released a new front-end loader-mounted and a pair of SB12 Series 3-point-hitch-mounted snow blowers.

The 76-inch wide SB2176 Snow Blower mounts on any current John Deere 400 Series Loader and gets its power from a PTO-driven, 3-point hitch mounted, hydraulic power pack that’s fully independent of the tractor’s hydraulic system. And if you need a bit more traction with the blower mounted, the power pack can be fitted with suitcase weights for added rear ballast. Operators use the tractor’s loader hydraulic controls to adjust the snow blower’s cut height and pitch while moving snow.

“The SB2176 has an industry-exclusive system that automatically monitors the torque applied to the impeller. The auger automatically slows when maximum torque is sensed and this allows the impeller to move away excess snow and helps to reduce plugging during operation,” says Michael Horrell, Frontier Equipment marketing manager.

For farmers and acreage owners who own utility tractors, Frontier also announced 74- and 80-inch, 3-point-hitch-mounted, . These machines are more traditional PTO-powered tools, but they are built to move a lot of snow very quickly.

“This is a commercial-duty snow blower for customers with compact-utility or utility tractors between 30 and 80 horsepower. It’s a great fit for large property owners or contractors who desire to own a commercial-grade snow blower at an economical price,” says Horrell.

I have yet to need a snow blower here in Kansas, but when I farmed in South Dakota, there were plenty of days when I could have made good use of any of these new Frontier machines. Pushing out 10-foot tall drifts isn’t that much fun with a loader – especially when the wind rebuilds them faster than you can remove them.

If you live in the snow-belt or are considering a snow-removal side business, you just might want to head down to your nearest John Deere dealer and have a look at these new snow blowers from Frontier.