Update on the Row Cover Chicken Tractor

1:31 PM in Aqua, chicken, cover, on, row, the, tractor, update

Last fall, we wrote about a chicken tractor we built to fit directly over our (at the time) only garden bed.  We hypothesized that the inherent stiffness of the woven wire fence top would provide some structural integrity, and help shed the snow off to the sides before it could pile up.  Unfortunately, we put too much faith in the fencing material, and one heavy snow was all it took to buckle it.  When we got some time this spring, we made a few improvements to it that will hopefully help it survive this next winter in a little better shape.

When it happened the first time, we put a stick in the middle to hold up the wire.  It worked for a while, as long as we only got snow in increments of one inch or less.  (Also, we didnt figure out a good way to close off the ends in time, and our kale died. :-(  In the spring, we found that covering the ends with garbage bags and holding them in place with sticks was a workable redneck solution for the coldest nights.)

When the heavy snow came, it pushed the stick right down into the dirt and buckled the fencing anyway.  (An unintended consequence of double digging in the fall!) Time for some repairs!

In the spring, we bolstered the structure with a 2 x 4, in which we cut grooves in the ends and screwed it into the hoop parts.  We couldnt find one quite long enough, so the far end has a couple of bridging pieces to cover the extra distance.  A real craftsman would have found the right length board, and put it in the center of the hoops!

We also upgraded the mechanism for moving the chicken catcher piece.  Its now fixed to a rope that goes from end to end, suspended from the main beam by screw-in eyelets.  Now we can just pull on one part of the rope to herd the chickens toward us, and on the other part to give them more room...and all from the comfort of the door side of the tractor!

Heres a shot of how the eyelet hangs at the door end.  Doesnt look like much, but it was cheap, and it works pretty slick.  Those are our two primary concerns.

How do your chicken tractors or row covers hold up in the snow?  Have you had to make any improvements to their structural integrity?  Let us know in the comments section below!

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Outdoor Season Update

10:41 PM in Aqua, outdoor, season, update

This summers growing has been progressing steadily. Ive harvested the basil a few times, and the cucumbers and squash now have fruit beginning. The cukes and squash have had flowers for at least three weeks, but until recently all the flowers were male - that means no fruit. I thought the lettuce might grow well under the shade of other plants, but so far theyve just stayed small and dormant. Bell peppers have produced a few fruits but few new flowers. Nitrate levels in the water have remained very high (~80ppm) and Ive put some Maxicrop plus Iron in as well. I started up the tank with pure ammonia, so I think there was a lack of some trace nutrients, including iron..

Grow beds on 7-26-2011

Squash (foreground), Lettuce, & Jalapeños (background)

Cucumbers (foreground), Peppers (mid), & Lettuce (background)

Basil (R) with Small Hot Peppers (L)

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Syrup Update

11:02 AM in Aqua, syrup, update

Of the eight taps we have in our yard sugar bush, only a couple have been flowing significantly.  The Tree of Heaven, both Bradford pears, and one of the Siberian elms havent even made a drip, the other elm has about a cup of sap, and the Lombardy poplar has about half a cup.  But the other two, the box elders, have been running like a gazelle.  By early Saturday morning, we had collected 38.4 lbs of sap, which means it was time to start boilin it down!

First: a measurement.  Our sap is starting off at about 2.5 wt% sugar, according to our hydrometer. Not bad for a box elder, pretty much in line with a study from St. Johns University in Minnesota.  But more importantly, with that number, we can calculate all sorts of expectations for this batch of syrup.  Allow us to momentarily digress!

This is the sugar content of the box elder sap on the Balling scale, which is essentially the same as the Brix scale more commonly used for sap measurements. (Using the same hydrometer we use for brewing wine.)

For example, knowing the wt% sugar, we can use the tables here to calculate the density of the sap and the resulting syrup (because syrup is normally 66 wt% sugar, which is very close to the solubility limit at room temperature), which will give us the volume of the sap and the resulting syrup, and our expected ratio.  Those calculations are detailed in this spreadsheet, if you want to plug in the numbers from your own sap. For us, our 38.4 lbs of sap at 2.5 wt% sugar works out to about 4.6 gallons, from which we should be able to expect just over two cups of finished syrup. (But note the caveat below.) 

38.4 lbs of sap at 2.5 wt% sugar should yield about 2.1 cups of syrup, which would be a ratio of 34.6:1.  That would be pretty good for a box elder.

We can also use other tables in that document to calculate what the boiling point of the finished syrup should be.  It would normally be 4 °C (7 °F) above the boiling point of pure water wherever we are, but that depends a little bit on what the boiling point of pure water is.  Were in the suburban Denver, where water boils at about 95 °C (203 °F) due to about 18% lower absolute atmospheric pressure. (Dont worry, we used NIST data for the Antoine equation to calculate the vapor pressure of water at that temperature, and everything checks out.  Well played, Universe.)  As it turns out, the difference in boiling point increase for syrup at our elevation is within the precision of our thermocouple reader.  Or, long story short, were looking for a final temperature on our syrup of about 210 °F.  Time to light the fire!

We added a wind break to our Dakota Rocket Silo and started out using the widest-diameter pot we have.

As we started to build up a bed of embers, the air flow through the chimney part dropped off quite a bit, and we werent getting much rocket effect.  So, we widened out the pit, raked some of the coals to the back part, and added a second pot on top.  The direct contact of the pot on the coals got that pot boiling a lot faster than the one on top of the chimney, even when the rocket effect was strong.  Conductive heat transfer beats convective heat transfer (with air) every time!  If you go this route, though, be careful not to get ashes, etc. in the lower pot.

As a side note, if youre trying to use a lot of small-diameter wood (e.g., thumb-size branches from an unsightly, rabbit-attracting brush pile), breaking the sticks by hand might start to get old after the 50th or 60th one.  At that point, a loppers will become your best friend.

With the volume decreasing by about half, some of the minerals ("sugar sand") started to precipitate out.

Eventually, the volume got low enough to combine everything into one pot.  Time to make some pancakes!  We ended up adding one more layer of blocks back onto the wind break.

Pancakes done, sap still boiling.  We might have to modify our evaporator design for the next batch.  In the meantime, lets make bacon, too!

Bacon done, sap at ~35% sugar.  Daylight running out.  Time to bring it inside to finish on the stove.

And.....the finished product in a pint jar.  Its delicious.

Ok, so the finished product looks much closer to one cup in volume than the two we expected.  Why the difference? (Heres the caveat we mentioned above.)  There are a number of potential contributions.  The equations above are for solutions of sucrose in water, so the initial 2.5 wt% reading we took didnt account for other dissolved solids (e.g., the sugar sand that precipitated out during cooking).  That is, we might have started out with lower than 2.5 wt% sugar.  Also, there were some losses on transferring between buckets and pans, filtering, and what we took out for testing along the way.  We were also physically unable to resist trying some of the 35% stuff on the pancakes, which probably accounted for at least 1/4 cup (dont judge!).  Finally, we also ended up going a little bit over 66% sugar (closer to 70%, based on our honey refractometers scale, which had store-bought maple syrup right at 66%), which would decrease the volume, in theory, by about another 1/6 cup.   Overall, even if we got one cup syrup instead of two, our sap-to-syrup volume ratio was still a respectable 70:1.  In general, it looks like the calculations above should get you to at least within a factor of two.

How is your syrup season going?

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State Legislative Update from the Lutheran Advocacy Ministry

1:46 AM in advocacy, Aqua, from, legislative, lutheran, ministry, state, the, update

The following update from the 2016 session of the New Mexico State Legislature comes from Ruth Hoffman, director of Lutheran Advocacy Ministry-New Mexico.

Summary of the major bills relating to the LAM-NM Advocacy Agenda 

(Bills LAM-NM supports are "green" & bills we oppose are "red") 

The estimates of state revenue are dismal! 
This means that the state budget for the next fiscal year will be very lean and the budget for the current fiscal year is underfunded. It is crucial that the state budget not be balanced by making deep cuts in the programs that impact the lives of our many neighbors living in poverty. HB2, the state budget bill, has passed the House and is now in the Senate Finance Committee. 

Affordable Housing & Homelessness: 
SB63 (Sen. Nancy Rodriguez) Requests an appropriation of $5 million for the State Housing Trust Fund which provides funding to build affordable housing projects around the state. SB63 is in the Senate Finance Committee.

SB202 (Sen. Bill ONeill) Adds "homelessness" as a protected group in the NM Hate Crimes Act. SB202 was tabled in the Senate Judiciary Committee.

HB59 & HB88 (Rep. Tomas Salazar) Request a total of $4.5 million for transitional/permanent supportive housing, rapid re-housing and other services. No new funding for these programs is included in the current version of HB2, the state budget bill.

Family-Sustaining Income
LAM-NM is supporting increasing the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families monthly cash assistance amount.

No increase is included in the current version of HB2, the state budget bill.

SJR2 (Sen. Michael Padilla)
This constitutional amendment would allow an increase in the distribution from the Land Grant Permanent Fund to fund quality early childhood programs. SJR2 passed the Senate Rules Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee and is now in the Senate Finance Committee.

HJR11 (Rep. Patricia Roybal Caballero)
This constitutional amendment would have asked voters to approve putting a cap of 36% on loans in our state. HJR11 was tabled in the House Business & Employment Committee.

Health Care
LAM-NM is advocating for adequate funding for the state Medicaid program. The current version of the HB2, the state budget bill, includes about a $40 million cut to the Medicaid program.

HB191 (Rep. Dennis Roch & Sen. Daniel Ivey-Soto) and SB217 (Sen. Benny Shendo & Rep. Sharon Clahchischilliage) Would create the profession of dental therapist. These bills have not been ruled germane for consideration in this session.

Hunger
SB52 (Sen. Nancy Rodriguez) Requests $400,000 for the State SNAP Supplement Program which serves over 11,000 seniors and people with disabilities by increasing their basic SNAP amount to at least $25. We are advocating for funding to increase the minimum amount to $30 per month. SB52 is in the Senate Finance Committee. Funding to increase the monthly minimum amount to $28 is included in the current version of HB2, the state budget bill.

Tax Policy
HB79 (Rep. Bill McCamley) Would increase the state Working Families Tax Credit from 10% to 20% of the federal Earned Income Tax Credit and to repeal the capital gains tax deduction. HB79 passed the House Business & Employment Committee without recommendation and was tabled in the House Ways & Means Committee.

Immigration
HB99, as amended ( Rep. Paul Pacheco) HB99 passed the House and was amended in the Senate Public Affairs Committee to reflect the provisions in SB256 (Sens. John Arthur Smith & Stuart Ingle). HB99, as amended, passed that committee by a vote of 8-1 and then passed the Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously. The amendments provide for a 2 tier license system. Residents can choose to get a REAL ID drivers license if they need one or choose to get a drivers privilege card. Drivers privilege cards would be available to both legal residents and undocumented residents. HB99 is now in the Senate Finance Committee.

Criminal Justice
SB140 (Sen. Mary Kay Papen) Would prohibit solitary confinement for juveniles and people with a serious mental illness and would require prisons, jails and detention centers to report information about who is held in solitary confinement. SB140 has not been ruled germane for consideration in this session.

SJR1 (Sen. Peter Wirth & Sen. Sander Rue) This is a constitutional amendment for bail reform. SJR1 would allow judges to deny bail for dangerous arrestees and also prohibit keep arrestees who are not deemed dangerous from being held in jail only because they cant afford bail. SJR1 passed the Senate Floor by a vote of 29-9, has passed the House Judiciary Committee and is how in the House Regulatory & Public Affairs Committee.

LAM-NM will advocating on legislation relating to our 2016 Advocacy Agenda. We work in an advocacy partnership with the NM Conference of Churches and the Presbytery of Santa Fe.

Watch for LAM-NM Advocacy Updates and Action Alerts! Forward our Updates to others that might be interested in these issues using the link at the end of this email.

Thank you for your advocacy actions!

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Chickens Update 8 Week Weigh in

8:02 AM in 8, Aqua, chickens, in, update, week, weigh

Weve got some good news to report on our chickens.  The gimpy one has regained its balance enough to rejoin the rest of the flock, which means our little bumper bowling-type chicken run worked!  (Or at least, it kept the chick upright enough that it could eat and drink while it got over whatever was causing its balance problems.)  Also, our fall batch of red ranger chickens will be eight weeks old on Monday, so we wanted to check in with their actual weights and see how they were doing in their goal of becoming heavy enough to put in the freezer by ten weeks.

On Halloween, some of the chickens turned into scary monsters and rampaged through the brooder box.  Fortunately, they only preyed on the feed in the trough, which probably means they werent all that scary.  But just to make sure we werent skewing the weigh-in results, we waited until Saturday to weigh them so any residual monsterly effects would have time to wear off.

We had our kitchen scale, but the little boat it came with wouldnt hold a chicken.  So we improvised with a cylindrical metal device that doubled as a prop for some poetic foreshadowing.

Other than the outliers, the chickens ranged from 3.5 to 5.5 lbs.  (The bar on the far left is the gimpy one, which was sometimes stuck upside down when it should have been eating, and the bar on the far right is the rare breed, which we think might be an Araucana.  Were starting to think twice about butchering that one with the rest of them since its so small.  What a difference between the meat and non-meat breeds!)  The roosters were generally heavier than the hens, as expected, although there were a couple of hefty girls that were bigger than the scrawniest rooster.  For the most part, it looks like were still on track for a butcher date in a couple weeks.  Hooray!

Were about a quarter of the way into the fifth bag of feed. That means were at a feed conversion ratio of about 3.2, which is considerably better than what we estimated a couple weeks ago.  For the next batch, well probably keep a record like this every week so we can more easily track their progress and feed conversion ratio. 

Have you raised a batch of red rangers?  What were your numbers for growth rate and feed conversion ratios?  Let us know in the comments section below!

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