Pastured Poultry

My family and I are growing pastured poultry.  These are chickens that are allowed to grow in the field, scratching and eating bugs and enjoying the fresh air and sunshine.  We have found our chickens to be much healthier and happier than the average chicken!  Their flavor is much richer and vibrant than those bought in the grocery store.  These are chickens that we proudly put on our own dinner table!  We are taking orders for those of you who would like to try pastured poultry and taste the difference.  

This is how it works...you order your chickens, we grow them out (which takes about 12 weeks), and you then have the choice of taking your chickens home to do your own processing or we can process them for you free of charge.   You are buying a whole chicken that is suitable for cooking that day or going into your freezer.  We can show you how to cut it up and de-bone if you would like, but this is something that we do not do when we process.

We are looking at processing once a month.  Sometime around the second or third of each month.  We will let you know exactly what days we will be processing after April.  We are not sure of dates because we have not confirmed shipping dates of the chicks.  The price will be $2.75/pound.  They should be from 3 to 4 pounds each.  This is about what an organic chicken or free range chicken is in the grocery store.  The difference here is you get to know your farmer and are buying local.  This money will be staying in this community!

Please copy and past the following site in your URL to place your orders. 

 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dDM0TUpLWjQ1UkdlUXdOV0hLV3djbEE6MQ   

The order form will let us know how many chickens you would like starting April 21-November (maybe December).  This way we can put in our orders way ahead and be sure to have the chickens ready!   If we see we will have too many orders on a particular date, we will add in another date and may need to process twice that month.  Please remember that if you place an order you are expected to pay for your order and pick it up that day unless you make plans ahead of time.

Please share this with friends and family who are interested in healthier, more flavorful chicken and would be interested in buying chicken directly from the grower!  You are even welcomed to come and watch them grow if you would like!!

We're so excited to start our second year growing pastured chickens!   We hope you will try our chickens and help to support local farmers!

Wordless Wednesday...The Chicken Wrangler

Cowboy Hamp helps gather up the hens for the evening...

 

3 Miles Up, 3 Miles Down

Early last Wednesday morning before light, Knox and I left the warmth of our beds and drove toward town.  It was raining and cool, not quite cold, but very wet.

We drove through Toccoa, not meeting much traffic.  People were just getting up and ready for the day.  We were heading for Currahee Mountain.
As mountains go, Currahee is not too tall.  It's name is a Cherokee name meaning "stands alone".  It is on the southern most end of the Appalachian Mountains and truly stands alone as the Georgia Piedmont rolling, flat hills back up to it.

As we approached Currahee, the peak couldn't be seen.  There was a halo of fog and rain that encircled the infamous peak.  But we were undaunted.  We were on our way to see the special event that was about to take place on that mountain.

When we came to the muddy forest road that lead to the top of Currahee, we saw what had brought us out on this wet, rainy morning...

Paratroopers

The 506th Airborne Infantry Regiment

750 men and women standing outside 18 charter buses warming up and getting ready to run a mountain that had trained 20,000 men during WWII!

This was something that had not been seen for almost 70 years! 

These men and women had just returned from Afghanistan.  They came to pay tribute to the men that had started their regiment.  The men that had ran Currahee Mountain every day, twice or sometimes three times a day as they prepared for the invasion of France.

It was a solemn tribute.

These men and women were joined by a man double their ages.  He too came to run the mountain.  He ran the mountain in tribute to not only all the men who trained at Camp Toccoa but in tribute to one special man, Sgt Robert "Popeye" Wynn.  Wynn was his father-in-law, but as Carl Lowry said he was more like a father to him.  Carl came from Virginia and joined these men and women on this cold, wet fall morning and ran, 3 miles up, 3 miles down.  (Carl was also raising funds for the Currahee Military Muesum that pays tribute to the contributions of the men who trained at Camp Toccoa.)

This is not a paved road.  (Click here to see a video that shows the drive up the mountain.)  The night before we had had over 1" of rain.  It was still raining.  That meant that it was going to wet and muddy--bad muddy!

We watched, in the pitch dark, as the first group and Carl left the staging area

and headed up the mountain.

As they started up the hill, we heard the cry.  The cry that had not been heard in nearly 70 years by this mountain.  A cry that has led many men and women in battle and from the comfort of airplanes.  The cry...

Currahee!!

We all had lumps in our throats.  It was this cry that so many had yelled as they went into battle never to cry again.  It was this cry that these men and women yelled as they paid tribute to not only the ones that had run on this red, muddy,  dirt road years before, but for the ones that would never be able to run this road again.

As the light filtered through the clouds, we watched as more of the 506th marched in their formations up the red mud road.

Then we saw a group coming down!

It was the first group that had left.  I got out my video camera and started filming.  It's what you hear in the video that tells you about scrifice. Listen closely...over the marching chats, you will hear the sloshing of shoes and mud.

We unfornately had to leave before they all came down off the mountain.  As we left for school, I asked Knox if he was glad we came. 

He looked at me and said, "We got to see history today, didn't we?" 

I said, "Yes we did!"

I haven't been able to get those pictures out of my mind.  They are pictures that bring home the fact that there are others in this world who are placing themselves in harms way for me and my family to be able to watch history happen.

It is the footsteps of these men and women that I want to see time and time again climbing this and other mountains to keep my family and myself free!

May we forever here the cry...

Currahee!! 

If you would like a little more history on Camp Toccoa, click here for another article I wrote about the men who trained here.  I also recommend watching the HBO mini-series Band of Brothers.  But remember that none of the footage you see of the men running Currahee was filmed on Currahee Mountain! 

Wordless Wednesday...Our New Guest

Our internet went out before I could get the pictures posted for Monday's post, Our New Guest.

So I thought I would share them with you today...

Knox petting the new piggies while they eat.

Knox answering Hamp's question about the piggies.


 Hopefully I will be able to get better pictures later on.

Stay tuned...

Our New Guests

We have new pets around the house.

Four new piggies have joined the farm.  They have been pulling their weight since they showed up a few weeks ago!

These piggies are getting to be some happy pigs!

We have them in an electric fence around our garden spot.  Since pigs love to root, we have them rooting up weeds and fertilizing our garden for next spring.

Boy are they doing their job!

Wordless Wednesday...Sharp Shooter

Sharp Shooter, Knox!

To Be or Not To Be....

My regulars have noted that I have been absent for a while...well too long some are saying.  But I have been trying to figure out what I'm doing here.

I started as a coupon blog.  I soon realized that I was WAY behind others and I was just wasting my time.

I decided to start doing posts on frugal ideas and recipes.  It didn't take me long to run through all my frugal idea.  I also found that others are much better at this than I am.

I realized that people really enjoyed my stories about my boys and thier Daddy.  As I have said over and over...it's ever boring around here!

But for the past couple of months, I have wresled with the idea of whether or not Frugal Tractor Mom needs to be retired.

How much does a blogs name need to tell what the content is all about?

Am I misleading new readers?

Am I misleading the readers who have been reading me for the past years?

Do I REALLY need to change my name?

The more I thought, the more I realized....

I am still a Frugal Tractor Mom!

So I'm going to keep the name Frugal Tractor Mom! 

I'll keep sharing my family with you and throw in a frugal idea every now and then.  The more I share with you the daily life of my family, hope to leave a wealth of memories for them to share with their children one day.

As I make my comeback to the blogging world, I hope my son will be happy to know that I am now adding more posts to the Frugal Tractor Mom!

I look forward to having you all follow and enjoy the stories....