Winter provides us with a natural chance to slow down…one I rarely listen to but still it is a chance. Less grows and what does grows grows slower. Things die back and its too cold and, well, wintery to really travel far and wide with frequency. Though the solstice is not for another 17 days, I am starting the process. OK, in truth it is not without be prompted as I had a huge failure with my rabbit pelts.

Amidst several other things going on, I decided to just jump in and start the process of tanning my rabbit hides. Mostly I just needed to get them out of my freezer. So following the lead of a local friend of mine (I was trying to time it so we could work on them together), I placed the hides in a bucket with Aluminum Sulfate for a few days. Then I realized, ok wait, no, then I READ the actual article that this technique was based on and realized I had not added salt.

Fast forward a couple of weeks in which day after day I told myself, “tonight I’ll go home and start cleaning the skins…no really…tonight.”

Well the results of my not reading directions and trying to do too much are in, and they are not pretty:

That would be a pile of rotten pelts. Yep. Luckily there were not many.

For anyone hoping to tan their own, rest assured. The directions (if you read them) in the Mother Earth News article are excellent. Others that followed them have had great success. I have to say, I am starting to get superstitious about trying to work on hides in December. As I recall last year I had another hide fail.

Set aside any doubt that heirloom crops and heritage breeds embody unique properties. This year I raised a Bronz/Naragensett turkey cross. I typically acquire my turkeys in August and they are never ready by November. They grow slower and take until Springtime. However, this year we did indeed have a Thanksgiving turkey weighing in at ~ 12lbs. Interestingly, the turkey had bigger pockets of fat than I have ever seen before. Their diet has been a bit different. Its been a high protein mix with layer feed and supplemental greens. This is the first year I mixed the layer feed in. The result was a roast turkey with the most intense and rich flavor I have ever had before. Amazing.

Preserving the diversity of our dwindling varieties of crops and domestic breeds, got me thinking. We’ve all heard how our food variety is diminished since industrialization of the food system. However, it can be hard to visualize such a large scale impact. National Geogrpahic has done just this with the below. Check it out folks.

Grody but pragmatic. It is necessary to know what normal and abnormal waste looks like from your birds. To this end, the Poultry Page Forum has created an online guide to poultry feces. Great job PPF! You can view what they have created thus far but be forewarned, its not pretty. Read more…

A recent article on Huffington Post featured Michelle Obama’s recent trip to Chicago to discuss food access. The article mentions several ways in which Chicago is working toward food security for its community. Apparently the new Mayor, Rahm Emanuel, has been a champion of urban farming.

“Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced 17 grocery stores will open in the Chicago area to help address the lack of access to fresh food. Some will sell foods from urban farms, he said.

Emanuel has made eliminating so-called food deserts – areas with few or no grocery stores – a focus since he took office in May. However, several projects were in the works before he took office, including a task force of city officials and major grocers committed to opening stores on the South and West sides.

Advocates do credit Emanuel with bringing a new energy to the issue. He’s promoted urban farming and brought together mayors on the issue. Those at the summit were from cities including Somerville, Mass., Minneapolis, Milwaukee and Baltimore.”

Other things to know about Chicago’s food security-  Since 1996, nine community programs in Chicago IL and Milwaukee WI have been raising a variety of livestock for food and sale. One such program is located on Chicago’s South Side at the Robert Taylor Homes, the largest public housing project in the United States, with more than 20,000 residents on over 92 acres. In the midst of this gang-dominated environment, a resident-run youth group has constructed a vermiculture and aquaculture system in the basement of one of the Robert Taylor Homes high-rises where they currently care for more than 100 pounds of worms and two barrels of tilapia fish.  In the planting season worm castings are used as a soil additive in their market garden and packaged for sale to city gardeners.  Every seven months fish are harvested and eaten by the participating youths’ families.  In another site, youth and adults have joined together to reclaim for food production an abandoned lot and illegal dumping ground. There, ducks are integrated into the operation for pest and weed control. They also supply eggs to participating families.¹

¹Alison Meares Cohen, “Urban Livestock: People At The Center,” Community Food Security News, p.15, plus additional information from the author.

Ponder a moment giving food to someone in need in comparison to changing a current system in which people go in need of food. While charity has its place, it definitely only addresses symptoms. While reading a paper recently, I came across this quote:

“Charity provides social services, while justice promotes social change. Charity responds to immediate needs, while justice responds to long-term change. Charity assumes people need expertise and help from others, while justice assumes people have expertise and are capable of helping themselves. The analysis and strategic choices that come with the approach have huge implications for how, and even if, a problem is sustainably solved” – Brahm Ahmadi, 2009

I’d like to take this lens and apply it to raising and processing animals for food. Some believe only “experts” can kill and dress an animal for food. Whereas others believe that centuries of history and tradition inform this process. The idea that we would depend on “experts” to provide our food diminishes our power of choice, and our power to act. It disables us. Growing food and raising food producing animals is a basic human activity. It is a basic human right.

The author of this paper, Kristin Reynolds, was researching urban agriculture in Alameda County. As she worked to define urban agriculture she initially left animals out. However, she quickly realize her omission of livestock products overlooked food important in several cultures in Alameda County, namely African American and Latino cultures. Lets add to this some of the Asian cultures present in Oakland, i.e. Chinese, Filipino, Hmong, Korean, Laotian, and Vietnamese. In Oakland, we all account for 77.9% of the population, according to 2010 Census Data.

People in Oakland are practicing urban agriculture for access to affordable healthy food. Food that is unadulterated by chemicals, that is humane, and food that is culturally appropriate. The suggestion that animals should not be a part of urban agriculture is not only a blatant misconception of ecological principles, it perpetuates an unjust and racist food system. Haven’t we seen enough institutionalize inequity and racism in Oakland? If people want to produce their own food, let them.

A while back I wrote a post about how to stop an egg eating chicken. At that point I had not had persistent egg eaters that went beyond my own measures. However, my summer was wrought with naughty hens eating most of their eggs. This is after increasing their calcium supplement and protein content in their food. I also introduced fake eggs which made a bit of difference but still there is a persistent egg eater. She is not eating the shell but the inside. I cannot tell who is doing it so I cannot remove her. They do not do it in front of me.

All is not lost however, I recently came across some additional suggestions from the University of Florida Agricultural Extension. They have a section on egg eating in backyard flocks (download pdf here). Two suggestions that I had never heard include:

Fill a dish with milk and let your hens drink it. Do this for several days and you’ll see a decreased problem with egg eating, according to the University of Florida Extension.

Trick your hens. The University of Florida suggests beating an egg into a creamy liquid, adding 2 tsps. of ground black pepper, and pouring it onto the floor of your chicken coop. The university reports that the hens will peck at it and find the taste disagreeable, thus curing them of the egg eating habit.

This report is part of a larger national survey covering 48 cities. National data will be submitted for publication this Fall (click on image to download pdf of report).

I have been perplexed by the argument made by angry vegan activists for the last few months. I am mostly at odds with the degree of outrage, violence, deceptive communication, intolerance and racism in the arguments made against raising and eating your own animals. It says something when these are the tactics that have to be employed to persuade.

My summer reading was a series of books pertaining to human animal relationships- Hal Herzog’s Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat; Temple Gandin’s Animals Make Us Human; and Irene Pepperberg’s Alex and Me. I’ve also been reading on compassion- a recent books are Rick Hanson’s, Buddha’s Brain and Psaris & Lyons’ Undefended Love.

I cannot reconcile the unreasoning fervor I encounter with these vegan folks. In fact, I love listening to TED and recently listened to Joan Halifax speak on compassion and the true meaning of empathy. A few nuggets of wisdom gained from that talk is that moral outrage is an enemy of compassion. People with deep and practiced compassion have the ability to empathize and return to their baseline calm readily, which is called resilience. Lastly, that compassion has a strong back and a soft front. It reflects our capacity to be open to the world with an undefended heart.

This practice goes well beyond sentimental compassion and goes deep into humanity- illness, loss, pain, poverty, despair…the human condition. Compassion is to love in these circumstances, even when those suffering are not ready to change the circumstance. That is compassion, true and hard. You cannot force internal change. You cannot force compassion. You can only practice it.

I am a true believer that our own practice in compassion can transform the world and that the world needs transforming with love. It has been a hard lesson to take in that anger, fear, pity and moral outrage does nothing but block the way.

The Grand Lake Ace Garden Center allowed the East Bay Urban Agriculture Alliance to use their site for a group feed order drop off. It went swimmingly. We got the best price in town on organic animal feed. The staff was super friendly and helpful. It made for a very rewarding community experience.

Also, thanks to the Urban Farm Hand, Jeanette, for all the help!

Jeanette by the way is an entrepreneur with a burgeoning Bay Area Urban Farm Sitting business. She is a wild life biologist with a variety of experience in an urban farming setting. She has worked with goats (mini and standard), rabbits, chickens, ducks, turkeys and horses, as well as dogs, cats, fish, reptiles, amphibians, and pet birds. She has limited experience with pigs, sheep, and cows, and a lot of experience with game species such as pheasants and quail. She also has over 2 years experience as a veterinary technician in a conventional practice and a holistic practice. She can be contacted at: brewmiss96 at gmail dot com.

Edible East Bay featured an article on the current Oakland zoning update process. It opens with the story of my crazy girl Annabelle. This rabbit has gotten increasingly more interesting to keep. She now wanders around the yard and is easy to corral back into her hutch. I rarely pick her up. I am not 100% if I will not attempt to breed her again as she does seem to have settled down. She also shows great interest in the buck’s cage. It is the first place she goes. I am thinking I’ll make a little access door to let her in if she is so inclined. Anabelle strikes me as a rabbit that will happily do rabbit things if they are on her terms.

Currently in Rabbitland I have expanded the male hutch to a shanty duplex and introduced a young buck to co-house with Virgl. They have taken quite well to each other. In the process, I have learned that rabbits are far more agile that I imagined as they have no problem hopping up and down a steep ladder in their housing. One day I will have the supplies and wherewithall to make it look pretty. For now, it works just fine.

To learn more about rabbits check out this great (and extensive) Daily Kos article in six parts: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, and Part 6.

If you are in the Bay Area and want to learn more, come out for a rabbit class at Biofuel Oasis on September 18th.