Tales from the Expoland Poultry Sale

As many of you may know, Nick and I have decided to cut back on our commercial farming and concentrate on homesteading. We discovered what everyone else already knows: we are too old to run a vegetable packing and hauling operation. As esteemed a career longshoreman is, it is not what I envisioned when getting into farming.

We also had an “ah ha!” moment (actually, more of a “duh!” moment) when doing our books midseason (hey, at least we do them). Now, we always knew the farm lost money. We have, for every year we have farmed, been in that year before the year we make a profit. But what we didn’t realize is that, even keeping our current number of employees, we lose LESS money when we sell absolutely nothing than when we run our (on paper) wildly successful and oversubscribed DC CSA and restaurant sales business.

So, starting next season, we are growing for ourselves and anyone who is really nice to us. We’ll probably still sell some meat, mainly by pre-order. We’ll have more time to enjoy our weekend guests, and we’ll take vacations in the summer, so I can stop bitterly mumbling through August as I watch Facebook status update after status update: “Perfect weather on the Vineyard again!” “Another beautiful day at the beach!” “Clam bake time!” Mine: “Still at the farm. Still hot. Pigs smell.”

And with our change in gears, the blog will change too. Though I will keep posting recipes and ideas for the CSA vegetables, I want to start using more to write about life on the farm. For years, people who get the farm’s rambling emails about sale items or the CSA have told me I ought to write a book (and I DO know they probably meant: “you ought to write a book instead of bothering me with all this claptrap”). I agree (with both sentiments), but I also have found I freeze right up when sitting down, plop, to WRITE A BOOK. So I thought I would ease into it one blog post at a time (and yes, two hours to put my head under in a cold pool).

That’s a long introduction for today’s dissertation on the Expoland poultry auction, my morning’s activity, and where I am sitting right now, on the back of the trailer in one of the few poop free spots available, marveling at the fast internet connection here in the middle of a gravel parking lot in the middle of a field in the middle of an industrial parks in the middle of the mountains.

Every third Saturday, outside of Staunton VA, in Expoland, Augusta Feed sponsors a tailgate sale. $5 to get in for sellers, mostly poultry and rabbits though today I‘ve seen potbelly pigs, miniature goats, turkeys, ducks, and a ratty dog.

This is only the second time I’ve been to Expoland. The other time was the Augusta County fair a few years ago. I remember it being really hot, really dusty, and really full of things you don’t want to see or smell on a hot dusty day in a gravel parking lot: Fried Oreo stands, people standing in line at the fried Oreo stands wearing halter tops (and clearly not on the first fried Oreo of their lives), nervous sheep (or perhaps not nervous but suffering from irritable bowel syndrome sheep), fat, sweaty crying toddlers set in the dirt while their caretakers tried to toss rings over soda bottles to win the highly flammable large pink stuffed snake(with bead eyes perfect for the fat, sweaty, crying babies to stuff up their noses later) that I swear I saw for sale the day before sitting for sale on a piece of plastic outside the gas station.

“ExpoLAND” suggests an all encompassing expo experience, in the way that DisneyLAND is an overload, all senses Disney extravaganza. But this is no land. Maybe Expoarea. Or Expogravelparkinglot.

The tailgate sale doesn’t even get to use the Expoland building – a cement floored, corrugated steel barn with bathrooms, a fact I would have resented more had there been anywhere to buy coffee at the sale. But live poultry was pretty much it, which surprised me. When we were all scared of bird flu, before the year of the swine refocused our paranoia, I remember all sorts of warnings about “open air poultry markets.” I also remember thinking at the time, since we don’t live in Vietnam, what are the chances I’ll run into someone who has been to an open air poultry market. Turns out, I am now someone who goes to open air poultry markets. I’ll put “flu vaccine” on this year’s to do list.

We brought a bunch of our older layers to sell, thinning the flock in anticipation of our downsizing. They sold in the first 30 minutes, with Nick inexplicitly haggling the price of the first lot down to the great confusion of the buyers, a group of Arab men, only one of whom spoke English, and none of whom understood why Nick, in a bad Arab accent (his way of helping bridge the language gap), kept insisting on a price lower than the sign said. “Bird flu,” I thought of adding to help make Nick’s case, but didn’t because my fake Arab accent is even worse than his.

It smells like fermenting corn here. Corn and chicken poop.

Heard often as the crowd walks back and forth: “Them’s good eatin’.”

Heard only once: “I don’t eat nuthin’ that comes in my house. Do you eat your family??”

Constantly in the background: Crowing, all sorts, some pathetic, some triumphant. The banty roosters are the triumphant ones, I believe, because they are too small to eat. I do not understand the sheer number of banties on sale here today. We have a few, but they were given to us. They are amusing running around the barn, but I cannot see paying for one, even less moving the volume of banties that seem to be moving today. I think they are the beanie babies of the poultry world.

Seen: Two big men, in their thirties, in baseball caps and sleeveless t-shirts, coffee in one hand, chicken leg (attached to the rest of the chickens, nice Buff Orringtons) in the other. Years ago, I would have thought, “What’s with the chickens?” Today, I thought, “where’d they get the coffee?”

The king of the poultry tailgate sales: He is about 6’ 4”, tanned, with flowing silver hair, and a ravaged face in the manner of Keith Richards. He wears low, loose jeans that probably were new in Haight Ashbury circa ’68 and a vest, no shirt. He is legendary in the world of poultry arbitrage. He churns chickens like butter, picking up boxes at this sale, selling them at a profit at the next sale down the road. He makes his living this way, tailgate sales only, and he is alive so I guess it is working for him.

Two of the largest roosters I’ve ever seen, in a cage, the sole item for sale in the back of a sad looking man’s pick-up. “Just don’t have the heart to kill ‘em anymore,” he said as I admired the birds.

By 10 AM, we had sold all the bird we brought, including the Barred Rock that escaped and was chased around the parking lot by a Mexican in a red shiny shirt, two women with matching John Deere t-shirts, and a chubby preteen in a glittery tube top and high heeled cowboy boots. We loaded up our tables and empty cages in order to get back to the farm quickly so we could work outside in the hottest part of the day. As we drove off, I heard the king of the tailgate sales making one last deal for a cage full of banty roosters. All is as it should be in the Land of Expos.

Pesto

Summer means basil and basil means pesto (though you can use all sorts of non-basily things to make pesto. In fact, the only thing you REALLY need in pesto, in my opinion is garlic and olive oil. And salt. You always need salt).

I make pesto in the Cuisinart, and I can’t imagine doing it any other way (blender, maybe – mortar and pestle, you’ve got to be kidding). You start with garlic. I like pesto really garlicy, so I put in maybe 8-10 peeled cloves. Then I add some more because I am already getting the Cuisinart dirty, so why not use it to chop garlic for whatever else you are making for dinner – or use it in a batch of salad dressing.

After the garlic is done, throw in a small handful of nuts. Pine nuts are traditional, but they are so expensive, and if they are just one day older than they should be they make your mouth taste bitter for a month (I am not exaggerating, this happened to me, and apologies to the Pine Nut Promotion board). I use whatever nut is on sale – walnuts usually -- and sometimes don’t use nuts at all, like when I make spring garlic pesto.

Chop the nuts with the garlic. Then jam a passel of basil leaves in the Cuisinart – fill it up – and chop that. Salt. Then, with the motor running, pour in a stream of olive oil (I should say “good quality olive oil” because recipes always say that, as if, without that, you would just go out and buy motor-grade olive oil. And why don’t we get that on every ingredient? I assume “good quality” butter milk is better than the regular sort – same with “good quality” flour or nuts or chocolate, but with olive oil, we have to be reminded to buy the decent stuff).

When the mixture gets to be the consistency of melted ice cream (with basil sprinkles), taste and salt more if needed. If you are freezing the pesto, do it now before you add parmesan cheese. You can also use it pre-cheese as an oil in which to sauté vegetables, like some of that squash you have all over the place. If you are eating it right away, add parmesan cheese (good quality, please), enough to get the pesto to the consistency of onion dip.

Now use it for everything – combined with tomato sauce on homemade pizza, spread on old bread or pita and toasted for garlic bread, tossed with mayonnaise and used as a dressing for pasta salad with veggies or for (good quality Green Fence Farm) chicken salad, on a cracker or slice of bread with a slice of tomato and brie or blue cheese.

And, as I alluded to before, you can substitute any number of things for basil (or combine with basil) in this recipe – spring garlic (in which case, obviously, cut out the garlic cloves), green onions (in which case, cut down the garlic cloves), parsley, red pepper, olives.

Caveat Emptor

Check out this succinct explanation of what we were all afraid was true. All of the meats and eggs from Green Fence Farm are pastured. Though, as the article explains, all are not wholly grass fed – chickens and pigs can’t get enough protein and energy from a diet of only grass. Our pigs, for example, have a diet of grass, natural feed, and slop from our and the Staunton Grocery kitchen; the latter means, of course, they eat better than me. And the chickens get day old bread from Newtown Bakery – or they get the day old bread that Nick and I don’t pull out of the bag and eat ourselves.