Anyhoo, fast forward to a week later. Bill had to run to the Home Despot for a few tools and other dude-stuff. Once he's home, he says - "I forgot. I got you a new bucket!"
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| OOOOOH! For meeeee? |
And they say romance is dead! :P
The building of a small family farm from scratch, warts and all.
Showing posts with label the three little piggies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the three little piggies. Show all posts
Saturday, June 24, 2017
Romance on the Farm
In passing the other day, I mentioned to the hubs that we were going to have to find a bigger bucket for the pigs' slops. These boys eat like it's going out of style!
Anyhoo, fast forward to a week later. Bill had to run to the Home Despot for a few tools and other dude-stuff. Once he's home, he says - "I forgot. I got you a new bucket!"
And they say romance is dead! :P
Anyhoo, fast forward to a week later. Bill had to run to the Home Despot for a few tools and other dude-stuff. Once he's home, he says - "I forgot. I got you a new bucket!"
And they say romance is dead! :P
Tuesday, July 30, 2013
Today's Take - 7/30/13
Zucchini - 1 pound, 13 ounces
Yellow squash - 1 pound, 8 ounces
Snow peas - 1 ounce
Strawberries - handful
Blackberries - 1 pound, 8 ounces
German chamomile flowers - handful
Eggs - 4
Goat milk - 1/2 gallon
The Guinea hens have either abruptly quit laying, or have yet again decided to move their nest. It seems like they will only lay in a given spot for 2 weeks or so, before finding our daily raids bothersome enough to warrant moving on to a new, increasingly difficult to reach location. If and when we do find a trove of Guinea eggs somewhere, the piggies will be getting a whole lotta eggs for their supper.
Speaking of piggies, the count down to bacon time is officially, unofficially on. We're hoping to get them finished in the next 6 weeks, but it'll depend on whether or not they gain well in that time, and whether or not we go bankrupt trying to keep these porkers in food. :\ Seriously, between the three of them, they can devour a 40-pound bag of pig grower, half a dozen loaves of stale bread and anything weird/bug eaten that comes out of the garden. Lately they've been getting 5-gallon buckets of some beautiful Yellow Transparent apples from a friend of ours' yard, and they can and do lay waste to that in under 5 minutes. They are eating machines!
So, come mid-September harvest time, our checkbook will finally get a well deserved break from both buying endless quantities of pig chow, and from spending in the neighborhood of $10 per pound for organically raised pork every week. I'll be sad to see our piggies go, but the freezer full of pork and the dollars saved will be awfully nice.
Yellow squash - 1 pound, 8 ounces
Snow peas - 1 ounce
Strawberries - handful
Blackberries - 1 pound, 8 ounces
German chamomile flowers - handful
Eggs - 4
Goat milk - 1/2 gallon
The Guinea hens have either abruptly quit laying, or have yet again decided to move their nest. It seems like they will only lay in a given spot for 2 weeks or so, before finding our daily raids bothersome enough to warrant moving on to a new, increasingly difficult to reach location. If and when we do find a trove of Guinea eggs somewhere, the piggies will be getting a whole lotta eggs for their supper.
Speaking of piggies, the count down to bacon time is officially, unofficially on. We're hoping to get them finished in the next 6 weeks, but it'll depend on whether or not they gain well in that time, and whether or not we go bankrupt trying to keep these porkers in food. :\ Seriously, between the three of them, they can devour a 40-pound bag of pig grower, half a dozen loaves of stale bread and anything weird/bug eaten that comes out of the garden. Lately they've been getting 5-gallon buckets of some beautiful Yellow Transparent apples from a friend of ours' yard, and they can and do lay waste to that in under 5 minutes. They are eating machines!
So, come mid-September harvest time, our checkbook will finally get a well deserved break from both buying endless quantities of pig chow, and from spending in the neighborhood of $10 per pound for organically raised pork every week. I'll be sad to see our piggies go, but the freezer full of pork and the dollars saved will be awfully nice.
Monday, May 20, 2013
Getting the Garden In - A Looooong Work in Progress
On Mother's Day weekend, we moved the (not terribly helpful) pigs back to their pen from the garden space. We'd moved them in there the week previous, hoping that they'd root up the grass in the garden space in a jiffy. One week later, a little bit of nothing had changed. So we powered on ahead. Bill & Olivia dropped the 18 raised bed frames in to place and attempted to smother the remaining grass within the bed spaces with a thick mulch of goat poopy straw.
The "garden mix" soil that we bought (1/3 topsoil, 2/3 mushroom compost) was delivered last Monday, and the laborious task of hauling it, one wheelbarrow at a time, from the front yard to the lower pasture, has been s-l-o-w. We've got four of our 3'x12' beds filled with soil, and just two of them planted. An underwhelming amount accomplished, yet I still managed to get a sunburn.
So, for the record, we have the peas, radishes, greens and beets in now. We also have a few strawberry plants in, but I hope to eventually fill a whole bed with them, so I'll need another good dozen to get the job done. Looks like I'll be hitting up the Farmers Market this weekend for the strawberries, basil and other starts which I didn't/couldn't start myself. The one year that Spring arrives on time and we're running late - d'oh!
The "garden mix" soil that we bought (1/3 topsoil, 2/3 mushroom compost) was delivered last Monday, and the laborious task of hauling it, one wheelbarrow at a time, from the front yard to the lower pasture, has been s-l-o-w. We've got four of our 3'x12' beds filled with soil, and just two of them planted. An underwhelming amount accomplished, yet I still managed to get a sunburn.
So, for the record, we have the peas, radishes, greens and beets in now. We also have a few strawberry plants in, but I hope to eventually fill a whole bed with them, so I'll need another good dozen to get the job done. Looks like I'll be hitting up the Farmers Market this weekend for the strawberries, basil and other starts which I didn't/couldn't start myself. The one year that Spring arrives on time and we're running late - d'oh!
Monday, March 18, 2013
Today's Take & Critter Update
Well, it appears that we may have two goat mamas left to kid instead of just one. Brother...
Scarlet & her bud, Thea, were checking out the baby goats and new piggies, when they saw Blue sitting all by her little self in the middle of the pasture. They went by to say hi and said that they swear they saw kicking in her ever-rotund belly. My knee is well enough now that I can take an occasional hike up to goatlandia, and so off I went to check out my Bluey girl. I wish I'd taken a picture! Her girth alone might not have been enough to convince me that she was pregnant, but a gander at her lady-region has me feeling pretty confident that she's extremely pregnant.
She didn't have any discharge happening, but, as happens with most extremely pregnant animals, it looked like her bum-bum was going to explode. :\ We definitely didn't plan for her to ever kid again, but if all of this is just fat, well, then I'm really worried about her, because then the bulging-bum-thing would require a visit to Dr Natalee to see what on earth is happening inside of Blue.
Chardy is also nice and fat, and pretty well bagged up, but no discharge yet, so, going by her history, she has at least another 24-48 hours to go yet.
The piggies have settled in well. In less than 24 hours they managed to root up all of the grass that had been growing in their pen. They also inhaled the slops I made for them, which featured such culinary delights as Kid Milk Replacer, freezer-burned apple slices and onion bagels. Yummmm!
The Guinea hens have settled in well too. They are in their own closed section of the coop for now, until they know for sure that this is home. Some websites suggested that I leave them in for up to 6 weeks before letting them out to free range. Boy, that seems like a lot to me, but then again I'd hate to see them up and fly off on their first time out. We'll leave them in for a few more days at least. No eggs yet from the Guineas either. I sure hope that we get a few before Easter. How cool would that be? ;)
Today's take-
*Eggs - 6
Scarlet & her bud, Thea, were checking out the baby goats and new piggies, when they saw Blue sitting all by her little self in the middle of the pasture. They went by to say hi and said that they swear they saw kicking in her ever-rotund belly. My knee is well enough now that I can take an occasional hike up to goatlandia, and so off I went to check out my Bluey girl. I wish I'd taken a picture! Her girth alone might not have been enough to convince me that she was pregnant, but a gander at her lady-region has me feeling pretty confident that she's extremely pregnant.
Our permanently portly, Princess Blue
Chardy is also nice and fat, and pretty well bagged up, but no discharge yet, so, going by her history, she has at least another 24-48 hours to go yet.
The piggies have settled in well. In less than 24 hours they managed to root up all of the grass that had been growing in their pen. They also inhaled the slops I made for them, which featured such culinary delights as Kid Milk Replacer, freezer-burned apple slices and onion bagels. Yummmm!
The Guinea hens have settled in well too. They are in their own closed section of the coop for now, until they know for sure that this is home. Some websites suggested that I leave them in for up to 6 weeks before letting them out to free range. Boy, that seems like a lot to me, but then again I'd hate to see them up and fly off on their first time out. We'll leave them in for a few more days at least. No eggs yet from the Guineas either. I sure hope that we get a few before Easter. How cool would that be? ;)
Today's take-
*Eggs - 6
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