It's been a long time...

For starters, I feel so bad that I've been so bad at updating this blog, but it felt like I had no time to do anything but go to work, and then work on the farm lately. Then there are days where I would get home later than usual, and simply decide to do NOTHING. I guess it's ok to do that once in awhile, but the last few weeks, it's been more and more. Ah well, maybe it's the changing weather, and I'm going into hibernation mode? :)

The piglets are doing well. All 10 that survived the first fews days are still going strong. We have decided to keep two gilts for ourselves and breed them again. We are making initial selections, but are also waiting until they are market weight to really decide which ones to keep in particular. Most likely we will pick the best looking, but perhaps smallest and most gentle ones, since if they are small and lean, they won't be as good at market. We sold off two boars as feeder pigs to a local buyer, and have sold out of the rest as either half or whole hogs.

To sum up the excitement with the piglets: we had to give them iron injections within the first few days - which involved removing them a few at a time so as to not upset momma, and give them the injections, cut needle teeth, and get them back into the pen. Thanks to Angie's parents helping, we were able to do this with no problems! Next, we had to castrate the boars, which Angie did very well, with me being the assistant. This went off without a hitch! Then came the small boar who cut his ear, nearly severing it from his head. After three attempted suturings, we decided to let it happen as nature decided - and it healed on it's own, with the ear just being lopsided (you may see him in a few pictures). After this, was the weaning stage, where we moved Suzy back into the large area with Roxy and the Mulefoots, and generally went well, despite feeling so sorry for Suzy as she filled with milk and looked very painful! Next, we had to give the piglets a vaccination and ear tag them, which went surprisingly well! Lastly, we switched the Mulefoots and piglets, letting the piglets back in with momma (who went right back to being a good mom!) in the large pasture. Whew!

As for the rest of the pigs - Roxy was taken to market shortly after weaning the piglets from Suzy. We did not want to do this, but from a business standpoint, we didn't want to invest the money into breeding her again, since she had a bad first litter (small, and she had no motherly instincts). She was a good, fun pig, but ultimately is fulfilling her purpose by feeding us. We got back about 390 pounds of meat, and are mostly keeping it for ourselves and close friends and family for resale. I have to say, we are enjoying it a LOT after having not bought pork from the store in a long time! The Mulefoots are currently being finished, and will be taken to market in about 2 weeks. At that point, they will be taken out to California and Chicago for resale. They have been an interesting experiement!

We are about to finish our last round of meat chickens for the year, which were a new breed that we hadn't tried before, but are very excited about. Bought from J.M. Hatchery in Pennsylvania, they are the second generation removed from a totally Free Range bird from France, where they are an important part of the Label Rouge free ranging system. We refer to them as Rangers, or Colored Rangers, and they are fed a lower protein feed, kept for longer (10 to 13 weeks, as opposed to 8 weeks for other meat birds), and are a beautiful array of colors, from tan to dark red, to a mottled blue. We are hoping that we can keep some next year and start our own breeding program with them.

The turkeys are just about done as well, and we are excited to expand the turkeys next year. We are going to stick with the Bourbon Red and Blue Slate turkeys, and are considering keeping some of them as well to start breeding them ourselves. We are going to reinvest farm income this year to buy a high quality incubator for this purpose. In addition, we are going to try and raise ducks for meat as well. For the turkeys, we are looking into getting portable electric netting so we can rotate their pastures during the year next year.

The meat chickens and turkeys will be butchered on November 23rd, and available that day or after. Sorry, but this year, we're all sold out of turkeys, but next year, we'll have many more! Soon we are hoping to have a real website launched, thanks to Randy and Cindy, and we'll let you know when that's ready for viewing!

Another Litter!

Suzy farrowed her little on early Friday, July 31. We had gone to bed with no indication that she was actually in labor, but when we awoke in the morning, we walked into the barn to find her nursing 10 piglets! She ended up having 14 total, with 2 stillborn. She took to being a mom right away, and was nursing all day long.

Unfortunately, as can often happen with new mothers especially, we lost two more pigs due to Suzy rolling on top of them. Those who do not learn her verbal and physical signals do not learn to get out of her way. After the first day or so, we 'shouldn't' lose any more, but obviously, it's not for certain.

Anyway, they are doing well. We were able to give them their iron dextron shots, to help with their iron deficiency, as well as clip their needle teeth, which can hurt each other as well as their mom while nursing. This was done using the help of Angie's parents.

We're keeping our fingers crossed, and hopefully in a few short weeks, we'll have an abundance of piglets running around the pasture! :)

Happy and Sad News...

Well, one of our sows finally gave birth last weekend, but things didn't go as planned. The first one out was a Hampshire Gilt, and with her black and white markings, was exactly what we had hoped for. We had images of raising her up, breeding her, and getting more baby Hamps from her. Next out was a pink Yorkshire Boar, that had muted black markings on his head, almost just like his momma, Roxy. We removed both pigs to clean them off, and planned on putting them back in to nurse once Roxy settled down. She was constantly getting up and laying down, and basically just stared at the pigs when they came out. So, we thought, once she lays down again, we'll put them in to nurse. We tried this first with the Gilt, and Roxy did not like it. She jumped up, trampled, and finally bit and shook the gilt to death right in front of us. Not a good experience, and one we won't soon forget.

We made the decision to bottle feed the other pig, and he was doing ok after a visit to Meijer for baby bottles, TSC for milk replacer and colostrum, but after a few days, he was not looking good. We believe he finally succumbed to anemia and hypoglycemia, and most likely an infection that spread to his lungs. There just was nothing we could do in the end, even though we tried as much as we could. Thank God I have a wife that's a veterinarian (just not officially, yet).

All in all, the experience has left us shaken, but not enough to make us stop. We are looking into options to replace our girls with a more motherly breed, most likely a heritage breed such as Mulefoots (which we have some experience with already, and know a reputable breeder), or Tamworths, both of which are known to be excellent mothers. The fact that Roxy reacted badly, in addition to her only bearing 2 pigs, was two strikes against her. She is normally sweet, but not this time.

While we are preparing for Suzy to farrow, we are very cautiously optimistic that she will be a better mother, mostly due to her laziness. :) We are prepared to lose sleep to bottle feed the little ones if needed, but we are going to play a more hands-off role this time. Wish us luck!

On a positive note, we were able to harvest quite a bit from our farm this year. You have read about our cherry trees and mulberry bushes, but we also found that we have an apple tree and a couple of oaks on the tree line as well. How we missed these before, I don't know. But, both are great for pigs, so we have been feeding them apples every day, and will try to get as many acorns as we can in the fall - it's a great pig finishing food, used in Spain for the famous Iberico hams. We've also harvested quite a few black raspberries from a few bushes around the property. In fact, I have some in my lunch today! From our regular vegetable garden, we had already gotten radishes, and the other day we picked 3 heads of lettuce (two types), 4 small bunches of spinach, 3 decent sized white onions, and a large amount of regular and snow peas and green beans. Tomatoes aren't far behind! :)

Garden's-A-Growin'

The garden is coming along nicely this year, especially compared to the last few years attempts! This year, we took care to kill off the weeds (last fall and early this spring), added sifted top soil, and hand-hoed it all before planting and laying down wood mulch, which is helped immensely!

We planted everything from seeds, with the exception of the tomato, red pepper, and jalapeno plants, which we bought already started from Horrock's. We have already picked the radishes, which Grandma Lyman loves fresh, so we passed some her way (which she was excited about, cause they were straight from our dirt!), and we love to add them to salads.

The onions are doing well, as is the corn, though we have obviously not had anything harvested from them. The peas and beans have started showing their pods in the last few days, and the peppers and tomatoes are growing like crazy! We are really looking forward to harvesting and canning them, for our own homemade diced tomatoes and green chilies. :)

Hope everyone out there, who has their own small gardens, or even a window-sill herb garden, are having the same or better luck than us!

Jams and Preserves!

Angie and I decided this year to get into canning. It was something that her mother used to do every year, but I never had. We bought a set of canning materials, and armed with those and a oversized book on how to live off the land, country-style, that included numerous canning recipes, we began canning.

We started by visiting a local berry farm, Bird's Berry Farm, in Belding, MI, and picked almost 14 pounds of strawberries in a half hour. It helped us that we went in the evening, as this was one of the hottest days of the summer thus far. Without going into the deep dark details, we ended up with semi-watery preserves. There just wasn't enough natural pectin in the berries, but they sure taste great on ice cream and pancakes!


We are starting a new batch tonight, and added pectin this time, hoping we will get better results for use on toast and peanut butter sandwiches. We had to go picking again, this time netting a little over 13 pounds of berries in 20 minutes! We will also mix some with rhubarb for strawberry-rhubarb jam. We tried just plain rhubarb jam, which turned out great, so why not add good strawberries to the mix? :)

In addition, we made some exciting discoveries on our property, that we don't know how we missed before. We have two large cherry trees in our tree line. I believe we saw them before, but assumed they were crab apples, but this year, I decided to try it, and to my surprise, they tasted like cherries. They were tart, but cherries nonetheless. Angie seconded it, and we decided to pick them as well, and try a preserve from them. Using our step ladder to reach higher branches, we picked 6 pounds of cherries, and it looked like we barely made a dent in the tree! And we have a whole other tree further down the line!

The other discovery we made was what we thought was a blackberry bush. But, after some research, it turned out to be a Mulberry Bush! So we picked a bunch of them, and will try and make some jam out of them as well. We'll let you know how it goes!

Turkeys!

The turkeys have arrived! We got a call early one morning (about 6am) that they had arrived at our local post office in Belding, and were ready to be picked up. We were expecting them to be a bit larger, but the day-old poults were the same size as chicks! So, with some quick planning and building, we constructed a small brooder to go in the middle of the range shelter to help contain them. We made the brooder out of some scrap wood and left over window screen. It worked great, and with a barely-long-enough extension cord, we had heat, food, water, and shelter for them.

We lost two to unknown reasons within the first day or two. Then, recently, we lost two more after four of them escaped through a small gap near one door (this was after we realized they were already too big for the brooder box after two weeks). We think the cats got to them, but we only found one body. The two escapees that survived were actually hiding under a tarp! Smart birds!

They are about 3 weeks old now, and growing a little faster than we expected. They are fun to watch, and a few are already showing Tom characteristics - puffing up, tiny tail feathers rising up, wings drooping, and just strutting around. Adorable! All in all, so far, it's a great experience, and something I feel we will be repeating in the future!

Back from Vacation and Back to Work!

Angie and I just returned from our early summer vacation. We decided that going in May would not only be cheaper and cooler, but was also necessary since both our soon-to-be-sows will hopefully be delivering in mid-July. We had a 10 day 'camping' trip - in quotations, since we stayed a few nights in hotels - to New England. Lots of historical stops, mostly from the Revolutionary war, but also the mansions in Newport, RI, Acadia National Park in Maine, and lots of wonderful food along the way, thanks to Roadfood.com. Pictured is Angie with her Sweet Potato fries at Charlie the Butcher near Buffalo, NY (known for their amazing Beef on Weck), and myself at Beal's Lobster Pier in Southwest Harbor, ME, enjoying an absolutely delicious Lobster Roll.

Anyway, we enjoyed our vacation, but are happy to be home and working on the farm. We spent the last two afternoons digging, cleaning, and planting our summer vegetable garden. Lots of good things that, if all goes well, we may be offering along-side our meats and eggs in the future.

The hogs are doing well. Roxy and Suzy are about 1.5 months along right now, and no indication of any problems with their pregnancy. They are a bit more lazy, if that's possible, and a little slower than they have been. Could be because they are closing in on probably 450 pounds or more too!

'Green' and 'Red', our two adopted mulefoots, are growing well. Green is larger, and seems to be a bit faster growing, but they are both bigger than when we left. They are large enough to be let our free-range in their pasture, and seem to love eating grass when they can. Luckily, they don't root as much as our gilts, so they will probably have more grass to munch. They also have graduated to their large, round self-feeder. Don't know if they have learned to agitate it to receive more food or not, but they'll get it eventually.

The hens are well. Sugar is broody now, and unfortunately, we have no fertilized eggs for her to lay on! Production of eggs has been good, with us having about 4 dozen by the time we got home! I think we've managed to sell most of them though. The new pullets are getting close to laying age, so we may have to try and integrate them in with the old hens soon. We are of the assumption that one of them, Garlic - an Americauna - is actually a rooster. She has a weak crow, and gives the stance of a rooster. We hope this isn't the case, but we are about 90% sure that she is a he. This may work out well, though, as we can try and breed the others so we have more of the 'easter-egg laying' hens. THey lay a blue/green egg, in case I forgot to mention that before!

Lastly, the meat chickens are about done. We are having them processed on June 15th, and hopefully picked up that day by their buyers. We will be receiving a new shipment of 25 New Hampshire Reds that week as well, so the next round will be started. We decided to go with the smaller Reds, as opposed to the white Cornish Rocks, as we wanted a more slowly developing, darker meat, healthier bird. These, we will plan on having an outdoor run for, most likely. The turkey's are coming this week, and hopefully, we're ready for them! It's an exciting month here at Pinehill Farms!