It has been a little crazy on the farm lately and it doesn’t seem like it will be slowing down much this week. In fact I would say that it has even been crazier than normal (if there is a normal). Because of that I haven’t had a time to sit down and update the blog much lately, so I thought I would just hit some bullet points of farm happenings …
- Since I need to keep my chin up I just thought I would be positive and mention that I’m really loving the sheep. They are all staying in their home now and they are a nice hardy flock willing to eat whatever hay I give them and do well on it! This past week I put two big bales in on the same day and all the cows and sheep attacked one bale until it was gone. The cows wouldn’t go over to the other, but the sheep were going to town on it. I put a new bale in for the cows and the sheep still kept working on the other bale … I love the sheep now!
- It seems like winter has really set in now. We don’t have much snow (yet), but the ground is frozen pretty solid and I was having a hard time putting in steel posts this past week (see next point on why I was doing that).
- About two weeks ago now I was able to find some bred sows for sale. That was just the motivation I needed to finish up the different pig areas and clean out the lean-to in order to use it for farrowing. Needless to say I needed to pound in some posts … see the post above for how well that worked …
- I realized I would like to drive in about 20 more posts. I’m not so sure it will happen (see previous two points).
- I picked up two Tamworth sows and two Berkshire sows. They are all bred to a Tamworth boar and should be farrowing soon. By that I mean the three others that didn’t farrow in the trailer will be farrowing soon! Yes … that’s right … my pigs farrow in the trailer … I guess I should try to figure out a better system than that! So far it is working out though and she has eight pigs. The funny thing though is that since there were four sows in there I had to figure out exactly which one the pigs belonged to. There were no visible signs, so I did the next best thing … I milked all four of them and only found one that would give any milk. That’s who the pigs are with now …
- Oh … and tomorrow I’m hiring one of my past youth group kids to build some hog huts with me … outside in the cold … late into the night. It’s okay though, he is a tough kid!
sounds as though you are very busy indeed. no snow? you can sure have some of ours. we just got 30+ cm over the weekend on top of the 20 or so that we already had. Keep plugging through…I find the hard times come in waves. Soon you’ll be feeling great again and content with all your accomplishments.
Oh man, I feel your pain on the post pounding. We’ve had our teenage LGD dog escaping a ton lately, and keep trying new fence work to keep him from going over or under.
Just found your blog recently, and am enjoying reading. Thanks.
Long time lurker coming out to say hi! I’ve really enjoyed reading your blog and it has helped us on our quest for more knowledge as we start up our farm. Thanks!