Farming: A summary

Life on a small holding can be dirty, exhausting, exhilarating, but never dull. Farming is the cheeps of newly hatched chicks, watching the antics of baby piglets, eating that first tomato of the summer. It is sweating under the hot sun fixing a section of fence, carrying feed buckets in the pouring rain, shoveling mountains of manure. It is quietly milking a cow on a cool summer morning. It is burying a piglet that didn't quite make it; worrying about mastitis, injuries and parasites. It is the sweet smell of hay in a newly filled barn, the sweat of horses. It is chasing piglets through muddy pastures and cows through the vegetable garden. Sheer insanity most of the time, but we wouldn't trade it for anything.

This summer has been a busy one, too busy to be sitting inside writing blogs. The days, though long, are never long enough to do all that needs doing. This spring we hatched 21 gorgeous fluffy chicks from our laying hens- the father is Mildred- the hen that became a rooster.They are now a pretty little flock of hens (the little roosters are in the freezer.)

In July, the hottest day of the year, Winnie had 12 piglets, and Priscilla had 5. They were wonderful babies, all up and about on the first day- then the second day the skies opened and Winnie's babies nearly drowned as she had decided to have them outside in a nice little nest in the mud. Louise nearly drowned herself getting them moved to the beautiful new farrowing hut that was waiting, empty. Consequently, the runt died, and a few days later, Winnie sat on 2 more. This is normal for pigs, apparently, but still very upsetting for us. The next litters are going to be born in the barn!

We decided this summer that we would ride our horses more, and we did, riding nearly every day for at least 1 hour, getting up early to ride on those really hot days. On August 17th I started riding Darn Tootin' for the first time. He is 3 1/2 now and looks pretty good so I thought I should just start him slowly. All went amazingly well, with Jim's help. 2 weeks later I took DT to the Oxford Exhibition. He is quite the little horse, not bothered by anything. We even took a 3rd place in the Paper Towel Command class. Touche did very well in the Ex too; he is growing into a superb horse.

Now autumn is here and we have to face the reality that winter is soon to follow. The hay is in, and the wood stacked, the garden harvested ( mostly) and the turkeys and chickens processed and sold. We have kept 2 of the piglets to raise for meat, Gerald and Bernard. They are growing fast. Ethelred is now out with the 2 girls to father the next litter, which should be born in February. Buttercup is bred again and Moremeet, the calf, is getting big. The nights are getting cold and soon we will have to carry buckets instead of running the hose. Ah, winter.

Many changes 1

I have not posted for a while and it is not that I have had nothing to say, but rather that I have not made the time. Many new additions to the farm. Buttercup has had a new calf, born Dec 18th, 2008. Moremeat is his name, Moremy for short. He is a beautiful purebred Dexter. Unfortunately, as his mother is not registered, he cannot be either. Hence, he is castrated and will live up to his name. We were hoping for a heifer.

We now have 2 gilts, that is unbred female pigs. Winnifred and Pruscilla. Winnie is a purebred, registered, Tamworth from Bob Ottenbrite's farm. Pruscilla is a spotty pig from a pig farm that was going out of business. Scilly has had her tail docked, a barbaric practice of intensive farms to prevent them from chewing on eachothers tails. Both the girls are large, pushy but friendly. They eat like pigs. We will have them bred in a month or 2 to provide us with the young pigs to raise for meat this summer. As most of the pig farms in the province have shut down, we have no real worry about selling our excess piglets.

We sold Rhyme and Raisin, our 2 youngest goats. We were finding they were bullying their mothers and eachother and we were getting no pleasure from having 4 goats. Now Pyramus and Frisbee seem a bit happier. I think the 2 girls went to a good home, where they will be pets.

More Piggies

We have had our second lot of 3 pigs for about a month now. They are a Berkshire/Tamworth mix, 2 males and a female. Poor little darlings had mange before we got them and are somewhat stunted and bald. Since coming to us, they have gained weight and grown back some of their hair but they are still no bigger than their cousins the Tamworths, despite being a month or so older. They are happily uprooting the vegetable garden for us, part of our new no-till gardening plan. We have called them AlfRED, WilfRED and WinnifRED, in keeping with this year's names.

The other boys are out on the 'back 40' now, enjoying their freedom. We have been doing some serious fencing this year, trying to invest time now to avoid spending time later moving temporary fencing around all summer. In this part of the world, if you want to sink a fence post you have to do it before the end of June or it would be like trying to drive a nail into concrete.We have fenced off a large shrubby area for the pigs and the goats to share- and perhaps even the cow sometimes. We'd like them to clear some of the brush and turn it into pasture. The theory is, the goats eat the leaves on the bushes, with the help of the cow, who will knock over the bushes, and then the pigs up root them, in essences, clearing the land to make pasture, all the while fertilizing it. Will it work? Who knows, but it will probably work as well as most of our labour saving schemes- which is, not that well at all.

Piggy-wiggies

While I was away visiting my brother in the warm southern US, Louise picked up 3 of our 6 pigs for this year's batch. We got some lovely Tamworth pigs, a very rare breed. Ours are all castrated boys which means we don't feel too guilty about raising them for meat. They are a beautiful ginger colour and Louise named them fREDerick, ethelRED and jaRED. Seems, though, that young pigs are skittish things and we like our pigs to be friendly and easy to handl; therefor, we spend a lot of time taming them. Last year, quite by accident, we discovered that pigs love marshmallows, so we sit in their pen with a bag of mini-marshmallows coaxing the little fellows closer and closer. Soon they begin to associate us, and the plastic bag, with these sweet treats and they look forward to our visits.

We keep them in a large box stall in the barn when we first get them and give them access to the outdoors to a large area fenced in by electric fencing. When the weather gets warmer and the pigs a bit bigger, it is time to move them outside to their summer quarters. Yesterday, we decided we should move them to make room for 3 more that Louise hopes to pick up this week. (Piglets of heritage breeds are not so easy to find, but that is another story. )

Anyway, we prepared their new living quarters, in the vegetable patch, where their job will be to dig up all the weeds in the garden so we can move the pigs out and plant directly. My idea was to string up temporary fencing all along the way to the garden and just herd the boys along. Great idea, if only pigs would herd. They were quite scared and really didn't want to leave the comfort and safety of the barn. After several abortive attempts at pushing them along and having them scoot back to the barn honking and squealing, we decided on Plan B- that is cramming them into dog crates and carrying them to the new home. I have been reading up on pig handling so figured that all we had to do was to make a narrowing path toward a dog crate and get behind them and chase them in.

Well, pigs don't really like the idea of cramming their fat little bodies into dog crates, believe it or not. They also have a remarkable ability to jump and can leap over hay bales with a single bound. We finally managed, purely by luck, to get ethelRED into a crate. Sadly, he is the largest pig and he went into the smallest crate. Not a happy fellow! But there was no way we were going to let him out to try again, so he just had to sit there, complaining while we chased his brothers around.

We noticed last year that the smallest pig is invariably the wiliest and indeed, jaRED is true to form. Shooting through any available space and jumping over bales and barriers. And pigs are much faster that one thinks they could be with those short little legs. A few times we sort of had a hold on one or the other but their sausage shaped bodies make it hard to hold on. Eventually I suggested we try to get them into sacks rather than the crates, so we tried that. All the while, the poor little guys are getting more and more panicky and stressed- which- surprisingly, worked in our favour because after an hour or so they finally became exhausted and generally fed up with us chasing them, and went one after the other into dog crates.

You would think that all this chasing and squealing that all our hard work with marshmallows would be undone, but it turns out that pigs don't hold a grudge. Minutes after being released in their new quarters, they were happily rooting around and even coming up to us to see if we had anything for them. Some people could learn a lot from pigs.