Pork bellies

Ethelred, our baby boar, is growing in leaps and bounds. Being a boy and being so little, we have had to keep him separate from the larger girls. Therefore, he is very lonely and although he started out being kind of suspicious and standoffish, he now seeks attention and when I tickle his side, he rolls over and lets me scratch his belly. He lies there, with his eyes closed, in ecstasy. I think it is a good thing that he is so tame as one day in the not too distant future, he will be a great big creature, all tusks and fangs- so the fact that he will roll over and even let you examine his fangs is definitely good.

Chicks are hatching today. We put over 20 eggs from the Americaunas and the Buff orpingtons into the incubator 3 weeks ago and today is the big day. 4 so far and many more eggs pipped and starting to show signs of life. I love little chicks. Something about their combination energy and cuddliness. They love to snuggle under your hand- instinct, I know, but it is still sweet. I can hear one making lots of noise in the incubator now, but you are not meant to open it too often to remove them, so I may have to resist the tempation of taking it out.

The trouble with gardens

Gardening, like farming, is at the mercy of mother nature and something even more unpredictable, perhaps fate.Each spring the gardener begins, full of hope and visions of the season to come. And as time goes by, reality sets in, in the form of too much rain, too little rain, too hot, too cold, too many damned cucumber beetles. And then, that perfect garden that was to produce a veritable bounty of vegetables becomes just another burden, with weeds popping up with admirable vigour.

Very poor germination of the corn, onions and peas this year. Old seeds, maybe? Cucumber beetles consumed 5 of the cucumber and squash plants within a day of planting out. Where to they hide? What would they eat if we didn't plant cucumbers?

Rain today. Needed it as things were looking rather parched, though it will wash off the Rotenone and give the beetles another go at my little plants.

Manure Spreading

Moved a mountain of cow manure today using our ATV and mini manure spreader. Still have nearly a year's worth to go and all the horse stuff.

Garden mostly planted. No rain for a few weeks and everything is parched but it forecasts rain for the next few days.

Cow was in heat on Wednesday. Must keep track as we plan to breed her next cycle. Pigs are getting large; due in a couple of weeks. We have made 2 lovely farrowing houses for them so I hope they are happy to use them and don't decide to have their babies in the woods.

Ethelred, the young boar is getting to be very friendly and rolls over to let me pet his belly. I am getting quite attached to him and am not sure that I want to send him to John's to live.

Turkeys now 2 weeks old and looking healthy. We have been using John's technique of putting buttermilk in the water and it seems to work. Meat king chicks come next week and we will try that with them.

Touche has had a nasty stone bruise for the past week or so, putting him out of commission. Louise has been riding Follie instead. We have bought a huge truck so we can haul the horseS around to various events.

Spring is coming

Finally there is some hope that spring will come soon. Of course, technically, it is now spring, but since when has the calendar had any effect on the weather here in the Maritimes? Seems we are due for a snow storm tomorrow. But the sun is shining for longer each day and the pussywillows are out and the yard is getting muddy, so it must be nearly spring.

Our two lovely piggies are off visiting a rather ugly large Duroc boar at the moment. He has to be one of the most un-handsome pigs I have ever seen but the girls seem to like him. They will be home soon and then we await the arrival of the babies. We are a bit late, as they will be born in July but that is just how it happened.

We are finally able to ride our horses again without the risk of broken limbs due to slipping on the endless ice. Both Bars and Touche were a little more feisty than usual, though with Touche that manifests itself as breaking out into a trot without being asked. Bars, on the other hand, was finding the big wide world a bit scary, but he has settled down now.

This weekend we are off to a team penning clinic. I have wanted to try team penning ever since discovering the sport, but the opportunity hasn't come up until now. Team penning involves teams of 3 horses and a bunch of cattle. The cattle have numbers painted on their sides and each team is given a number. If you get #4, you have to try to get the 3 cattle with #4 on their sides out of the herd and into a small pen at the top of the arena. Very fast paced and exciting. I am not sure how excited Touche will get as it takes a lot to get him going, but Bars will probably enjoy it.

The Girls

Here are our 2 lovely pigs. Winnifred, the red one, is a purebred Tamworth. Prucilla, the spotty one, is some sort of mixed breed we got from an intensive farming operation. Note the stubby tail. They dock pigs tails in commercial pig operations so they don't chew on eachother's tails. Very primitive! Winnie and Scilly are our breeding stock and are due to go visit the boar any day now.

Endless winter

Okay, enough already! I don't care what anyone says but February is the cruelest month, at least here in Nova Scotia. We are tired of the snow and ice and wind and rain and frozen water buckets and frozen manure and miserable goats who can't get outside to chew on trees and not being able to ride our horses and salt on the cars and whiny kids on snow days... I could go on.

Which brings me to snow days. Louise and I used to love snow days. Sit home, turn on the telly and watch some daytime tv. Eat whatever, in front of the telly. Read a book and watch the snow fall, knowing there was no where we had to go. Then we got this crazy notion that we would foster children. Don't ask me why. Some kind of shared martyr syndrome. So now we have 2 kids, a 12 year old boy and his younger sister. Snow days are completely ruined. I dread snow days! Imagine the bickering and shouting that goes on with 2 kids locked up in the house. We tried letting them watch tv all day. That just turned them into hyperactive demons. So we have to find ways to keep them busy, none of which involve us sitting in front of the tv eating junk food. In fact, since we have had the kids, we have to sneak our junk food after they have gone to bed to avoid setting a bad example.

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.