This guy will be ready for processing in the fall. He has plenty to eat in the front pasture. 🙂
It seems like it has taken FOREVER, but the front pasture is finally fenced. This gives us 3 pastures for rotating livestock. Nice. This does not count the 3 small corals around the barn. I mostly use those for temporary stuff and for pigs.
Since this pasture was near a busy road I wanted to put woven wire instead of just electric fence. This fence has H-braces set in concrete at the corners and another 6 inch post every 50 to 100 feet, depending on the lay of the land. Between the wooden post we have T-Posts every 10 feet. Also, to keep the critters off of the woven wire we have electric running on the inside. Just one strand now, but I may add a top strand and possibly a lower strand as well.
Below is the view from my security camera. It is nice seeing the cows from the windows on this side of the house. The goats are in this pasture as well, but they were “off camera”.
That is all for now.
– Stan
I’m going in with a friend to raise some piglets, so today we went to pick up the sow and piglets
Sally is here… after some fun loading and unloading.
We will keep Sally and piglets together until weaning time. After that some of the piglets will head to a new home down the road. We will keep Sally and one or two of the piglets.
She will be in need of a new “boyfriend” eventually. 😉
Enjoy the short video.
– Stan
I’ve had my mobile chicken coop setup for a while now, but I have not been pleased with the laying boxes. They were too close to the floor and made it too easy for passing chickens to peck at the eggs.
This week I decided to redo the laying boxes by making them higher, deeper, and wider. Hopefully that will discourage the “egg pecking” and set me up for the new crop of laying hens that I’ll be adding.
Here is the outside view.
I was able to reuse the board from my old laying box lid. I put some new metal on it, and added a scrap trip piece above it for a “drip edge”.
Here is the inside view of the laying box. They are about 3.5″ deep. Inside I’ve put a thick layer of shredded paper.
Here is a happy hen getting settled in the new box.
Hopefully this will help my egg production go up a bit. I’ll be moving in new hens in the fall, and culling out some old ones. Some roosters are going away this weekend, hopefully. Can you say “Chicken and Rice” 😉
– Stan
So and my wife and I were walking around the farm this evening she mentioned that today is the longest day of the year, and the first day of summer. Boy did spring fly by! Yikes. I have been very busy with IT work, farm work, and more, so I’m behind on my blog posts.
So, this will be a little summary of what has been going on since April.
Both hogs have gone to the meat processor and came back in packages. So thankful to have meat in the freezer… finally. It’s nice to have some to share as well. We are blessed.
A friend welded up a scrap trailer for me and I used it to replace my lousy wheels on my chicken tractor. In the photo below you can see the frame lined up in preparation for sliding the chicken tractor on to it. On set of the flimsy wheels had been removed. The other set had not been removed yet.
With the new frame I had to do a bit of re-arranging. I had to change the main door into a half-door. I also had to move the run to the end rather than the front due to the wheel. I built a little “connector” so that they would fit together better. The picture below shows the new rig all hooked up.
Rick, a young buck arrived on the farm. Ricky gets to hang out with our doe, Lucy.
They seem fairly happy together.
Our garden got off to a good start
Had a bumper crop of collards the other day.
Cooked em in this. Farm raised pork. YUM!!!!!
Big boy Maurice came to live at the farm. He is a registered Dorper ram. He has excellent blood lines and he is here to do a job. 😉
Well, that catches you up on most of the farm stuff. Stuff that I have photos of anyway.
– Stan.
I’m very behind on posting, so we will just start with Today’s farm activities and I’ll fill in some past stuff later.
Today was a good day. James and Nate came to rake and bale the hay. I did not have my hopes very high because in past years our hay yield was pitiful. We did however seed the former corn field fairly thickly, sow clover in the front field, and put down manure. Still… I did not have my hopes very high. So, I was thrilled with the results.
Here are the nice looking rows of hay in the big field
And the front field
And the nice results in the big field.
Good results in the front field as well. Eight rolls (not all pictured). We only got two on the last cutting.
Overall I’m thrilled with the yield. Twenty four rolls! Thank the Lord for multiplication.
Tonight was also calf processing night. A neighbor friend came down to help me band and de-horn a couple of calves. Here is a photo of part of the process.
Janet had a couple of the neighbor boys in the audience with her.
Gotta hold em some how…
Our helper
That is all for now. I’ll up on more of the farm “goings on” in later posts.
– Stan.
For the last few days Bacon the hog has been flipping her water bowl over a few times a day. It was a bit irritating because I would have to turn off the electric fence, put the bowl back, carry water to fill it up, etc. I thought she might be bored or lonely since her buddy Sausage is gone… but I was wrong. Yesterday I finally figured it out. She was trying to make her own Pig Wallow.
So, after figuring that out, I helped her out a bit with the water hose. This is her enjoying her wallow this morning.
– Stan.
I went out to the compost bins to do a “flip” and this is what I found.
– Stan
Took a loooooooooong round trip to Liberty, KY to pick up our processed pork and deliver 1/2 to a friend. We put some serious miles on the car, but it was worth it.
The live weight of our first hog was a bit less than I had hoped for, coming in at 223 lbs, but I’m still thrilled with how the meat turned out.
Check out 1/2 of the sausage:
And this is 1/2 of the other cuts (not including Bacon)
I didn’t take a photo of the bacon, however we got back 7 nice packages of generously sliced bacon. We ate an entire pack this morning. It did not stay around long enough to pose for a photo. Yum!
We will process the 2nd hog in about another month… so… we should get this same amount of meat back AGAIN.
Yippie!!!!! It’s thrilling when the farm work really starts to pay off.
– Stan.