Penned In

Back from a trip down south.  While I was away one of our Sows decided it was time to bring forth some new piggies into the midst.  So Jo-Ann, with the help of some friendly neighbours got to handle the event.

Fortunately, we've kept track of all the breeding dates of the five sows we currently have and can figure out when they should farrow.  Job last before I left was to get Peg the Pig into a farrowing stall we had built.  In a hurry we just screwed a pallet across the back of a stall to make a safe area for the little piglets.  Complete with heat lamp it makes a pretty comfy place with no danger of the Mom laying on the piglets.


We lost five of the litter of eight.  A pretty tough blow.  The cause seems to be that the piglets got away from the mom and got too cold.  The culprit is suspected to be too much hay.

Picking up from that tragedy we have been building new stalls with farrowing rails.  We're waiting for the next four sows to give birth and as their due dates come up we put them in farrowing stalls.  It's still plenty cold outside and there wouldn't be any suitable place for them yet.

The farrowing rails inside keep the piglets from getting squished.

The rails were made from recycled logs that we used for the pen in the 80 year old hand built log barn.  Reuse recyle.... that's our motto. And you can't beat the price.  Speaking of which.... can you believe it cost $15 in screws just to screw the thing together!?! 

This shows the piglet creep area at the back of the stall.  Mamma can see 'em, but she can't get at 'em.

This  is the 2 x 4 walkway over top of the creeps, so we can walk along the back without going into the pen.  They are removable.  We can lift them up and hang heat lamps down to warm their little butts.  Nothing says comfortable like a warm butt.

No butts about it!  Hope you're having a great week!

Snow Storm

It's April 6th and I am sitting at our kitchen table at 8:30 in the morning.  It's a struggle  to see the trees at the Southern edge of our front property due to a blinding blizzard.  This has been going on for two days now.  A couple of days ago we were congratulating ourselves over getting through another winter and planning on putting away the long johns, and how it looked like the balmy days were here again.  Plus 10 temperatures.  Mother Nature may have taken slight at being taken for granted.

The three bird feeders off the front balcony are filled with Juncos, their feathers all fluffed up against the driving Eastern snow.  It's only -5c but it seems a lot colder.  It's certainly long john season again.  For a while anyway.

The snow will put a bit of a damper on the pig feeder project.  I was hoping to get that done before my trip to the coast.

It was mud season a couple of days ago so I built a couple of pallet walks to the green house and barn.


I can never get enough pallets and the pictures will give you an idea why.  Jo-Ann even bought me a book on nifty pallet projects: Wood Pallet Projects by Chris Gleason, filled with inspirational ideas.  Keeping with my theme of recycle and re-use there isn't much that can't be built with a little ingenuity.

My four main recycle items are glass windows, tires, pallets and five gallon buckets.

The glass is perfect for shed projects and hot boxes.  We grow food and flowers in the truck tires.  Pallets are used from everything to walkways to furniture, and five gallon buckets are used for animal feeders and grain.

The house sure smells nice.  Filled with the wonderful aroma of dog food.


 Oh, I know, but this dog food is made with 100% organic beef chunks, some added pig lard, oats and barley. No crap.


 The doggies love it, and it's sure a lot better for them than the packaged cardboard, fortified with entrails and chicken feathers kibble that comes in those cool looking bags.

We save all our pork fat.  Jo-Ann makes lard from it.  Beat's Crisco hands down!


Hope you're doing well, and the snow shoeing is just for recreation!

Bolting

The spinach, that is.  I've become resigned to the fact that I am unable to grow spinach in the green house.  Even in the winter time it gets too warm.  I planted spinach several weeks ago and when I checked yesterday it was six inches high and starting to bolt.  As I have suspected for a while now, I can grow tomatoes or lettuce in the same green house during the winter months but not both..

We've just had over a foot of snow fall in mid March.  And it looks like it's not over yet.  It's time to start putting plastic covers on the tire garden and melting the snow.  As soon as I can work the soil, perhaps in as little as a week, I can start planting spinach and lettuce outside.

I haven't been doing much on this blog as of late.  We have decided to become an actual, farm and so have been setting up our business.  Our Website is www.savoryfarm.ca.  We also have a Facebook page.  I have been astonished at the business it has brought in.  Hopefully we'll be able to fulfill all the requests for weiners and full grown feeders in a month or so.  It sounds like it's going to be a busy spring.

What is our operating philosophy to be.  Well, I've been reading a lot of Joel Salatin lately and talking with some local organic farmers.  That should tell you the general direction were taking.  The organic food market in B.C. is largely untapped and local organic suppliers cannot get enough B.C. farmers to supply them and are going as far east as New Brunswick to replenish their stocks.  That's the Atlantic seaboard.. Clear across the country.  Like shipping lettuce from New York to California!

The hoops to garnering a certified organic status seem prodigious at times.  A process that can take as long as three years.  We're hoping it won't take that long as the land we have, probably a hundred acres of tillable soil, hasn't been used for anything but cattle grazing for the last twenty years or so.

Anyway stay tuned.  It promises to be an exciting year.

King of The Hill

The doggies love that game.  All the hillocks around the yard, remnants of the winter's snow plowing operations, have little doggy platforms at the top.  Great places to hang out and survey the fields. 

We're over wintering two boars and five sows.  Hoping for lots of weaners come spring.  They do love to prance around the one acre field the renovated barn is in.  I installed a motion sensor yard light and was surprised last night to see it cycling on and off.  I had forgotten to close the door to their barn bedding and they were out galavanting under the stars.  The girls like to go over to the blue shed where Polka Dot, our full grown boar, resides to chat him up. 

We're pretty sure we have three sows bred now.  As they come into heat we bring them over to the Boar's compound and let them spend a night or so together.  Actually, there's no need to bring them there as they will already be smooching him through the fence.  The blue spots on the sow below isn't a skin disorder,  its vegetable dye.  We're using different coloured dyes to distinguish between them.  Once they are bred they get a name.  So far we have Peg, Matilda and Polly named.  Next up are yellow and red, tentatively Mabel and Linda.  

The sheep are enjoying their new spacious quarters in the renovated log barn but really enjoy coming out and playing with the dogs on a sunny day.  Who is King of the Castle now?!

I loved the shredded daikon we get when we have Sushi at a place near my Daughter's in Coquitlam.  We could never figure out how they did it.  Turn a daikon into long tasty shreds.  We even asked them but it seemed to be a closely guarded secret.  But, ah-ha, my daughter managed to find the machine and sent me one for Christmas.  Not having anything exotic like Daikon in the local stores, I tried it out on some sweet potato.  Delicious stir-fried with some veg.  We plan a trip to Prince George or perhaps Burns Lake to score some Daikon so I can make a facsimile of "Crack Sushi"....  something we named a dish that consists of Tuna soaked in hot sauce on a bed of shredded Daikon.  My Tuna will have to be canned, as sushi grade fish is hard to come by in this neck of the forest.  

Our newest equipment purchase.  The two wheeled barrow upside down on the top of the Jeep.  Aptly named the ShizaWagon,  Jeez I've bought cars far cheaper than that thing.  But it is way easier to use than a single wheeled barrow.  

Remember now, you've got friends keeping an eye on you!

It's In The Bag

Santa's not the only one packing a large bag of goodies around. Mind you if you pulled your gift from this bag you might be a bit disappointed.


We've discovered that the used grain bags are perfect for hauling wood and dropping it where we need it. We have fires burning in a couple of locations besides the house. The old barn and the greenhouse. We process the wood that we stacked last fall at our basement with a wood splitter, load the bags and drop them where we need them.


They have a cinch strap on the top that keeps the snow out. There's no refund for them so we're working on more ways to recycle them. Like a perfect cover for the back of the Jeep.

Our Boar is back from college.

who wouldn't go crazy for a face like this?

The ladies are fascinated with him.

OK, we'll sneak out a little later when the warden isn't looking...

Been a bit under the weather lately so I haven't been progressing on the project front as much as I've wanted to. We have plans for a 45 gallon water barrel feeding a bunch of nipples but in the meantime we just installed a heated 15 gallon water tub in a tire to keep it pig proof.


It seems to be working well. A lot better that trying to keep them watered from a trough.

Hope the Christmas season sees you and yours  well watered, healthy and happy.

the Pigs Run Amok

Before I even opened the door to the barn the hairs on the back of my neck were inexplicably standing on end.  And then I opened the door.  The pigs had managed to un ravel the chain on their pen and had run amok.  Trampling everything in sight.  That would be a pigs sight - anything they could reach.  Of course their blaming some one else as they were all in the pen looking out at me when I walked in.



But they can't fool my finely attuned eye.  It was, after all, cemented to the floor with frozen pig crap.  Don't tell me the sheep dragged that in! And the sheep wouldn't devour a whole box of apples.. Thankfully most of my electrical hand tools and most of the power tools were out of reach.

It has been a really nice time of winter.  Before the deep winter cold.  Fresh snow and hoar frost make for a beautiful setting.  The animals sure seem to like it!

Starting to lose count of how many times I've had to plow out the place.  That's a good sign that winter is progressing.

the blue tinge is because it was taken near 3 pm and falling dark.

Hope you've got a friend by your side willing to share a comforter on a cold winters night!

My Water Broke!

A couple of times, actually.  Thankfully, the hydrant in the barn was frozen in the closed position.  After several false starts I hit upon the solution.  Connected a funnel to a piece of garden hose, inserted a chunk of quarter inch plastic tubing (to let the air out) and poured some Methyl Hydrate down the hose.  Raising the funnel above the hydrant and in about a minute, voila, handle unfroze and water flowing. Having no water in a barn helps put other problems in perspective.  The freeze up was caused by leaving a garden hose, with nozzle, attached to the spigot when turning off the water.  It just created a vacuum and wouldn't let the water drain like it was supposed to.  I was using the hose to fill the water tubs.  My new temporary solution is to use a two valve "Y" fitting so that I can shut off the connection to the hose and then open the other valve to let air down the hydrant so it will drain promptly.  Ah the things I learn.  Usually one freeze-up too late.

This was a result of not turning off an outside water line.

Missed the checklist.  Fortunately, Jo-Ann noticed it and managed to turn off the inside valve that was feeding the outside line.  The new attraction on the hill: The Giganto Ice Falls, narrowly averted.  We also had one other freeze-up with the water line to the chicken shed.  The maintenance guy had disconnected the heat tape, and exacerbated the problem by forgetting to close the chicken door.  Fortunately, getting a brisk fire going in the wood heater and connecting said disconnection gave us running water in a couple of hours. Lesson learned?  We'll see.


Finally managed to get the electrician to work in the barn.  He's installing waterproof lighting and outlets.  In between other chores so it might just take a while to get everything all lit up!  With all the dark time, an outside light is high on the list.

The pigs are sure enjoying the new digs.  If it gets in the -20's I can put a little propane heater on to take the chill off. Prior to the electrician getting some quartz infrared heaters happening.

Does this hay make my butt look too big? 

The puppies seem to be adapting well.  Afternoon naps, after bone time, are frequent. They're still sleeping in the shop at night, awaiting their heated dog houses.

We spent one day cutting up Belgian Blue beef (and one more day unthawing 40 feet of frozen water line. Getting good at that!).  We got to use our new roller table to move the quarters around.  Getting too old to wreck my back. This thing adjusts to whatever height I need - a real back saver.  About three more and I can almost pile wood with them!

These are Flintstone chops! Almost three inches thick! Perfect for a summer's barbecue.   If we can wait that long.

Here's what happens when you forget to clear off the hood air inlet and have the heater on.  Instant snow storm inside the Jeep.


Hope someone holds you in their heart!

It Must Be Winter: The Waters Frozen

Just had our first foray into the -20c's.  Of course the new water Hydrant we installed in the refurbished barn froze up this morning.  Apparently everyone on the planet but me knew that leaving a hose on a hydrant will cause it to freeze up. Ah well, off to town in a snowstorm to get some heating cable then I will disassemble the thing and give it the hot water treatment.  I am pretty sure it's not a drainage problem because we took great pains to make a 10 foot long drainage path.  Well we'll see.  That kind of problem disappears in Spring - and that's only six months away!


The Pups and Hurley seem to really like the snow.  We just gave Xena heck for climbing on the wood pile and when we turned around here's Hurley and the Pups:

Haven't been doing any blogging lately.  A dry spell.  We've been busier than a couple of cats trying to burry scat on a marble table top. Getting the New Barn operational and the winter wood project consumed quite a bit of time.  But mostly it's that I've just felt like I didn't have too much to say or post.

We store six 1100 pound bags of feed in a stall in the barn and to get them in we had to install a bigger door.

 We off load them onto pallets, use a skidsteer to get the pallets to the barn and then shuffle them around with a pallet lifter.

We made four stalls with four foot gates on them.  They are made out of salvaged "D" logs from a log home. Sturdy and hard to beat the price.

We've got three pigs ready to go to market. I want to process these ones myself.  Including the hams.  Well, ones for us and the others are for a couple of friends. We're wintering Five sows and a Boar, with a little weiner purebred Berkshire who we may keep as a boar.  Time will tell.

I have heard some great things about the Berkies.  He's seperate from the others for a while.  He needs to be a bit bigger to hold his own.

Don't know if you can make out the guillotine door at the right.  a rope and pulley means we don't have to go in the pen to let the boys and girls out..Of course the biggest oinker we have around here got to make the inaugural entrance! 

We also have a Belgian Blue beef hanging in the cooler.  I was practicing with a vacuum pack machine.

 We were going to cut the beef up tomorrow, but first things first being getting the water flowing.  Carrying five gallon buckets of water a hundred yards loses it's fascination really quickly.  The pigs are going through 30 gallons of water  a day.

"Ha, Ha, he's so new he doesn't know he's not supposed to pee in the water"

Ah sometimes at the end of the day it's just nice to snuggle up with a friend and a cup of tea!

Hope you got yours!