Happenings on Thursday:

Photos:  Mama Red with one very tiny and determined white baby.  You can see it's front leg and the tiny ears tucked against it's head as it roots for a sip of milk.

And the litter of day-old babies, after we put them back in a makeshift nest.

The elusive but bold stray black cat that wants to take up residence.  Not a great photo, but it captures the stealth and boldness which come with the presence of this particular cat.

And--the annoying young-un's which Bea the guinea hog deigns not to associate with just yet.

Buddy is gone.  There was a bit of chasing after a failed attempt to shut him in the trailer.  He actually DID walk right in to get his food, but we somehow fumbled getting the double-doors closed in time and he barged right through.  There was quite the earsplitting squealing as Jeff, Michael and friend Damon tackled the hog and hoisted him in into the trailer.  This turned out to be quite the impressive task, especially when we found out what that hog really weighed (read the end of the story!)  Then there was the "Hey, here's food!" peace-and-quiet, as Buddy noticed his dinner pan again and dug right in (yes inside the trailer).  

I thought I'd be in tears today, but there is so much else going on.

A young black male cat with slightly crossed-eyes has been establishing residence at our farm.  We already have one black indoor-outdoor neutered male cat, 4 neutered orange tabby male barn cats, and 2 young unneutered tabby male kittens.  This black kitty seems to be fearless.  He was first seen two days ago, after we heard numerous cat fights during the night.  Yesterday, he came right up on the front step with 3 of the other cats.  

Last night, when we went out to load Buddy into the trailer, a sleek black shape ran from the fenced area behind the barn.  Today, he faced off with Sly, and he sat in the garden with Milo, the short-haired orange tabby.  None of our cats is pleased about the intruder, but this little cat is determined.  Spartan (the oldest barn cat) has had two injured paws in the last 2 weeks, and came in with a few bite marks on his ears a few nights ago.  A brave male cat who tries to move in but is injuring our own cats will be run off (by us!) at every opportunity.  Waiting to see how it plays out.

Miss Bea, who was Buddy's constant guinea hog companion, was treated to a spa today (as in:  the mud-wallow, freshly filled with hose water, and the unthinkable luxury of having it all to herself).  She trotted after me as I went about my barnyard chores and manure shoveling.  She oinked loudly as she followed me out to the rabbit barn.  She laid down in the pasture and munched quietly for a while.  She barged her way into the barn when I went in to get something.

In short, she simply wanted company.

Pig meeting pigs (Bea meeting Twitchy and Boss) was uneventful, at least as far as humans would be concerned.  Bea pushed and shoved, Bea ate the most food, Bea slurped up water while fending off impatient younger piggies, Bea squealed in indignation when Boss tried to nose his way in for a bit of grain that she hadn't gotten to yet.....

Yeah, the pigs will be fine.

Red the rabbit had all of her babies out of the nest this morning.  They are only 2 days old.  We made a small nest in the straw for them to snuggle back in.  There are 3 white ones, one red-brown one, a few blackish ones, and a dark brown one.  8 total.  A healthy litter, from a rabbit who has already had two healthy litters that died before they reached 24 hours old.  So hooray for Red, because her babies are alive.  Not so much because she's doing an excellent job of mothering them, but because it's not so cold that they chilled immediately on being out of the nest too soon....

The boys finished shoveling the last of the sheep bedding and manure out of the south end of the barn.  Whew, what a stinky and back-breaking job.  Tomorrow, a movie will be the reward.  They really didn't have a choice in doing the work, but.....it made the deal a little sweeter to know there would be a fun outing at the end of a disgusting shoveling job.

I shoveled out 6 wheelbarrow loads of the ankle-deep muck that the cows have been plodding through.  With a break in the daily rainstorms, things are drying out just enough for me to make some progress there.

Future piggy plans:  I've heard from two guinea hog breeders that they either have a litter of potential breeding-quality hogs or that their sows are expecting a litter.  A little male for Bea is in the future.....but wouldn't be old enough to bring home until September sometime.  Bea is already showing signs of "cycling" at 8 months (sorry, but that's the reality I have to keep an eye open for!)  Still too young to be bred, so it's a good thing that we don't have an intact breeding boar with her yet.

Having a new companion won't happen soon enough for little Bea.  During the day, she started moping around.  This afternoon, we have a seriously depressed little piggy on our hands.  She burrowed under the straw in the newly cleaned sheep area and tried to "talk" to me from under it all.  I'd clear my throat or move around, she'd grunt back at me.  I made a few pig noises, she perked up and looked around.  I peeked in after she decided to stay right where she was, and the sheep and lambs were all peering anxiously at her while she half-heartedly snorted from under her straw.  Hopefully the sheep won't panic and break a leg as they stampede when she decides to get up.

Oh well, I'll have to make sure Bea gets a few extra ear-scratches and belly rubs in the next few days.....  Maybe she'll get a special helping of the royal only-for-the-cows mowed clover, to perk her up.  Poor girl.

 

And here's the pork update, not to be insensitive or anything while the absence of Buddy is fresh in our minds, but this was pretty surprising.....  Buddy weighed in at 240 pounds.  For a guinea hog, that's at the heavy end of the expected mature weight.  We expected him to be more like 140.  He was long, lean, and solid.  There will be plenty of bacon, ham, roasts, ribs, sausage.....

I guess that's the bottom line, isn't it?  We purchased him for a reason, he grew and thrived here to fulfill that reason.  

I expected to be depressed today, too, like little Bea is.  But the busy-ness of caring for all of the other animals goes on, and it's been good to keep my mind focused on that, rather than missing a big happy hog.  He was a great part of our farm for the 7 months that he was here.    

Maybe the best thing to do is REMEMBER him for the part he played, be THANKFUL for what his life will mean to our future farm meals, and not bursting into tears when I think about how he's fulfilled his purpose......

Laura

"Thanks" and "We'll miss you", to a good-looking hog

Photos:  Buddy and Bea look longingly at the coffee can which had held their grain just moments before.  "Are you sure there isn't any more in there?"  

And:  Buddy's character, shining through ("Hey, would you quit already with that camera in my face?!")

And:  The end(s)

I typed this out yesterday, expecting to feel the tears well up, or the horror clutching at my heart as I contemplated sending my first American guinea hog barrow to the butcher today.  

But....as friend Myles put is a year or two ago, it's interesting watching my attitude towards things changing since we moved fro suburbia to a more rural farming setting.  (Myles grew up on a farm)

From a frantic suburban thought-process "My cat can't be left out at night!  He might be hit by a car!" to "The pig was raised to be bacon.  His time has come", it's a surprise to me that I wasn't in tears.  I loved that pig!  Swagger, saunter, side-swiping/joyful/wallowing/vocal attitude.....  He OWNED the place, at least in his own piggie mind.

Last year, sending Michael's piggies away was very difficult for me.  This year, maybe because we're so busy with so many other things, it doesn't seem to be affecting me as much.  Maybe the tears will come later, or maybe not.  I haven't been out to the barnyard yet to see Bea in the pen all by herself, yet.  Or to try to introduce her to the little nuisances that she'll be moving in with..... But I think it will be OK this time.

So, read on, and keep in mind that I thought I needed to work through some deep-seated emotions about Buddy the pig leaving, but that I found out that it wasn't going to be as bad as I expected.  Progress?  Reality?  The new "interesting" attitude is a little unsettling to this animal lover. 

Wednesday:

So, it's Buddy's last day here.  I have been keeping V....E....R....Y  busy, so as not to think too much about it.  I like that pig, darn it!  He doesn't roll on his side like Bea does, and he is eating a lot of food, and he is getting quite lean and large....  But he's a character, and I like his personality and the way he comes running when I call (because there's food involved, not because he likes ME or anything), and I even liked it when he was gutsy enough to "wuff" in Bessie's big dairy cow face.  

Buddy would have been a perfect "boar" for breeding with Bea, because he's become her protector and comrade and partner in mischief-making.  But, when a little piglet is "fixed" at a tender young age of 2 weeks or less, that decides things.  We got Buddy to keep Bea company until he (Buddy) was old enough to be freezer pork and bacon.  The 2 new feeder piglets are old enough that Bea can move in with them.  So.....tomorrow is the day for Buddy.

Today, it's a beautiful, mid-to-high 70's day, sunshiny but not too hot.  Buddy and Bea have been lounging peacefully in their outdoor pen after their usual breakfast of "hog grower" ration (basically, ground up corn).  They have "the life", for sure.  Eat, squeal, wallow, enjoy.

(To stay busy, I shoveled sheep bedding and manure, wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow.)

Red had babies yesterday (this is the red New Zealand rabbit who carried two winter litters successfully to birth, and then they all died.  Twice.  Over ten beautiful and perfect little bunnies, dead on two occasions)

Today, Red is doing a great job of caring for her newborns, despite the past two failures.  Maybe she knew it was "Three strikes and you're out".  

(To keep my mind occupied, I've been out to the bunny barn numerous times to gaze at the new life.)

Buddy was still wearing his favorite body coating from yesterday's romp in the mud wallow--flaky bits of brown stuff sticking to his bristles..

I got the cow brush and found out that, yes, pigs DO love to be brushed.  (He shouldn't arrive at the butcher's tomorrow with flakes of mud and the dried-up liquid version of other.....stuff....matted in his bristles.)

Sheila's litter of 7 bunnies is 3 weeks old today.  They are old enough to hop out of the nest-box, old enough to throw their chubby little bodies underneath their mama to try to steal a little sip of milk, old enough to munch thoughtfully on a blade of dry hay, old enough to look at me with curious eyes but dive back into the safety of the nest box if I open the cage door.

(I've been watching them a lot today.  The rabbits are getting tired of seeing my face peering down into their cages)

Buddy was luxuriating in the sunshine, with the cool cement floor of the outside pen to balance out the temp:  Hot and sunny, cool and damp.  Perfect pig weather.

More work to be done:  It was breezy enough that the mosquitoes were being kept at bay, so I went out and scavenged in the corners of the yard for black raspberries.  Despite the deer who munched quite a bit of the raspberry canes down to half their size during the harsh winter, there was a great harvest.  I brought in over 6 pints of beautiful berries, and put them in the freezer for making jelly this winter.  There will be more to pick in a few days, too.  

While I was picking berries, I was thinking about this:  Buddy can't be let out for the usual piggy romp in the pasture and the mud wallow, so he couldn't enjoy his favorite food.  Clover.  

As one last gift to him, I mowed the abundant clover that grows on the driveway (remnants of last year's clover-grass hay deliveries, seeds which took root on the driveway and rivaling the lawn in thick lushness.)

Mowed grass is a luxury reserved for royalty here, namely the cows.  The pigs and sheep have to graze it themselves if they want fresh green food.  But Buddy loves his clover, so the cows bellowed in vain while I mowed one last feast for Buddy's enjoyment.

Tonight:  A friend will stop by, we'll load the big hog into the trailer (hopefully without too much trouble), and tomorrow I'll call in the order for what cuts of meat we want.  (Bacon, lots of bacon!)

Tomorrow, leaving from our friend's farm, Buddy rides (along with a sheep) to Lake Geneva. 

Tomorrow, here on our farm, little Bea gets to take up residence with the two smaller and very opinionated piggies.  She already put bite-marks in the ear of one.  We'll see how that goes. Will the drama of having two intruders in the pen with her distract her?  

 

Today, it was a perfect day, just the kind of day a hog loves in a rather carefree, swaggering and seemingly cheer-filled life.   Sunshine, food, fresh water, the company and constant commenting  of a friend, a good brushing, a scratch behind the ears, a tasty snack of royal clover.....what more could a 130 pound hog have asked for, except to have been allowed in that wallow one more time.

 

Laura

The smell of pigs

Photos:  Pig One and Pig Two (2013), and Buddy and Bea (2014)

I moved Buddy and Bea to the old pig pen on the south end of the barn.  The idea is....Buddy will keep himself cleaner there, in preparation for the day next week when he will leave for "freezer camp".  It's only around the corner from where they were for the past few months.

Suddenly the nice fresh breeze blowing across our driveway is rather.....um.....pungent!

They have been in a fairly protected area, where Jeff built the cow shelter on the back of the barn.  Protected from the weather, but now we know that it also protected US from smelling PIG!

I had thought to myself numerous times this spring and early summer "Wow, those guinea hogs sure don't smell as bad as the Berkshires did last year!"  That was a definitely a good thing.

The wind tends to whip around the side of the barn, either from the southwest or straight out of the west.  You stand at the northwest corner and get blasted by wind, or walk across the driveway and feel the breeze swirling past you after it has cleared the southeast corner......

The cow shelter (where the pigs have been since April) is tucked nicely behind the southwest corner of the barn and the silo which is directly centered in the middle of the west side.  I got a whiff of pig once in a while this spring, but not the full blast that we got yesterday.

I'm holding out hope that it's because Buddy set to work immediately in rooting through the old soggy 4 inches of bedding, which was left from Pig 1 and Pig 2 last October.  

These guinea hogs are pigs, after all, but I'd rather not smell them every time I get in or out of my car.  Jeff doesn't want to smell them when he opens his office-over-the-garage windows for a nice breeze.

It might be a very short time of keeping them in that particular pen, before I admit defeat and put the pigs back in the sloppy but not-as-stinky cow shelter again.

Bottom line:  As much as we like having piggies on the farm, we really don't want the stink of pigs to be the defining odor for the rest of the summer!

 

Laura

Bessie....the waiting game

Photo:  Bessie and her 7 month old calf, Caspian

Well, the waiting game begins again.  Bessie needed to be bred, we watched for her to come into heat (her fertility cycle), little Caspian her STEER calf was ever-so-happy to show us that yes, she was definitely "in heat", and we called the vet.  (I emphasize "steer" because he should have no bull-type hormones raging through his 7 month old body.  He's been castrated.  The vet double-checked.  He is a steer.  But yet he was acting like a testosterone-crazy bull for a good 12 hours, there.)

So, a big thank-you to Caspian, who should not have been giving the all-clear signal for the artificial insemination timing, but he did anyway.  Cows (and steers) do funny things when one of them is fertile.  In the absence of a bull, another female (and apparently a "fixed" male) will go through the actions that a bull would go through.  Strange, yes, but we've seen it with Lucy and Ruby and also with Bessie before.  It's what to watch for, it gives us the signal for when to call the vet......

The vet said the timing was the best we've managed so far, after the multiple tries for Bessie last time, and two different heifers who got pregnant on the one and only try.  There was a definite learning curve involved during all of those tries.  Maybe Bess will get pregnant on the first try this time?  That would be AWESOME!!!

Now, we wait.

This is the part that drives me crazy.  I'm OK with watching for signs that it's time to call the vet for a visit.  It's the 60 day wait-period AFTER the breeding that leaves me unsettled.

Is she pregnant, or isn't she.  Did it take, or didn't it?  Will there be a calf in March/April, or will we start the process over again? If the vet comes out in 2 months and says she's not carrying a calf at that point, we start watching for the heat cycle, and watching for breeding-simulation action from Caspian, and listening for unusual bellowing from Bessie (letting all the bulls within earshot know that she's receptive, I think!), and....and....and......

  

If she IS pregnant, then the due date is around April 11.  That would be excellent timing.  She would not be making milk during spring break (assuming that vacation was at the end of March, like usual).  And she would have the calf well before Michael graduates from high school next May.  Graduation party....maybe in June.  I would not be stressed about a calf being born during the month of graduation, because it would have already happened.  Guests could ooh and aah as the spunky new-comer gallops and prances around the pasture, or laugh with delight as a beautiful black and white calf daintily takes a slice of apple or carrot from their hands......

If she is NOT pregnant, her calf-delivery date could be pushed back by 2 or 3 months.  Imagine the stress that I normally describe (waiting on a calf, waiting on a lamb, waiting for eggs to hatch in the incubator.....), and plunk that scenario right down in the middle of a teen graduating after senior year, and all of the traditional festivities that follow.  

(Imagine a calf's birth taking center stage as party guests flock to the barn instead of celebrating with Michael.) 

Well, the timing is ultimately not in my hands.  If she is pregnant now, I'll certainly celebrate.  If not, I'll accept the later timing, even if it becomes the main attraction at a graduation party.

The vet "felt good" about the timing of the artificial insemination, so that's all I have to go on for now. 

 

It's just time to settle in and w....a....i.....t.  Which I'm not very good at doing.

 

Laura

Twitchy the piglet lets me scratch her head

Photos:  Twitchy (formerly Buford) watching me warily

I set out in May to bring home one feeder piglet to take Buddy's place when he leaves.  Pigs do best with a companion, and I didn't want little Bea to be alone when he is gone.  

I neglected to think about the 2 week quarantine time for the new one, or the fact that the new little replacement for Buddy would be all alone for that 2 weeks until I could introduce him to Bea.....

So, on pick-up day in Stoughton, WI, I was talking with the farm lady and realized that our new little piggie would be without a friend until 2 weeks later, and could/would be miserable.  We couldn't have that!  A lonely pig?  On OUR farm?  Never!

The woman pointed to the remaining piglets from 3 different litters, and there was one unspoken for.  It was a cute little red one with black spots.  Honestly, I couldn't tell WHICH red one we were going to chase down, but I had the extra cash and decided on-the-spot that our little black piglet couldn't be without a friend.

Which is why the woman and I spent the next 15 minutes chasing down a very fast and evasive red piglet and stuffing it into the extra cat carrier I just happened to have in the back of my car.

Being fairly new to pigs, I assumed that, since it was a "feeder" piglet that we were chasing down, it would be a castrated male.  She had pointed out females that people were buying as breeders, and all of the feeders that she pointed out as spoken for were male.  I must not have been paying attention when she pointed out the little red one we eventually cornered.  After dealing with this little pig for the last 4 weeks, I wonder if the woman was glad to be rid of her!

Twitchy came to the farm in May, along with Boss (Boss Hogg).  Because we thought we had 2 males, and because Jeff wanted to name a sheep "Buford" (and I'd already decided on "Brock"), I named the little red one Buford and told Jeff that I'd brought home a piggie just for him.

If you know Jeff, you'll realize that this news didn't bring forth any shouts of joy.....  More like "You did WHAT?"  ("I brought home a piglet, just for you!")  "Groan"

Luring Jeff out to the barn later, he did laugh at the antics of little Buford, which sealed the deal.  :)  Boss and Buford were eating out of one dish, Boss shoved a little too hard so that Buford was not able to keep his nose in the food dish.  This is a tragedy if you're a pig!  Buford, in a fit of squealing rage, flew at Boss's side with teeth at the ready to do some serious gnashing.  Jeff couldn't help laughing out loud in surprise.

The next day, I noticed that certain.....um....parts of Buford's anatomy looked strangely similar to Bea's, rather than looking like Buddy or Boss.  Sure enough, he is a "she".  Still considered a feeder pig, but not castrated (obviously).

I started calling her "Twitchy" as I tried in vain, day after day, to win her over.  Little Boss got to the point where he saw me coming and flopped over on his side, anticipating the scratch behind the ears or pat on the tummy.  His eyes would roll up with pleasure as he grunted appreciatively and then sought me out for more attention.  (My brother in law was quick to say "Laura, you need to learn not to play with your future food!")

Twitchy, on the other hand, must have remembered the terrifying scene of the two monsters involved in the high-speed chasing of a few weeks back, when she was so unceremoniously pierced through the ear (the ID tag), dumped into a tiny crate, bumped along for 2 hours in the darkness, and deposited into a strange pen in a strange barn.

She was going to hold a grudge.

Twitchy is a master at dashing around, hopping up on top of hay bales, scampering through the flock of ducklings in the barn, running madly for the food but watching me warily to make sure I can't taint her meticulously clean skin with my filthy hands.....  (a bit of sarcasm, there, but she does watch me intently as she sidles up to the food, aware of any movement on my part that might result in the dreaded scratch on the back.)

It's been 4 weeks of trying to get my hands on her.  She will come close with Boss and root for grain in the straw, but if she knows that it's me that is touching her, she will squeal indignantly and dash away, with a look of seething piggie anger shot toward me from the corner of the pen.  I lure them over day after day, Boss is conflicted ("Do I eat this lovely grain before Twitchy gets it?  Munch, munch, munch.  Or do I let this nice lady scratch me?  Hard choice....."  FLOP!)  Twitchy's thought process seems to be more like this:  "I WANT this grain.  You'd BETTER not touch me.  I'm watching you, lady!")

It bothers me to have an animal on the farm that doesn't like me.

Once in a while, I could scratch her back while she was foraging at my feet with Boss, and she would give a little grunt of happiness before the reality set in and she dashed away in a fit.  It became somewhat of a game for me....and just once, when she stopped long enough for my fingers to scratch up her back to her ears, she unwillingly flopped to the ground in ecstasy.  Then she realized that it was ME, her mortal enemy.  You have never seen such an indignant reaction as what she graced me with after that close-encounter with friendliness.  She shivered her skin over and over, as if my touch behind her ears had tainted her cleanliness.

This week, I think the ice is finally broken.  We got a couple of boxes of stale bread, and I decided that the piglets would not get any unless they took it from my hand.  Boss was delighted.  Twitchy made protesting noises each and every time, carefully taking bread with the very corner of her outstretched lips so as not to touch my filthy fingers.  Over a few days' time, she got a little bolder and would -almost- take the bread without flinching.  I think it was the knowledge that Boss was getting more bread than she was that forced her to be a little more eager to venture a solid full-lipped grab.

And then last night, for some unexplained reason, she let me scratch her all over.  Boss was interested in biting my shoes (they smell like the cows, I'm sure), and I was preoccupied with nudging him away.  Twitchy came close enough, and I reached out to touch her back.  She didn't twitch away.

I scratched a little harder, down towards her tail.  She made kind of an appreciative oink.  I scratched up her back towards her ears, and she didn't twitch away.  My fingers found the soft spot behind her ears, and she closed her eyes.  She came just short of flopping down on the straw and enjoying it fully, but I think the ice is broken.....she is won over.....finally!  

She let me scratch her head!  Celebration time!  :)

Time to head out to the barn for morning chores.  We'll see if she lives up to her name again today and dashes away in a huff when I try to touch her, or if it's finally time to give her a nicer name, more befitting a pig who isn't flighty, hesitant, nervous.....and twitchy!

 

Laura

Buddy's date with destiny, and other piggie-plans

Photo:  Buddy and Bea, waiting slightly impatiently for their turn in the pasture, and the two newest "feeder" pigs in the barn, Boss and Buford (Buford is now nick-named "Twitchy")

On my mind today:

I made the appointment for Buddy, the big guinea hog, to take the trip to the butcher up in Lake Geneva.  He has a couple of weeks left here, that's all.  The time has gone so quickly!  

I brought him home as a 6 month old in January, when I purchased Bea to be our eventual pig momma and we needed Buddy as a companion to her.  Buddy's fate was sealed when he was only 2 or 3 weeks old, long before we bought him.  The snip-snip when he was a young piglet made sure that he'd be someone's dinner/breakfast sausage/cured ham/grilled bratwurst, back before we even thought about needing a friend for our pedigreed guinea hog gilt.....so the date with destiny wasn't a "maybe" or even a "hopefully not", it was a "when and where" question since more than a year ago.  Being on our farm at the "when" part of that question, it falls to me to make the appointment, even though I've grown quite fond of his boisterous and protective personality.  ;(

I'm getting a clean pen ready for him and Bea to move into, so that, for the last week before he leaves, he isn't getting himself filthy on a daily basis.  The butcher would not appreciate having a hog delivered to them in the caked-with-muck condition that Buddy loves to show off as his fashion-of-choice.

Buddy and Bea have done an excellent job of nosing up the compacted cow-bedding in their current pen, which was the cows' winter quarters.  That bedding needs to be shoveled/wrestled out of there when Buddy and Bea are in the different pen.  (Michael and Jeremy will be simply delighted.....because I've had them working to shovel out last winter's sheep-bedding for weeks now.  One manure job to the next, until we're ready for the next winter's accumulation!)

The two younger piglets in the barn need to move outside soon.  Boss and Buford (who needs a new name, because "he" is a "she") are guinea hog-Kune Kune mix.  (Boss looks just like a guinea hog with red highlights, and Buford looks more like Kune-Kune, but they are the same mix of breeds).  They will be set up in the freshly-shoveled cow shelter, where Buddy and Bea have spent so many blissful days of rooting around and basking in sunshine mixed with filth.....  

Bea will get used to seeing and hearing them while she is still with Buddy, and she will move in with them on the day when Buddy is no longer here to be her protector/antagonist.  (We'll see how the spoiled-princess attitude of Bea changes when she is "top dog" and no other pig is rudely shoving her away from food.  She'll be the biggest one, then, and she'll probably change tactics rather quickly to shoving and snorking at the smaller two, rather than the whiney squealing as she stands by watching Buddy chow down on what was previously "hers".)

Eventually, Bea's future mate will arrive, when the right male piglet with the right pedigree is available.  She actually has quite the impressive pedigree, the more I learn about guinea hog bloodlines.  So her future mate needs to be carefully chosen for the best genetic diversity (with the farm budget in mind.) Then we'll do more shuffling and rearranging to accommodate THAT new set-up.

I'm headed out to mow some grass for the cows (who will be waiting anxiously as soon as they hear the mower revving up!), and every time I open the gate, the two pigs out in the pasture will perk up and come barreling towards me, happily snorting and scarfing down the handful of cut grass that I throw their way en route to the cows.  

Kind of a funny side-note:  I keep a stick handy when the pigs are out and I'm in the pasture with them.  If they get too up-close-and-personal in their shoving and pushing, a small prod under their jowl with the stick sends them squealing indignantly back to a more acceptable distance (and keeps my legs free of the muck that they like to rub off on my shins!)

Right now, Buddy and Bea are contentedly grazing out in the pasture.  Happily "talking" to each other as they saunter along.  Scampering like puppies for the sheer joy of it.  Dripping with mud from their ecstatic launch into the wallow.  Taunting the cows, who are still contained in their cow-yard behind the electric fencing.  Playfully galloping into the small flock of ducks and scattering them just for the fun of it.  

Enjoying a beautiful, sunny summer day without a care in the world.

 

Laura

Green acres

One footnote to the "slinging the manure at the silo" episode:

The muck involved is only a fraction of the manure that has to be moved/composted.  I was in bed last night, thinking of the mental image you might have after reading that little story:  ALL of the manure from the WHOLE year of cow-poo, piled 40 feet high against the silo until there was a huge sledding hill from the silo and extending in all directions.  Well, if it became a sledding hill, the boys would like it, at least!  :)

If you had a mental image of it at all, it probably wasn't THAT drastic.  

Yesterday's pile consisted of only the mucky stuff that the cows were wading through, the wet stuff that keeps getting churned up into deeper mire, the partially composted stuff that has needed cleaning up since the weather got warmer.

It's maybe a pile that is 4' high/3' out from the side of the silo now, but will condense and compost to a nice 2'x2' berm of black gold around the bottom of the silo.

And yes, there are other methods of dealing with the fresher manure, no worries there. 

 

Here's one success-story about enriching the soil here, from last years' experimenting:

We have two beautiful stands of white pines in our pasture.  White pines in a tightly-spaced stand like these typically drop enough needles to ensure that nothing else can grow underneath, including the grasses that we need for the cows' summer grazing.  Between both stands of trees, the soil was having a difficult time sustaining anything besides a thriving band of thistles.  

With precious little grazing area for our Bessie and her calf Caspian, every blade of grass counts for something.

With manure coming fast-and-furious on a daily basis, I was looking around the property for soil that needed enriching.

For most of that winter and spring (2013), I deposited wheelbarrow load after load of freshly soiled cow-bedding (straw or wasted hay dirtied with cow ploppers) in between those stands of trees.  By early summer, it looked like a field of tiny burial mounds, with straw sticking out the top of each one.  By mid-summer 2013, those mounds were partially composted.  By late summer, I let the chickens and ducks out to scratch up those mounds and to even out the surface of the pasture in that area.  By early fall, the manure was close enough to being well-distributed dirt that I over-seeded with some pasture-grass seeds.  This spring 2014, the clover seeds in that composted manure burst into life, along with more grass seed that I had broadcast in early spring.  Now, the beginnings of a richer, more lush carpet of grass and clover are growing in the beautiful, black, crumbly topsoil that just over a year ago was fresh cow poo.

I didn't really know if my little idea would work, or if it would just kill the small amount of grass that was already growing there.  But hooray!  The experiment paid off, there is precious grass and clover growing for our cows (and sheep, and pigs) to munch down, the soil has some life in it again, and what could have been a bad decision turned out to be the beginning of a plan to enrich much more soil around the tiny 2-acre farm that we try to keep up with.

I have my eye on a few bare patches in the pasture, and on an area where too many chickens in a small enclosed area scratched any green thing into oblivion (and the topsoil is now washing away), and areas where we want to extend the pastures along the side of the property with new fencing.....  All areas that will grow grass if I seed it, but will grow much better grass with just a little enrichment. 

Green Acres, courtesy of the mounds and mounds (and mounds!) of cow-stuff that has to be deposited....somewhere.

 

Laura