Truck Puzzle- Moving Forward



 We often say that what we like best about farming is that almost every day there is a puzzle to solve.

This week the transmission on our farm truck broke, and we stopped being able to drive in reverse in our truck. We try really, really hard not to put ourselves in debt. Since winter is usually our slowest time of the year financially, Colby has decided that his new challenge is to do all of his farm work without ever having to back-up...which makes tasks like hooking up a trailer pretty tricky, but he's got a plan! He will always park the trailer at the bottom of a hill and roll into place. What seemed like a huge bummer, and an expense we didn't budget for, has now become a fun new game!



Here's an example of another recent "truck puzzle:"



Oops.







Winching the stuck truck out of the mud.  



Mulefoot Hogs: Super-Foragers!

Young Mulefoot (about 60 lbs.) finding acorns that other pigs overlooked.

 

 Colby recently combined three groups of pigs into a single group in a large wooded section. A mother sow (350-400 lbs), twenty piglets (around 75 lbs. each), four Mulefoot piglets (around 60 lbs each), and seventeen (150-200 lbs. pigs) are now living in this section. Colby did this to cut down on his daily chores...the fewer locations he has to feed in, the less time he spends driving around the farm with a truck full of milk, and the more time he has for making new fences to move the pigs into new areas. But, we're hoping for another benefit too.

A mother pig and twenty piglets weighing around 75 lbs. each were in this fence for a couple of weeks before the other two group of pigs arrived (its about 35 acres in size- so there is plenty of room for this many pigs!). The original group had been foraging fairly well. Despite the fact that we gave them their own special pan of grain and milk, the Mulefoot youngsters immediately began digging, and finding acorns right outside of the Pig Palace, which should be the most thoroughly searched for nuts. These little guys sure do now how to forage!

The other group of pigs that we moved into this section is a group that was born on our farm to sows we raised from piglets. We have watched mother pigs teach their piglets to forage. The sows root with their noses, and push the tiny piglets into the ground they have just opened to let the piglets discover what they have uncovered. This is a group of very skilled foragers. Their foraging ability seems to grow with each generation, as mothers pass on their knowledge to their offspring. Our goal is to breed a line of pigs that are exceptional foragers, who will eschew grain for what they find in the forest.

We are hoping that in addition to sows teaching babies to forage, these three groups will share knowledge and become exceptional foragers.






Young Mulefoot in Search of Acorns

Pig Palace in an Abandoned Stone Foundation

Stephen (our logger/friend) and Colby putting rafters on the pig palace

The palace measures about 25x20 and is about 4-6 feet tall.

We are working in conjunction with Stephen, who is selective cut logging our leased land. When he came out of this section of the forest we put the pigs into it. Stephen used his skidder to create a low wall made from big stumps set opposite from an old stone foundation. The pig palace is tucked in from the wind, its sturdy, and when filled with hay and warm pigs it is quite cozy.

Young Mulefoot Pig Checking Out the Palace.

What These Farmer's Do in the Winter

Butter (the mother pig) and the Butter-pats (piglets).

Often, when people hear we are farmers they say something like "oh, how nice, so you have the winters off?" I am here to say this is not so... I can't speak for vegetable farmers, because I am not one, but work does not cease on a livestock farm during the winter or otherwise; not in the winter, nor on our Birthdays, nor on Christmas. Animals eat, and have needs every day, year round. What does change is the kinds of work we do, the population on the farm, and the weather. 

We do not keep poultry over the winter (in the past we kept laying hens, but found that they did not thrive in the housing we could provide them with during the coldest months at our new farm). We do keep sheep and pigs over the winter. January through March is lambing time at our farm, which brings its own special set of chores. We will begin farrowing (having piglets) in the winter later this season. Housing requirements are greater in the winter- which means Fall and Winter are times for harried construction projects, and winter is a time of lugging bedding. Water is a big issue in the winter, because automatic waterers freeze, water must be carried to the animals daily (or often a few times during the day), and ice must be chipped. Our pigs drink a LOT of dairy, which must either be transferred to a heated tank or by the crate into our basement so that it doesn't freeze, and then distributed daily to the pigs. Swift shifts in the weather, and prolonged extreme cold can be hard on the animals, with pneumonia being a particular threat to smaller piglets (though thankfully we have avoided this completely so far this year!). Changing weather conditions make it hard to tell what to expect each day during our chores, and difficult to plan transportation to slaughter or to new forage- we've been alternating deep snow, and deep mud this year! We gain two (nearly full) days each week after holiday farmer's markets dwindle in Mid-late December...which is bitter sweet. We love seeing our customers each week and depend on the income we make there, but it feels fabulous to eat pancakes and play with play dough on a Sunday morning with our kids. (I counted and think we went to 48 farmer's markets this year!- We will have to eat a lot of pancakes this winter to make up for those lost weekend mornings with our kids!). 

While we don't have the winters off, our life is good (and busy) year round.

Transferring milk to heated tanks.

This has GOT to be one of the coldest jobs ever done by the human hand.

A common winter scene indoors at our house...one kid making pancetta, the other making bacon.

Butter-pats roughly one month later- growing well in the winter woods

 

-on a diet that includes very little grain.

 

 

 

 

Pig Garden Update

The pigs have been working hard in their garden. These pictures are from a month or two ago, but illustrate well how efficient pigs are at foraging and how important it is to keep them moving from one spot to the next.

 

 

 

 It took  17 medium sized (90-120 lbs) pigs 10 days to turn:

THIS 

into THIS!

We're always yammering on about how important rotational grazing is, especially for pigs. This is why...these pigs were moved in time to prevent soil degradation, but if we had left them longer the soil would have become compacted, and new forage would not be able to grow to feed the pigs in the future (among many, many other reasons that soil compaction is not a good idea). YAY for rotational grazing!

The Turkeys are Almost Ready!

 



Tending her flock.

The Monday before Thanksgiving these birds will be processed at nine the morning. At three in the afternoon on that same day a swarm of Thanksgiving celebrants will swoop onto the farm, and choose their holiday bird. You can't get much fresher than that. Birds have been pre-sold.

Please reserve a turkey for next Thanksgiving for a fabulous meal!

 

 

Sharing an apple with a friend.

Pig Garden!

Pigs being unloaded into the "pig" garden that we planted this spring.
 

These photos were taken in late October, on the day of the first hard frost. We chose to put the pigs in on the day of the first hard frost in order to give the forage crops as much time to grow as possible.

Trying out: mangles, pumpkins, tomatillos, vetch, clover

 

Yum, grass!
 (Check this pig out...it looks like a white pig, but it's skin is black. What a funny color combo- especially coming from a Large Black sow and Tamworth boar (which is a red pig).

Even weedy gardens taste good to pigs!

Considering a nibble of mullein.

 

 

Delicious mangles (feed beets).

 

The pigs LOVE their new garden. When Colby did his last chores of the night he noticed the pigs chomping away in the garden well past their bedtime.

 

We plan to add many more pig gardens in the years to come. In the future we plan to grow turnip, rape, and field peas in addition to the pumpkin, vetch, mangles, clover and sunflowers we tried this year.