Around the farm

Today we managed to get the electric wiring done in Pasture 2 so we could move the pigs into that pasture. It took us all day, first moving the shed, then finishing the barbed wire fencing in one area and then putting in the electric. But it's done! I am so glad DH built the pig shed on skids so we could move it from area to area. The Farmall got put to work today!

All we haven't done yet is put a pig water nipple on the waterer on that side, so we left the small gate between the two pastures open and will add the water nipple tomorrow.


This is the double sided waterer we were lucky enough to inherit with the house and land. If you look closely, you can see my wonderful DH has added a pig water nipple on the front and connected it to the waterworks. SO wonderful not to have to carry buckets of water around! The pigs love it too. We installed the green gate on the left last weekend, that is our human gate between the two pastures, we don't have the livestock gate in yet, so the animals use this too. Butterbelle was a bit hesitant, but has since adapted to it quite nicely. DH is going to add another water nipple on the other side of this waterer so the pigs will have water available in both pastures.

Exploring the wonderful green grass. I am pretty excited that our rotational grazing plan is coming along nicely. We still need to divide the third area in two and then we'll have four pastures total, with a possible fifth in our vegetable area.

Our little Daredevil. He has caused a bit of havoc on the farm in the last week! He was climbing on the haybales and knocked one onto the chicks container after I moved them into the garage. They haybale broke the container so I had to figure something else out for them. What we have now is actually better, I'll share a photo of that later. He also rode into one of our newly planted fruit trees today, luckily no damage, but he was grounded from the ATV for the rest of the afternoon.

The tree in question, as you can see it's just fine. Look at those buds! Other things are doing great on the farm as well....

The garlic.

The spinach, broccoli and cauliflower bed. They are doing wonderfully well. We had some really strong winds here the last few days, and a lot of the greenery you see is those "helicopter" seeds blown down from one of our trees.

The gooseberry bush we got from Henry Fields. I cut it down to half its height after we planted it. We've never had gooseberries before.. so we really hope they're good!

Grapes coming along nicely.

DH gave lessons to our oldest DD and oldest DS on how to drive the tractor. They both did great!




The chickens haven't quite been pulling their weight. We have 13 laying hens and only get about 8 eggs a day. They've definitely slowed in production, so we're looking at adding oyster shell to their feed again.

Today was a very busy, but productive and satisfying day!

Tomato seeds have arrived

Today we finally received our tomato seed order from Seven Acre Seeds. I placed the order towards the end of March and they shipped in a timely manner, and I waited.. and waited... Finally after about 10 days from the shipment date I wrote and asked if I should be concerned that my order hadn't arrived yet. They very quickly shipped out a new order, which arrived today! I should add that we currently have temporary mail carriers and the mail delivery has been.. interesting. I am left wondering who got the original order of tomato seeds.

Unfortunately I had decided that it was getting too late, so last week I started tomato seedlings with seeds I already had on hand, so these will probably have to wait 'til next year. I specifically ordered crack free/resistant tomato varieties since so many of our tomatoes cracked last year. Some of the varieties I already had on hand we never planted last year, and they're said to be crack resistant, so I think we'll be okay. We planted out 105 tomato seedlings. According to MO's extension site that should be enough for our family for eating fresh and processing.


Tomatoes should be planted out about May 10th in our area so I'm off to a bit of a late start this year.

Kudos to Seven Acre Seeds for their excellent customer service, as well as for the free seed packet (Golden Egg) which was included in the order :)

Today is a really gloomy day, the ducklings are outside and loving it though! Tomorrow we hope to get Pasture 2 electric fenced so we can get the pigs in there and out of Pasture 1. We will have to move their shed, but that's relatively easy. Right now they have taken over Butterbelle's shed and we need to have that available to her when she calves at the end of May. We still need to get the milk stanchion made and get her used to it before she calves.. so much to do!!!

I also got another package today.. watch our Etsy store for new arrivals happening soon!

Pastured Pigs

We've been working for a while now to get our pigs out of their small enclosure and into the big pasture. We had to run electric fence first though to keep them in. We finally got it done and released the pigs. Can you say PIG HEAVEN? They were running all over the place and squealing for joy. It was very funny :)

Butterbelle is not quite sure what to make of them yet, but seems to be tolerating them. Our plan is to have a rotation system going after dividing our pasture into appropriate sections. Butterbelle will have the pasture first, and then when she moves onto the next one, the pigs will move onto the one she has just left. We'll have four or five areas in the rotation and we expect this to do wonderful things for our pasture.

A busy week!

We've had a busy last couple of days. We got the part for the tractor that needed welded, so Dan could get out there and bush hog. Of course everybody had to have a turn sitting on dad's lap :)







Our pasture looks so much nicer now and we can actually find Butterbelle when we go look for her.

We also got the electric fence fixed, so now the piggies can't root near the fence anymore. They're not very happy with us though and spent yesterday sulking and stayed in their shed all day. They're a little happier today. They have tamed up enough that when we feed them they will allow us to scratch them if we move slowly.

The one has been named "Little Miss Personality" or "Little Miss" for short. She sure HAS a whole bunch of personality and is always running around acting goofy. The other piglet is more reserved. We'll probably eat her. LOL. As Dan says: "No slackers allowed." I guess she's slacking in the personality department. Kidding aside though, we're keeping one pig for breeding and one for butchering, so we'll keep the friendlier pig which at this point is Little Miss. Next month we will be picking up our Mulefoot Boar and we'll breed an Ossabaw / Mulefoot cross for butchering.

Also, in other news, Dan finally bought a tractor! It is a 1941 Farmall H. He bought it at an online auction and will go pick it up on Saturday. It will need a new battery and some TLC, but it's only ever had one owner and has been stored in the barn. We're quite excited.


Our new (to us) tractor


Plus a very dusty Bradley sickle mower

Glad to finally have a tractor, it sure has been prayed for!

Pig shed complete!

The pig shed is complete, with the exception of a second coat of paint and first and second coat for the door.



And the piggies love their new home :)



We sectioned off part of it for their bedding area, the other part will be for their feed/general area. The bedding area will be filled with straw.



If you look at the first picture you can see Dan's ingenious idea of using a rubber mudflap as a smaller door for the piggies within the big outer door for the humans. This way they can come and go as they please, but still stay warm and cozy.

If you notice the bucket on the left in the top picture, that's supposed to be their waterer, fitted with a pig water nipple. They haven't figured it out. We don't know HOW to get them to figure it out. We have tried all kinds of things including smearing the nipple with peanut butter, but they just don't GET it. They much prefer their water trough, and if that goes empty they just stay thirsty. Any suggestions?

And their electric fence charger has gone on the blink. We're going to get it replaced since we haven't even had it two weeks.

Pigs and electric fencing

This morning we picked up our pigs from the seller. They are so *cute*! We weren't finished with their pen yet, so they had to wait in a crate until we had the electric fencing done.



We didn't really get any further with the shed because we had to run the electric wire and that took up a large part of our time.

They were very happy to be released into their pen and immediately set to work sniffing everything, rooting and testing the electric fencing.







I'll say it again... they're cute!

Pig shed & pen

Today we started building our pig pen and shed in preparation for the arrival of our piggies. Dan planned out this awesome "little" shed. We are using four 16' x 34" pig panels for their pen. We'll also add electric fencing.

Another family project!













Done for the day. We got the floor done and then called it quits.