Snow Day

The kids are away and I end up with a snow day. I guess that is just how it works out sometimes. Got up, went out and took care of the animals this morning at 4:30 am. We already had about an inch of snow but still planned on going in to work, that is until I went back inside and turned on the news. All the schools are closed in the DC metropolitan area and they are calling for a nasty mix of snow/rain/ice etc. Email the people I was to meet with today to tell them I am not coming in and climb back into bed. Wake up at a very reasonable 8 am, and start my day again. Shoveled out the driveway and was beginning to think I made the wrong decision since we only have between an 1 ½ and 2 inches of snow, only to find out the all the surrounding counties have implemented snow emergency plans -- meaning no one on the roads without snow tires or chains. Guess I made the correct decision.

Here are some pictures -- decided to go black and white since it is overcast and the colors didn't show up well anyway.

Bella hanging out in her stall.

Inside one of the high tunnels before I cleaned off the snow.

Maya having some water. She is doing well but unfortunately only two of the piglets made it. I don't think Maya had enough conditioning to support them all so she culled down the numbers.

The barnyard gang hanging out on a snowy day.

Cold Morning Chores

Due to the combination of the Martin Luther King Holiday and Inauguration Day I had an extra long weekend.  Actually I was off on Friday as well due to my 9/80 schedule so it was a relaxing 5 days around the farm.  I try to do all the farm chores when I am off work since Danielle does them during the week, especially during the winter months since I leave the house before sun up and don't get home until 5 PM.

We have been experiencing quite a cold snap lately which made the morning chores particularly brisk.  I am not complaining, since I realize many other parts of the country are below zero in actual temperature and -30° F or more with wind chill, but 5° F for Maryland is damn cold.

When it is this cold Buddy grabs his morning breakfast, in this case a meaty bone from the previous nights pork roast, and retires to the relative warmth of his straw filled dog house.


I tend to give all the animals larger portions of feed to help them stay warm. Danielle also put new straw in all of their shelters at the start of the cold snap.





One of the biggest problems is keeping water available to everyone. We have an electric de-icer in Bella's water trough adjacent to the barn. We have not however found a good way to keep the other animals waters from freezing solid. This leads to twice a day hauling of water from the barn to the animal paddocks, luckily only 50 yards or so. The ice then is broken out of their buckets and the fresh water poured in. The pigs manage to drink or spill all of their water before it freezes so in their case it is just a matter of retreiving their trough from wherever they dragged it to and filling it.

Here is an obligatory self portrait of me all bundled up for the morning chores. In addition to my pajamas from the night before I have on a turtle neck, waffle insulated hoodie, hat and insulated coveralls. While I managed to stay relatively warm it was still great to come in by the warm wood stove when I was finished.



Hope everyone is staying warm.

Snug as pigs in straw

Well that might not be the correct saying, but these little guys and gals seem pretty happy.


They are our first litter of Tamworths here on the farm so we are probably obsessing a little over them. You can see that we have two distinct color variations blonde and red. Danielle thinks that all the blondes are females, but I will request that you all refrain from the dumb blonde jokes.


I look in on them when I feed the pigs, since their mama Maya is distracted. Big Boy, the sire is in an adjoining pen and has been foaming at the mouth a number of times when I came near. I guess he is anxious to protect his offspring, which is a good thing, but might make our barrowing of the boys difficult. He calms down when he has food in front of him so we might have to feed both Mama and Papa and see if we can abscond with the boys. Will let you know how that goes.

Ice Storm

We got an ice storm Saturday night/Sunday morning. We got off light compared to the midwest but everything did get a thick glaze of ice.


Julia came out to help me tend the animals, and had a lot of fun knocking the ice off the fences and gates.




All the animals weathered the storm fine. Luckily the pigs and sheep respect the electric netting since the thick glaze of ice would have prevented it from shocking them.


A large branch from a neighbors evergreen came down due to the ice landing on our fence. After cutting it free with the chainsaw, the fence rebounded, although I may need to add a t-post at the spot to take out the slight bow that is left.


The asparagus stalks were finished off by the ice. They were ready to be cut down anyway, but they do make quite a tangled mess.

First Snow

Well we are having our first snow of the season, and it reckons to be a real one. We have at least an inch already and it isn't even noon yet. Overall they are calling for up to four to six inches. Went out deer hunting this morning but nothing seems to be moving with the snow falling. Maybe I will get lucky this afternoon if it lets up.

The pigs now have access to part of the market garden and seem to
be enjoying cleaning up the leftover corn stalks and other vegetable matter.

The Navajo-Churro sheep don't mind the snow at all with their nice thick wool coats.

This will likely be the only snow many of these geese see, as we need to butcher them soon for Xmas.

Silly Geese

Our Chinese Geese are growing well. We plan to harvest all but three (one gander and two female geese) the week before Christmas. While my wife will not miss them getting into the market garden -- they did a job on the radishes -- I will miss the funny way they flock about the pastures. They get all excited and have an almost deafening squawk when it is feeding time, but easily get spooked and run off flapping their wings. They are unable to fly more than a few feet but they make quite a spectacle of themselves trying.

Fillet du Chevon

Or for those of us who don't speak French, Goat Tenderloin.

This past weekend I butchered a ~2 year old Nigerian Dwarf goat wether. We had kept him around the farm to provide company for our doe, but since she now has her own kid he was not needed anymore. I had never butchered a large animal. I have processed my fair share of chickens, turkeys, ducks and even the random rabbit, but a goat, even a dwarf goat seemed a big step. But with the help of the book of Country Wisdom & Know-How and some net searches I figured I would give it a go.

The weather on Saturday cooperated, being slightly cool. Julia and Sam were interested in seeing the process so they climbed up into the hay loft, watched and took some photos, while I dispatched the goat with a .22 behind his ear. The hardest part of the process was getting the goat hung at a level to work on. I wasn't prepared for how heavy he was and I didn't have a block and tackle handy.


After getting the goat hung up the skinning and gutting process went fairly smoothly, although slowly. When I was mostly done I took him out to the clothes line so that I could finish in the sun.


I then washed and quartered the carcass and put it in our garage fridge to age. I went to Seattle on business Monday-Wednesday. I stayed home from work on Thursday to catch up with my family and started the process of butchering up the carcass. I got three bags of cubed stew meat and some soup bones from hind section. I carved out tenderloins, or back straps, from the ribs/chops. The bellies were saved for the dogs.


I still have a lot more to butcher but was interested in trying out the meat, so I decided to grill up some of the tenderloins. Danielle took this opportunity to pull together a zero mile meal for the Dark Days Eat Local Challenge.


Danielle describes the meal in detail, all I will say is that the goat tenderloin was great. Not quite as tender as good beef tenderloin, but the flavor was excellent. There was a slight undertone of goat but there was not a strong gamey taste. We were somewhat concerned since this goat was considerably older than the age at which they are conventionally butchered, usually around eight months. I am happy to say though that there was not any taint to the meat, although I was careful to closely trim all the fat, which is where the strong flavor supposedly is concentrated.

Ribs!

The picture above says it all. Danielle picked up the pork from the butchers on Wednesday and we have been eating it almost constantly. The kids tried some pork chops the night she brought everything home and liked them so much that Sam requested to have more on Friday night. This weekend my parents were down so I barbecued up a couple racks of ribs and we made some more chops. It was quite the feast. Emily my oldest has already requested that I barbecue up a pork shoulder for her birthday, the kids really love the pulled pork. Danielle is salt curing the bacons and hams and my only disappointment is that I will have to wait up to 6 months for the ham. I must say that all this good eating is making me forget how much trouble we had getting the pigs to the butcher.

When Pigs Fly

Runt and Grunt, our Tamworth pigs have done a good job of rooting up and fertilizing our field over the last couple of months. They both put on a lot of weight and thus were ready to go to the butchers. The plan was to load them into the back of my pickup the night before their appointment (Easter Sunday) and drive them up the next morning. I built a ramp out of two 1/2 inch thick sheets of plywood with furring strips spaced every foot or so for traction. Danielle and I tried to coax them in with the slop bucket and after many failed attempts managed to get Grunt -- the bigger of the two -- into the back of the truck where he happily went about eating his dinner. We tried unsuccessfully to get Runt to join him then realizing that one was better than none decided to just take up Grunt and let Runt feed out for another couple of weeks. After we closed up the back of the truck and turned it on Grunt started to take exception to his location. He broke the latch that holds the cap window down and then proceeded to flop up onto the tailgate, teeter there for a moment and ungracefully flip out the back. He was quite the site in my rear view mirror. Luckily he was unhurt and was more than happy to return to his paddock.

My wife wakes me up the next morning to inform me that all before 6:30 AM she has called a livestock hauler that the butchers recommended and that he would be coming that morning for the pigs. The hauler shows up to our place at 9:15 AM. It takes the three of us at least a half hour to wrestle the pigs into his truck -- I am stiff and sore as I type this. And the biggest kicker is after calling the hauler at the last minute and him having to help us fight to get our free range pigs into the truck, all he wants to charge us is $15. I have to force him to accept $25 for his troubles and feel that I got off cheap.

So all in all the pigs make it up to the butchers and we should be able to pick up our fresh pork on Wednesday, and now I have a story to go with the expression When Pigs Fly.

Snowy Morning

Got off to a slow start this morning. Snow started around 5am so I took my time getting ready for work to let everything settle on the roads. Since I was still at home when the sun was up I let out and fed the animals before I left. Normally Danielle takes care of the animals in the morning, but it was peaceful to feed the animals in the falling snow.

New Year -- New Fences

The addition of our pigs highlighted the need for some new paddocks. Although we have 5.25 acres only about half an acre was fenced in with goat fencing. I had previously tried to contain the goats with electric tape but their desire to be up by the barn and us was much greater than the deterrence factor of an electric shock. Having three goats, two pigs and thirty some chickens all on half an acre was definitely taking a toll on the pasture. Besides the over grazing, the rooting of the pigs and their enormous manure production was just too much for the area to handle. So the mild weather around the new year provided a good opportunity to fence in the upper pasture. Enclosing this field effectively doubled the area for the animals as well as enabling the goats to browse the hedge row.


I purchased two rolls of fencing for the upper pasture, but since I was able to tie into an existing line of field fencing in the hedge row I only used one. The other roll was used to fence in a long border with our neighbors properties. The kids helped me remove the electric tape and post connectors as well as driving the tractor with all the needed tools.







Finally, we used the recovered electric tape and some step in posts and a few hog panels to make a paddock for the pigs. The pigs are not nearly as agile as the goats and after getting shocked a few times the first day have been content to be in their quarter acre slice of heaven. Now their rooting and manure is being put to good use, prepping the area of pasture for spring plantings.

They sleep in a simple A-frame structure fabricated from a tarp and some scrap pallets. Another pallet A-frame provides shelter for our rent a stud goat buck Skeeter in the upper pasture.

Another thing I never thought I would do

We added two Tamworth pigs to our small hobby farm a few weeks ago. My son and I in particular were excited to raise some pigs since we are as he likes to put it "bacon buddies". I must say the pigs are quite cute and we all enjoy having them around. We all get a laugh out of watching them run around since they can not bend in the middle and thus have a particularly amusing running style. Don't worry I am not getting too attached to them and I will have no problem sending them off to the butcher when they have fattened up.

Now for those of you who think the title of this post refers to the mere owning of pigs you are very much mistaken. See we purchased two weanling male pigs that were approximately ten to twenty pounds each. No problems so far except that the person we purchased them from had yet to castrate them. My wife brought the pigs home a few days before we went on vacation. A week down in Disney followed by a week of my wife and kids at her mother's place in Alabama. Did I mention that we all caught a nasty cold down at Disney which I am just finally starting to get over. What all this means is that by the time we are ready and able to castrate the pigs they weigh in at about 60 lbs for the big guy and maybe 40 lbs for the runt. I will spare you the details of the castration, except to say it is surgery that I am performing on the pigs while my wife is trying to hold them still. Normally watching my petite wife try to wrestle a pig would be funny, but when I am trying not to cut her or myself with the scalpel, nor cause any undue harm to the pigs during the procedure it is quite stressful.

I am happy to say that the pigs seem to be healing nicely, and my wife and I now know that we can do some things we never would have thought about.

Thanksgiving Turkey

As my wife is fond of saying, we started Thanksgiving dinner last Easter by setting 18 Narragansett turkey eggs into an incubator. From those 18 eggs we only had three turkeys make it to maturity one of which was white (not the proper coloring for a Naragansett).
We augmented our flock with two birds from Springfield Farm to make sure that we would have a breading pair.

All told we ended up with three Toms one Hen and the aforementioned white. In order to allow the bird to age appropriately and to avoid grossing out some house guests I processed one of the Toms and the white one the weekend before Thanksgiving. After plucking and cleaning our Tom weighed in at ten and a half pounds. The white went into the deep freezer and will be dinner sometime this winter.

On Thanksgiving we also cooked a store bought thirteen pound bird, to ensure leftovers and placate my mother who was somewhat leery of eating our homegrown bird. While our bird was a few pounds smaller it was considerably taller (our turkey is on the left).

All said and done the turkey was delicious and it was great that the potatoes and beans were also grown on our farm.

An Accidental Dinner

Our chickens like to go into the goat stall during the day to root around through the straw for food as well as to just hunker down out of the weather. Some had gotten in the habit of jumping up on-top of the corner hay feeder. This was not a problem when it was full of hay other than the fact that they tended to spill some of it, but one day the feeder was empty and one of our Delaware's managed to fall down into the feeder and get herself stuck. Not sure how long she was like this but upon removing her it was clear she could not walk. Danielle hoped that she was just in shock so she isolated her and gave her some food and a electrolyte solution.

After a couple of days it was clear that she was not going to recover so I culled her. Not really wanting to take the time to pluck all her feathers I instead just skinned her. It was apparent when butchering her that she had broken her one leg and had a significant amount of internal injuries. It ended up that I was only able to salvage the two hind quarters and one breast. After letting the meat age for a few days in the refrigerator I made what turned out to be a delightful dinner -- if I do say so myself. I first browned the chicken on the stove top with some butter and onions. Then added some chicken stock to deglaze the pan and baked it with some fresh rosemary from the garden. Served over some farmstyle home fries made with our own red potatoes it was quite a treat.

We have since removed the corner feeders from all of our stalls, but this definitely seems like an example of making lemonade from lemons.