Bridgette's Babies

November 24, 2020

Our Miss Bridgette (aka Lil Momma) gave us five brand fresh new piglets a week ago! Three girls and two boys. They are thriving and getting more active with each day! Pretty soon they will be out and running around the farm just like their momma did a few months ago. 

It's been a while since she was a newly born piglet - like 8 months - she's a "teen mom." At first I was concerned that she wasn't really interested in them and that they had to go to her and grunt for food. Only then it seemed she would oblige and plop down on here side. Over the past few days she has been  doing much better and the babies nurse regularly. They have changed quite a bit. 

They are a bit more chubby now and not so many wrinkles. 

Man it was nice being home for the Thanksgiving holiday! I spent so much time watching them. 

I could watch them all day long!

Soon her momma, Fiona, will farrow and we'll have even MORE piglets! Fiona had 8 piglets to begin with, but in the end we ended up with 6 babies. So, we could be looking at another 8 piglets, possibly more. Fiona's first unsuccessful litter was 5. She could give us a few more, but goodness, I hope not. I kinda like thinking that 8 would be her magic number for litter size! We'll see soon. I calculated her potential due date and it could be this coming Saturday at the earliest. 

What will we do with so many piglets? Well, a few months ago I saw a timeline on butchering piglets at regular intervals from 12 weeks to 14 months. Since it has been a while that I've seen it on Facebook I had to put a question out on the AGH Group on Facebook. A response was posted quickly.

Here's how it goes...

From Cascade Meadows Farm:

Let's say you have a litter of 8 piglets:

Piglet 1 - Slaughter an uncastrated boar at 12 weeks and roast whole in the oven.

Piglet 2 - Slaughter an uncastrated boar at 13 weeks and roast whole in the oven

Piglet 3 - Slaughter an uncastrated boar at 14 weeks and roast whole or half at a time outside or inside.

Piglet 4 - Slaughter the last uncastrated boar at 16 weeks, quarter and cook 1/4 at a time over the next couple of weeks

Piglet 5 - slaughter the first female at 5 months and use it up over the next month or two

Piglet 6 - Slaughter female at 7 months and use it up over the next few months

Piglet 7 - Slaughter female at 10 months and use it up over the next few months

Piglet 8 - Slaughter female at 14 months

This is a very cool schedule and I am interested in trying this out BECAUSE this slaughter schedule is from the farm that we got our Rex & Fiona. So I trust them and how to do this food growing thing. 

Until Fiona farrows, we are going to enjoy Bridgette and her little brood. 

I'm So Tired

 I really tried to keep up with this blog. The closer I get to retirement the more hopeful I get that I will be able to update here more often than I have this past year. So much has happened in the past few weeks!

We are officially done raising meat chickens for the year. We thought that the chickens would be ready the week before Halloween, but as it turns out, they were still too small and just not great going through the process of processing them. After processing 8 of them, we called off the rest of the day and had our helpers go home. We were disappointed that we had to do that, but honestly, how long would we have to grow these guys out? Nearly a month later and so many days of listening to the meaties crowing at all times of the day - we finally went through the whole flock and graduated them to Freezer Camp. As it turns out, the extra month really didn't make that huge of a difference. They were still on the smallish side and they did not do well tumbling in the plucker. Smallest chicken was 3 lbs and the biggest just over 4 lbs. I guess we got spoiled with the Freedom Rangers as we had many 4 pounders and an occasional 5 pound bird. Definitely going back to them next year!

These terrible birds all bagged up and nestled into the freezer.

The last bird that we processed this past weekend was one of our turkeys that we acquired in June. At 5 months old he was still a little on the smaller side, but since it's just Tom and I it's actually perfect. Not much difference processing our big ol' turkey (big compared to the chickens). We were ready and not ready to take care of the deed. The plucker seemed to be an inadequate size when we thought about it, but turns out it would have worked just fine. Anyway, We don't have restraining cones big enough to accommodate a turkey so we had to hang him by his feet. HOWEVER, we didn't have any kind of rope or twine to wrap around his legs. So zip ties would have to do, BUT we didn't have any large sized zip ties so Tom connected to small ones together and we tried to make that work out. THEN how would we hang him? We didn't have a hook so after some thinking Tom came up with a tie down strap that has a hook. SCORE! After he got that situated and got Carlos on the hook he slit his neck. As soon as he started flailing a little he fell down. UGH. So Tom ended up holding him while he bled out. 

The rest of the process went okay. We ended up hand plucking him since we weren't sure we could run him in the Yard Bird. He is now aging in the fridge after swimming around in a salt brine for a couple of days. We'll see how he roasts up for Thanksgiving dinner! 

The other day I got a couple of photos from Tom while I was at work - 

The only girl from Fiona's litter in March farrowed late on Monday. Sneaky little Bridgette getting knocked up at four and a half-ish months old! Little Missy is doing great! The piglets are doing great!

 The funny thing about this - I had the thought that she might be pregnant since she didn't have a heat cycle since the end of July. Tom hadn't mentioned anything since the summer and I wasn't going to say "You know, I think Bridgette is preggo." He was kind of dismissing my concern over her and her litter mate "gettin' busy." Last week as I was observing Bridgette's body, it seemed to have changed a bit. For starters, her teats were looking a little more pronounced and I'm sure that Fiona wasn't like that at all. So, I decided to keep all of the information to myself. Then, late last week I arrived home from work and Tom was getting dinner prepped and he looked at me and said "You know, I think Bridgette is pregnant." My response, "I know." 

HAHAHAHAHA....I had a moment. 

So now that we were on the same page we were looking at her over the weekend and her lady part was looking rather swollen. I thought maybe another week. Tom concurred. NOPE let's say Monday evening. Then Tom figuring it out Tuesday morning after all of the piggies were set free from their house. Even Bridgette went sauntering out as if nothing happened. 

We are very excited that she has a healthy litter of 3 girls and 2 boys. They seem small, but then I think Fiona's March litter were just as little, I just don't remember. They grow so fast! 

This weekend I'll be spending a lot of time with the piglets and lil momma. I just love those wrinkly little bodies!

On top of going to work and doing the farm thing, last week was National Collection Week. So, each day I left work an hour early to go home and eat dinner and then go and sit at the church waiting for people to come and drop off their filled shoeboxes for Operation Christmas Child. My role each year is being a host and interacting with the donors whether they are groups or individuals. This year was different due to COVID and everything had to be done outside. No non-volunteer people were allowed into the building. We were running a curbside drop-off. for the rare occasion that there was more than one donor there was another host who would take care of the ones that I couldn't get to. Numbers were definitely down, but that just made each box received even more special. In the end we received over 15,000 filled shoeboxes. It has been said that each box reaches 3-5 people with the gospel message. You do the math! That's a lot of God's love working through the hands of the people who packed each and every box this year. 

So I might be tired, but I have so much to be thankful for this Thanksgiving season. Our farm, my upcoming retirement, and my friends and family.

Be blessed during this holiday season!

Friday Update

My posts kinda fell away as I got later into the week during my vacation - mostly because I ended up being busy and a bit tired.

1. The Meaties - Last Saturday we were set up to process the FryPan special Meaties. The only problem was that they were not ready for processing. After the first 8 it became pretty clear that these birds were not ready. So Tom suggested that we quit for the day and he would process them in the weeks to come when they start looking big enough and all that. So our helpers finished up the last two birds and then were off for the rest of the day. 

This was not great news as I really just wanted to be done with the Meaties for the year. Mostly because I'm tired of them - which is pretty ironic as I work full-time and am not at home during the week and only do chores on weekends. Even so, it is costing a lot to keep feeding them for as slow as they are growing.

Until then we'll continue to shovel food into them and hope they don't take too much longer to get big enough to process. 

2. The pullets - we had planned to get the baby Buff Orpingtons and the Blue Sapphire Plymouth Rocks out into the chicken tractor with the turkeys after the big meatie harvest, but there was a change of plans. So we created a space for them in the yard under the cherry tree and they are doing GREAT!

Well my effort to do a Friday update didn't happen this past week so this is it. I will try again next week :)

Bridgette & Victor are now 7 months old!

Retirement can't get here soon enough. It will be a wonder when I get to January and don't have to get up and get ready for work!

Saturday

Well, I missed posting yesterday. Mainly due to the fact that I was exhausted from not sleeping well for several nights and it finally caught up with me yesterday.

Today we are processing the Jenk's Hatchery FryPan Special meaties. I'll tell you what, I'm very ready to get this done and over with. These dudes take a very long time to grow out and my attention span is just over 3 months - the time it takes for the Freedom Rangers to reach harvestable size.

A lot of these dudes have started crowing and I'm not cool with that. Yes, I knew that it would happen, but still they started crowing weeks ago. Most of the time it's entertaining because they aren't good at it yet. There are a couple who I would say were over-achievers and were quite good and loud!

What we have learned about these meaties:

1. They are not especially smart. I suppose that's true for most birds, but it took these dudes to figure out the routine in the evening. The Freedom Rangers caught on fast and would generally be ready to be locked in. All without having to chase a few around the paddock to get them into the Chicken Tractor. 

2.  There are three different breeds in this FryPan special and they are all different. The light colored boys were mostly friendly and allowed us to pick them up and set them on our laps at time. There was one dark gray meatie who was just a bully. He would run around and pick fights with the other ones. And the speckled ones were very skittish. They didn't necessarily care if we were near them, they just didn't want to be grabbed. For any reason.

3. As I mentioned before - they are very slow growing. Today we are at 15 1/2 weeks. We could have done nearly two batches of Cornish Cross in the same time-frame. The Freedom Rangers were not nearly as long, but also were a much nicer meat bird which made it more enjoyable to grow them. 

4. Personality - these birds weren't mean, but they were super curious and would not hesitate to start pecking on your leg or arm or whatever after they saw something interesting. As they grew up with the turkeys, we would spend most evenings trying to console the turkeys because the meaties could be so spirited. The turkeys got over the meaties pretty quickly so it wasn't all that bad. 

We may be processing these guys a little early, but I didn't want to be out at the end of the month doing the job in what would most likely be the typical weather for the Pacific NW fall season - RAIN. It can be done, but nobody wants to be in the rain if they don't need to. So, really, we lucked out today - mostly cloudy with a small chance for rain or showers or misting. 

Today was also going to be the day that we promoted some of the laying hens to Freezer Camp. However, that changed when I took one of the ladies that had spent the evening out (bad girl!) and locked her in with the meaties. They immediately started to attack her. Okay, so I guess they get to stay with us a little longer, not much longer though - they are just hanging around and eating food and not laying anymore eggs! Just a bunch of freeloaders. They are sweet hens though, but have outlived their purpose on the farm.

Just for the sake of curiosity we are planning to grow a batch of Cornish Cross. We want to see how different they are compared to the Freedom Rangers and if it will make a difference letting them out on grass instead of confining them to a small space like those big commercial poultry barns that house thousands and thousands of chickens. 

Okay...I'm not going to get started because this is not the time for this subject. What it is time for is some more prep work for our day today!

The Garden

 It's been time to put the garden to bed for quite a while. I would say since the middle of summer when I started to realize that this year's crop garden was just an idea. Or a dream...yeah, dream is more like it. 

The only thing that worked would be the Salvaterra Tomatoes. Even then, I wasn't 100% satisfied with those being in the big garden. Mainly because the bunnies were in and out and nibbling on pretty much anything that looked good to them. We do have a solution that we will put in place for next season. Tom was lamenting to one of our friends about the bunnies and she suggested using burlap. I did a little research and found a 100' roll of one foot wide burlap at Uline. Since there are so many other things to do right now that can wait until the spring once we get closer to planting some crops in there.

Once I can get that in I think I might be more excited about the garden and maybe, just maybe we will have things like beans. 

So long sad 2020 garden!

Today I spent some time getting some of the giant plants OUT. ALL of the Romanesco was overgrown and therefore no longer edible. Actually, I don't think that it was ever in an edible stage. Every time I would go and look at the plants there was nothing. Maybe I just got them out too late. Next year I'll have to try getting the seeds started early and then get the plants our once the frost has past. Hmmmm... Also pulled up the rest of the cabbage, cut open the pumpkins for the pigs and took out the T-posts that were used for a tomato trellis and the stakes that reminded me where the center of the squash plants were.

This year's garden was so disappointing. So much that I didn't really care to see how things were going with so many different things. I am happy that I had enough tomatoes to put several pints of sauce on the shelf and some tomato juice as well.

Next year will be different and I will have loads of time to work in the hoop house and in the garden in addition to taking care of the pigs and poultry. I think I've been wanting to leave my job ever since we added laying hens. That was just one thing in addition to the garden(s), but I could tell that I needed more time. Not to mention the rest of the critters that we have added to our little farm. 

Once I'm retired and settled into my new routine at home Farm Life is going to be truly the BEST.

Saving Seeds - Saving Money

 Just in the last couple of gardening seasons I have started to save seeds from the plants that I had grown in the garden. Beans and Peas were the first things that I had saved. So easy too - just letting the pods dry out completely and then pop them open...Seeds Baby! Last year was my first big seed saving project. The veg that I saved seeds from: variety of squash, Glass Gem corn, peas, kohlrabi and some of my Tiger's Eye Beans. The only thing that I hadn't gotten would be the Provider beans. The geese were allowed into the garden after the season was over and they annihilated the beans. I let them, so it's hard to be upset with them.

Okay, so I may have gone a little overboard last year, but hey, I couldn't help myself. It seems a shame to waste such a precious resource. I can plant row after row after row of sunflowers if I wanted and I might just do that next year. The Glass Gem corn might warrant its own garden space. So many possibilities for the 2021 growing season. 

This morning I spent some time harvesting seeds from my spent Basil, Genovese plants. Also, I prepared the garlic that I saved from the harvest in June and some of the shallots that I pulled up this summer also. Over the weekend I plucked a Salvaterra tomato that was overripe and took seeds from it. There are still a couple of things that I want to get some seeds from a lone Delicata Squash and the Spookie pie pumpkins that came from last year's seeds.

Basil Genovese - Seed Savers Exchange

Mt Saint Helens Garlic - Territorial Seeds

French Shallots - Territorial Seeds

By setting aside some of these garlic and shallots I'm already saving nearly $40. With the seeds from like the corn, beans and peas those packets are $3.25 each. This is pretty typical when ordering from quality seed companies that sell organic, heirloom seeds all non-gmo of course.

My hope is to continue saving the seeds that I know that we'll plant in the future. Starting in 2021 with my retirement and the reduced amount that it will bring and Tom's retirement I think that our income will be more limited and we'll need to be mindful about what we spend our available funds on. We are going into this new phase of life with a lot of reliance on the God who made the universe and cares for each an every need that we have. Trusting that the Lord has prepared the way for me to be away from a full time job. Also, trusting that He hears us even before we realize that we have a need.

Farm Life is a Blessed Life!

Sunday Funday

Today, Monday, I am officially on vacation! A week away from work is just what I need!

This week might be full of all sorts of things that I think that I will get done. There are two things for sure that I know that we'll accomplish - First, Meatie Batch #2 will graduate to Freezer Camp on Saturday and second, I will be sowing a bunch of seeds (greens) into the hoop house bed. I would like to get the garlic into one of the garden boxes, but I will need help getting the fence back up around the box. The chickens abhor a nicely tilled/planted box. They would get in there quick and dig everything up! The netting wouldn't be a bad idea either, so that might happen as well.

The weekend went by pretty quick, as usual. Yesterday I got the rest of the Freedom Ranger chicken into jars and processed. BOOM - cooked meat on the shelf! This time around I had a little help from the hubs. It took me a couple of hours to part out the three chicken from a few weeks ago. I didn't want to spend too much time working on the last five from the freezer. The cool thing is that I filled 7 jars with legs, thighs and breast meat, just like last time...

Canned Chicken Meat!

The only thing I did differently this time is that I added water to each jar. So we have some broth to keep the meat tasty. 

Now, I have five carcasses that I will now use to make even MORE bone broth. I have so much broth on the shelf! More is not a bad thing though. As winter comes I'm sure that we'll be using the broth and some of the chicken to make soup. So easy!

It's lunch time on Monday and I've already gotten the greens seeds planted in the hoop house. I also took the opportunity to bring the Saffron Crocus planters into the hoop house. I'm glad I did as the chickens did jump into the garden box that I placed them into and started to scratch up a couple of the planters. I'm so annoyed, but I only have myself to blame. I should have known better - they will get into whatever has plain soil and start digging away. 

Today has been filled with enough outdoor activities, it's time to do some indoor stuff now.

Friday Fun Day

Actually, Friday's at work haven't been fun for a long time. In fact, most Friday's find my work mate, myself and the PIO just trying to get through the day. Honestly, this week has been really long and I've been looking forward to today more than usual because next week I'm on VACATION!

So, what has happened in the last week?

Last Saturday I did a load of potatoes and then spent the rest of the day and weekend resting.

Sick Day - for some reason I wasn't feeling 100% on Monday morning when I woke up, but then that was partially from spending most of the night coughing and not sleeping. Around breakfast time I wasn't still wasn't feeling great so I decided to take some sick time. With 1040 hours in the bank, I think I can take a sick day. Monday was basically a down day and watching A LOT of stuff on TV. I rented The Biggest Little Farm on Amazon and watch so much Star Trek Voyager. I napped too. 

The rest of the week was rather unremarkable really. My cough was getting to be a bit much the past couple of days, but I'm actually doing much better now. With the days getting shorter there aren't many things to do around the farm. It's getting cooler in the evenings also.

I am looking forward to having a week off though. There are project that I need to do that I would rather do during the daylight hours and not after dinner. Because after dinner is reserved for the turkeys!

Carl is getting so handsome

My plans for the next week - the start pulling up stuff in the garden. I'll probably get the small squash out and let the pigs feast on them. It would be nice to clean things up enough to get the tarp down and help kill off the weeds that have taken over. This will be a fun experiment to see how long it take to smother those weeds! 

The hoop house is ready for planting. There are several things I want to sow, but I'm not sure which greens I want to grow yet. I'll need to remember to water in there otherwise my efforts will be wasted and we won't have any greens this winter.

It's time to process the meaties. My hope is that we'll get that done next Friday or Saturday. It will have to be Saturday no matter what. The decision to get these birds may not have been the best one. Tom picked them up on July 7th and quite honestly I've been getting tired of them. Several of the little roos have started to crow. Most of the time it's entertaining, because they are not good at it and sound like they may have smoked one too many cigarettes - LOL...

Once I get through vacation there will be jsut one more week left in October. Then November will go pretty quick and then December...

THEN RETIREMENT!

What I Don't Do Well

There are a lot of things that I don't do well, but one of them is not taking care of myself very well. It's not like I am reckless and just go willy-nilly doing whatever, which I do, but not to the extent that I did this past Saturday.

You see, if I stand too much or lift too many heavy-ish things, I risk hurting my back. It seems that I've always had issues with my back for as long as I can remember in my adult life. An innocent twist here and a heavy lift there and BAM my back is unhappy. In more recent years I've decided that I don't like to be in pain more than I need to - let's face nobody likes to be in pain. Anyway, I've been getting good at asking the hubs for help lifting pretty much anything that is more than a five pound bag of sugar or heavier. A lot of times, I will carry the hefty-ish item myself on the sly, only to be discovered and then lightly reprimanded for carrying whatever. I'm glad for the help now that I know that it's for the health of my back.

WELL this past Saturday after I found the canning jars I was really excited to do some canning. The project of the day was potatoes. I got two bags of potatoes and after I was left alone for the afternoon I got to work getting the potatoes prepped. Knowing that standing too long will cause me problems, Tom was kind enough to find me a stool to use while I'm working on things that don't require standing. I set up my work table and got to work peeling 10 pounds of potatoes...all while sitting on my very comfortable stool.

One thing leads to another and pretty soon I'm moving back and forth from the work table to the sink and transferring potatoes from my giant bowl to a stock pot full of water for boiling. The stock pot by itself is a little heavy, add water and potatoes and it's a lot more heavy. Fortunately, my work area in the kitchen isn't vast. So transferring the pot from the sink to the stove is just a couple of steps or so. 

To be honest, I never think about if I'm going to be in pain at the end of the day. I'm just enjoying the process so much! 

Nine canning jars later I'm ready to transfer the jars along with the All American canner to the garage. Here's where it gets a little physically demanding. The cart that I use during my canning adventures is this ONE. It is the perfect size to tote my canner and the jars and other tools in one trip. The only problem with using the cart for this particular canning session was the fact that there was 40+ pound bag of scratch in the cart which made the cart hard to pull and left not much room to transport my supplies safely in one trip. I'll tell you what, that thing was HEAVY! I could have wrestled the bag out of the cart, but I would have been in much worse shape.

After I was able to get things out to the garage and the whole process started, I felt the first twinges in my back. It only got worse from that point. By the time Tom had returned I was in a lot of pain and STILL trying to get things done - I had to do two rounds of canning to finish the project on Saturday. Even though my back hurt and I knew better, I continued to do the lifting like I probably should not have. 

The rest of the day was not great. The pain was terrible and it was a reminder that I REALLY need to pay attention to what I'm doing and not over-do it so much. However, to do the things that are fun I have to fit them into the weekends that go by fast. 

The day is coming though, I won't have to work so hard to cram all the things into my weekends. That day can't come soon enough, now that I know that it will be here soon-ish. Until then I'll try to remember to be mindful of the things I'm getting myself into and rest more than I think I need to and be thankful for prescription naproxen!

This is more like homestead life...

There Was A Shortage

There still is a shortage...of Canning Jars!

When I decided to figure out this canning thing I had some jars. The whole purpose of wanting to can food wasn't because there would/could be a food shortage. What I wanted to do is grow TONS of paste type tomatoes and make sauce for the shelf. I found out quickly that freezer space runs out very quickly. In July I used the jars that I had and bought a case here and there and freed up some space in the giant freezer in the garage.

Knowing that I really enjoyed canning more than I thought I would it was time to start buying supples to store for future canning sessions. The last time I bought several cases of canning jars was probably early August. Wilco had a coupon available, so we went and I thought I was stocking up and only got a couple of cases of quart jars and a couple of pints. I may have been able to purchase another case or two after that purchase. 

Since then I have been watching the canning jar supply starting to dwindle to a few cases here and there to NOTHING. Empty shelves wherever we went. My reality, along with the masses,  is that I haven't been able to find jars ANYWHERE. 

During some of my searches online I would find that the places that have (or had) jars available are no where near Mt. Hazelidacreekshore area. On Monday or Tuesday I saw on Ace Hardware's website that they had jars available....in Woodland. Nope, not gonna drive there after work. I believe that Wilco still had some also. Okay, Battle Ground is closer, but still, not gonna drive there after work. After searching some more throughout the week it looked like JoAnn Fabric had a case of pint jars - so I went ahead and put those in the cart and checked out. I was hoping that I would get these, but my hopes were dashed. Within a couple of hours I got the email that said that the jars were no longer available. Sadness. SO CLOSE!

I started to think that my last canning project would be the chicken that we have left from our spring meatie batch. There are only 5 whole chickens left and I think that I would only need like 3 or 4 jars for those. That would have to be the end of my food canning adventures for a while.

However, yesterday we went out for coffee and to run a couple of errands. The first place we stopped was Parkrose and they only have the itty-bitty jars that are good for things like pesto or small quantities of jams or spreads. I did spy the Ball Electric Water Bath Canner though, so that was pretty cool.

Available at Amazon

We found the items that we needed and then made our way to Fred Meyer for breakfast stuff that I meant to make this morning...but didn't. Oooops! There's always tomorrow!

As we were walking through the aisles, it felt almost like I was being pushed to walk down the aisle that we did. I kind of knew that the pecans wouldn't be down this aisle, but then it happened...

What the WHAT?!

I almost couldn't believe my eyes! The elusive cases of canning jars! So, Tom went to grab a cart since we thought we were only coming in for a couple of items. I stood guard over these. Amazingly, no one else showed any interest in this small supply. Any other crazed human looking for canning jars probably would have grabbed most of these, but I'm not greedy. So I just opted for a case of quart jars and a case of pint jars. 

We went to check out and I didn't think much of the cost of the jars, but when I looked at the receipt I found that the quart jars cost close to $18 and the pints not quite $13. Boy Fred Meyer, way to jack up the prices! Meh, I have some jars now. 

So, the lesson that I learned from this year's canning adventure. Buy them when I see them and store them in the basement. There will come a time when I won't need to go hunting for these though, just the lids. However, until we get to that point in my canning adventures I'll be hunting for these jars along with the rest of the bored quarantine people.

Yes, I did do a canning project after we got home...

Nine quarts of yellow potatoes for the shelf

Friday Round-Up

This week has been a little weird - so much that I'm not sure about today and the weekend.

Well, after a solid year of needing, wanting desiring to be away from the Fire District I did it. I quit - kind of. Actually, I decided the kind thing to do would be to give ample notice so that a replacement could be hired and properly settled in before I sail off into my farm sunset. So I will continue to work through the end of December and wake up on January 1, 2021 and be a retired person! 

Then what? Since we will both be drawing retirement (mine will be a reduced benefit for leaving "early") I might do something that doesn't have set hours. The other day it occurred to me that I could become a Notary Public and do mobile biz. Over the next couple of months I will do some more research and see what I will need to do to earn my commission. Until I do that, I will devote time to do more work for Operation Christmas Child and do a whole lotta work on our farm. We'll be doing the work together as it should be and enjoying life as farmers. 

This is really the big thing that happened this week. I spent a couple of days this week going to appointments so, not much has happened at home. Well, that's not true, there's always something. We did move the meaties/turkeys to a less poopy area, nothing big. In a couple of weeks we'll be getting ready to process the meaties and I'll be on vacation - yahoooo!

Until next time...I'll be resting my way through the weekend!

First Friday - Top 5

This past week...wow - it went fast and slow at the same time. 

I decided that it was time for a vacation day to do stuff at home, so I took Monday September 28th off. It was a productive day of doing projects at home and I needed the day away from work just to be refreshed just a little. 

So here's what happened this past week...

1. MORE Canning - Last Saturday I spent part of the day canning some of our homegrown chicken. The first thing that needed to happen is to part each chicken so I could can the legs, thighs and breast meat. It was a very slow process since I have not cut a chicken up before. It was gross, but had to be done, so I powered through. I wanted to do this so that we would have room in the freezer for the 26 meaties that will be processed in a couple of weeks. Anyway, the method was super easy. Basically filling each jar about 2/3 full of chicken and place the lid and ring on and BOOM ready for the canner. I got the idea from Living Traditions Homestead on YouTube go HERE to check out their video. I decided to start with three chickens just in case parting out the chicken got to be too much. It wasn't terrible, I got the job done. Next time I think it will go quicker. There will be a next time since we have 5 more in the freezer that I would like to go ahead the process.

Homegrown Freedom Rangers

Ready for the Canner

This turned out alright

2. The Junior Swine - Victor & Bridgette turned 6 months old on September 28th. Now that Rex & Fiona are nearly two and half years old I can hardly remember what they looked like at six months old! V & B are so good! Actually Miss Bridgette is quite the bully at meal time. So much that poor Victor submits to his sister and will walk away. He is so passive...compliant...peace-keeper. We actually need him to eat up...he is our BaconHamChop!

The Chubby Bubbies!

3. More Canning - On Monday I decided to can the bone broth that I made out of the chicken carcasses from Saturday. Waste not, want not. Since we started growing our own meat chickens I don't think that we have bought broth at the store, but maybe a couple of times. When we process the chicken we save the feet for broth. When we roast a chicken for dinner we take the carcass and make broth. Since we usually end up just eating the legs, things, wings and breast it's a shame to waste the rest of the carcass. Plus broth is the easiest thing to make! I also took time to make Strawberry Lemonade concentrate for Tom. It's a recipe from the new canning book that I bought on Amazon. It was a good day to just do the stuff that bring me joy and also to hang out with the critters when I wasn't doing inside stuff.

Six more quarts of broth and not quite three pints of
Strawberry Lemonade concentrate

4. Beef Box order - We have been ordering grass fed Beef from a "local" ranch for a little while. Previously we were ordering Butcher Box, but I had become a little dissatisfied with the meat and not really sure if it was really good meat. Since we grow our own chicken I wasn't ordering chicken, now that we have Victor, I don't need the pork either. Well, actually, we won't be harvesting Victor for a little while, so we still pick up some pork at the store here and there. Last year Beef Box showed up on my Instagram feed. Hmmm...what is this place? So I checked it out and decided to place an order and dump Butcher Box. I'm glad that we made the switch! The best ground beef and steaks. This week we had tri tip and it was sooo good! The other thing that makes this small biz special is that they are local - out of Cove, Oregon. That means our order ships on a Monday and is delivered on Wednesday. Our Butcher Box orders came from California and it took probably 4 days. They also used bio degradable packing peanuts. Which is great, but it always went everywhere! I'm not sure how our meat is packed from Beef Box as I have yet to actually be home when it is delivered, but I think there is a lot less packing materials. The BEST thing - Hand written notes from Gabby! Every. Single. Time.

 

5. The Turkeys & Meaties - If I haven't mentioned this before, the turkeys and the meaties are in the same area, sharing the same Stress Free Chicken Tractor. Most days the turkeys make their way out of the paddock and free range until their late afternoon meal. At that time they are ushered back to the meaties and spend the rest of the evening poking around looking for things to nibble on. Sometimes a couple of them well "escape" again. When we go out after our dinner they usually make their way back. This is the time that they get some quality human time. Sometimes they want nothing to do with us and will just continue eating or sitting off to the side by themselves. SOMETIMES they get curious about what the meaties are doing. One of the poults was curious about what the two meaties were doing and just casually walked over to check out what the fuss was all about. 

This weekend I plan to relax a bit. Putting my canning obsession on hold for the weekend, but will be looking toward finding something else to get into jars and process. 

Farm Life is a Busy Life. 

Last Friday of September

This past week has been a bit of a whirlwind, but then at the same time very slow. Work has been a little quiet, kind of. Home life is always go-go-go. Let's get these five things going...

Pokemon Go - Last Sunday was Pokemon Go Community Day and the featured Pokemon was Porygon. Yay! Since last months Community Day we decided that we would do all future Community Day events at the WSU campus around the corner and down the road from us. Last month was pretty quiet and there weren't many people. This month was different because of the fires and it was the first Sunny day with no smoke in over a week! There were all sorts of people enjoying the campus and the trails and everything. It was fun to get out and move a bit. We ended up walking the trail that leads to the entrance off of Salmon Creek Avenue and put our pokemon in the gym that is new at the WSU sign. Our pokemon are still stuck there and it might be a while until we get kicked out. Oh well. During our walk we passed this cool sculpture - 

New Book - A couple of weeks ago I placed an order for a new book with canning recipes. It came highly recommended by Living Traditions Homesteader Sarah. I've been enjoying her and her husband's YouTube videos and she had mentioned this book a couple of times. So I took a look on Amazon and read through the reviews to get a feel of what other people's thoughts were and went for it. I was excited to see that it would be delivered earlier that I thought and now I'm keen on starting to plan next year's garden while going through the recipes in this book!

Cabbage - few things worked in the garden this year. So to find a cabbage that was worthy of harvesting was a nice surprise! This variety is called Filderkraut and I had grown it once before with excellent results. So I was hoping for more than just the one head this year. There might be another one out there, but if there isn't I'll just have to try again next year. Next year's garden is going to be so much better, I can just feel it!

Baby Magpies - This week we have been enjoying watching the little Magpies developing. Unfortunately, the runty one of the trio got into a bit of a pickle yesterday and it didn't look like he/she would survive. Evidently it was all drenched and not able to walk very well. Tom set up the heat lamp and tried to dry it off as best he could and put her under the lamp. When he went to check on her again this time she was in the middle of the garage, all wet again and laying lifeless on the floor. Again little duckling was put under the lamp and Tom didn't have high hopes that she would make it. After hearing from Tom a couple of times I said a quick prayer for the baby to be strengthened. Miraculously, he/she perked up and appeared to be doing well. Today after I left for work the baby took a turn for the worst and even after a little help from Tom ended up passing away during my lunch break. The little one is the one at the bottom of the photo. We still have the other two and we are sure that Betty will continue to raise them up. She was made for this! I am sad, but since it's hard to bond with these little ducklings the loss isn't that huge. We still have two and they are a blessing. 

Silly Turkeys - We spend time with the Meaties and the Turkeys after dinner most days - weather permitting. Last night was a nice evening so we started making our way out there when I heard the familiar sound of the turkeys chirping. Then I saw them...

Seriously, never a dull moment with these two. I was able to surmise that these two were Cindy & Mindy. Just exploring the future pig palace. They are a couple of goofballs and we never know what they will be up to at any given moment.

Throw Back Thursday

 As we look forward to our next Meatie Harvest in a few weeks I was looking back at the post of our first REAL meat chicken harvest. The actual first harvest was a terrible event. Trying to reduce the number of cockerels from our first flock of chickens. Yet, we still decided to move forward and do a real batch of meaties. Go HERE to see that post.

In a few weeks we'll be getting ready to set up our equipment and process 26 meaties. I'm hoping that we'll have decent weather, but it will be late October and anything can happen. Heck it's 2020 and a hurricane might decide to blow through...hehe...

I'm excited for this next batch of chickens though because we are trying something new. The Fry Pan Special from Jenks Hatchery in Tangent, OR. My favorite place to get brand fresh newly hatched chicks! So easy to place an order and choose the hatch date and have them shipped. Unless you live within driving distance and make the trek to pick them up in person. Which is what we have done with each batch.

There are two reasons why I suggested to my hubs that we try them. The first is that they are different, not Freedom Rangers (which I love) and NOT Cornish Cross. Second, they are all cockerels and very inexpensive. I think they are even less than CC at Wilco - they ended up being $1.40 each and the minimum order is 25, but we got lucky and got 26 :)

The breeds escape me right now, but I think one of the breeds is Blue Sapphire Plymouth Rock. I think the one pictured above would be that breed. Maybe. Our batch is a mix of three breeds and we have probably a dozen of the Blue Sapphire's and a dozen of the lighter colored chickens and ONE all dark roo. 

Anyway, kinda cool to see where we are two years later. That first batch was only 15 and our current batch is 26. Who knew that we would be all in with this food growing attitude?! I really do love it! 

Farm Life Best Life

5 Things Friday

Let's try this out. I've decided to recap the last week as a way to actually get at least one post out a week. This doesn't mean that I won't be posting on the regular ('cause I haven't), but this way I'll be sure to visit this space more than once a week.

1. Adventures in Pressure Canning - over the past couple of months I have been slowly adding canned food to the pantry. These projects are a weekend thing and I've been pleased with how most things have turned out. Last Saturday I prepped about 20 pounds of Salvaterra tomatoes to make into sauce. On Sunday I got everything jarred up and into the canner and added 10 pints of sauce to the pantry. I've really enjoyed picking out new recipes to try and getting some quick and easy, throw together meals on the shelf. So far we have enjoyed Sloppy Joes - on more than one occasion, and Chicken Pot Pie. Tom's favorite thing is the pears from our trees. I am looking forward to trying the baked beans that I did a couple of weeks ago. Since I work full-time and the weekends are full with chores and errands (when needed) and church I figured the least I could do is spend some time getting food ready for future meals. 

2. Wild Fires in the Willamette Valley and in the Gifford Pinchot. The fires actually started Labor Day weekend and have been going strong until today. Very early this morning we had a pretty impressive Thunderstorm and rain too...YAY!  Well, the rain hasn't been as heavy as it could be for September in the Pacific NW, but it was rain none the less. The air quality has improved to "Unhealthy" from "Hazardous." So being outside will definitely be more pleasant and won't be nearly as smoky. We have not really had sunshine since last Tuesday and I was getting a little depressed. The smoke settled in on September 9th and stayed. Every once in a while you could see a sun ball, but not actual sunshine. It has been a long week!

3. We celebrated our 29th Wedding Anniversary last week. We had planned to go to the Willamette Valley Pie Company and have lunch and meander our way back home. Obviously, that was no longer an option. A trip to the coast would be like staying home - air quality was just as good. So we ended up shopping for our Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes and then decided to have a nice quiet steak dinner at home. 

4. Turkeys! Even though the air quality has been terrible, it didn't seem nearly as bad at our house as it did at my work. So I grabbed one of my face masks and wetted it down and went to hang with the turkeys. Our White Holland Turkeys have been with us for three months and are just over three months old. They are so fun and friendly which is a welcome change from the chickens who are just looking for a hand out. The turkeys know that food comes from us, but they don't run up and beg for food...well they do in the evening. These goofballs spend most of the day free ranging and then are ushered back in to their area with the Meaties. They might get some scratch then, but if not they know that they will get some at bed time.

5. Broody Betty. Well, since we couldn't break Betty of her broody ways, we gave her duck eggs 4 weeks ago. Early yesterday morning those eggs hatched and we now have three new Magpie Ducklings! Three is the most that she has had so far so probably in about a month or two she will be getting ready to rejoin the flock and leave the babies behind. When there were two (Leona and Walter) I think she stuck with them for about two months, maybe less. When she had the one duckling I think she stuck with that one longer, just because there was just one. Well, the three will be interesting. I predict that we'll be taking over raising them after a couple of months. Until then we are going to enjoy watching Betty with her little trio of waterfowl.

The Magpie Population

Let's start with my first post about Betty and her broody ways - go HERE to check out that post. 

Just last night Tom looked at me and said that he didn't think that those eggs were fertile and asked what we should do. Well, I thought about it for a second and then said that it take about 4 weeks for ducklings to hatch. It hasn't been quite 4 weeks yet so we need to wait. Good thing we did because Betty successfully added to our Magpie Duck population by hatching out three more ducklings.

Shortly after I arrived to work this morning I got a message from Tom saying that Betty was a surrogate mother again...YAY. After a couple of more hours he took this photo and sent it to me:

Duckling No. 1

There was no sign of other ducklings since this photo. So he was thinking that just one of the eggs was good. Again, I told him we had to wait.

He came to Hazel Dell and we went on our lunch time Pokemon hunt as we do most days. After he arrived home I received the following message:

"I think you could put a rock under betty and she could hatch it. We have 3 new duck babies."

It's good to know that Gordon is doing his job and the girls are popping out fertile eggs! These three make eight Magpies now. We'll see how many last to adult age. Out of the four last year we have one. Two were taken by a predator and one was probably squished by momma. I am hoping that hey will all survive. If they do survive we might have two "gangs" and Princess Leona. We'll just deal with the logistics of the ducks later when it becomes a thing. 

This will work out in our favor in the future. If our Turkey hens don't show interest in nesting and sitting on eggs we always have Betty. Actually, we could take a certain amount of the turkey's eggs and then give them to Betty. Then let the turkeys nest with any eggs they lay after, if they choose to. Another idea, we could just maybe sell those eggs to someone who is interested in White Holland Turkeys.

For now, we are going to enjoy the three new babies on our farm. I'm REALLY excited to get home and see them, if Betty will let me.

Twenty Nine

On this day 29 years ago we got married.

Today 29 years later we are still married.

That day was a beautiful sunny day which followed a rainy day.

Today is a smoke filled day and we pray for rain.

We had plans to go for a drive into the Willamette Valley and visit the Willamette Valley Pie Co. for lunch and meander our way back home. However, a week ago fire started up and down the valley and now much of western Oregon & Washington have smoke filled skies and it has been this way since last Wednesday.

With all of the craziness that has been occupying our minds - COVID19, lost lives, crumbling economy, the closure of businesses, BLM and protests - I'm glad that I have my rock by my side and God in the middle of our marriage. In the end, no matter what, we know that God is sovereign and he will make thing work for his good.

Today we will celebrate our marriage by doing service together. We will be heading out to shop for our Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes. Serving others in the name of Jesus wins every time.

V&B

Rex & Fiona and kids

Victor & Bridgette

Happy 5 month birthday to these two! They turned 5 months on the 28th :)

Our baby swine are no longer babies. They are growing out really nicely and are still so sweet.  Bridgette is quite the bossy little lady and will push her brother out of the way when it comes to food. However, poor Victor doesn't fight back, he is pretty chill actually. He' like, "Okay Bridgette, whatever you say" so passive. 

It's hard to say exactly how much they might weigh, but they are looking bigger all the time. That could be because of the fallen fruit from the pear trees. They don't seem terribly interested in their evening meal recently. New plan, just put out food for them and see if they are interested after filling up on pears and grass and clover. 

We are still planning to process Victor come winter time, we'll see how he looks in January or February. 

We Couldn't Break Her

Over a week ago Tom put Betty into Broody Jail. She was in jail for the amount of time that we leave hens in jail that usually sufficiently breaks them of wanting to sit on eggs.

Not with our Betty. She went broody really fast after being released back into the general population. When we figured this out, it was Friday (August 21st). During our evening after dinner routine I had enough of her wandering around and making her broody noises. I broke down and said we need to give her eggs since she has found her calling in the chicken world. A world that has NO rooster by the way...I gave her duck eggs. Again. Last year she hatched out a couple of ducklings in May and then again in late summer. from the four that she hatched, we still have one.

Betty with Walter & Leona

We started something with her by letting her sit on the eggs and it appears that she is not willing to end her mothering ways. Granted she is a good momma. She takes REALLY good care of her babies! So well, that we are not allowed to come within grabbing distance of her or the babies. Let alone look in her general direction - sometimes.

Back to the eggs, we (I) gave her three. She also has a nest that is better for when the ducklings hatch and she'll be able to get them out of the garage whenever she likes. Last year she chose a storage tote that had some straw or and pine shavings in it to set up her broody hen shop.

This is what she has this time -

An milk crate placed in a storage bin that is on its side

Her very serious look

If she continues to be broody, I might just let her be broody. Depending on how things go with the turkeys she might be our ticket to adding more White Holland chicks to our flock. However, she is so protective that she might not allow the poults to join their own kind once they are hatched. We'll have to watch the turkeys and see if they will be broody. Turkeys raising turkeys would be my first choice. However, if we had to, we'll turn to Betty for her incubating services.

Farm Life, Best Life with a broody hen!

Just a Slacker

My last post was July 20th?!

Yeah, I'm a slacker. There are days that I think that I'll pop on here and post something just to update a little, but it doesn't get done. I might have too many things to do.

So, what have we been up to here? Well, nothing and everything!

We FINALLY tagged Miss Bridgette's ear and I sent in the registration form electronically on Tuesday. We'll get her certificate in a few weeks - she is now officially counted in the AGH population. Before we could submit anything we needed to tag her. If we don't then it will never happen. Case and point - I have had the tags and the pliers for about a month. These both were moved out into the garage and as we all know, out of sight out of mind. So finally last weekend I decided to retrieve the pliers and at least bring them into the house. Plan A was to get her tagged before last weekend was over. However, the junior swine had both spent the majority of the weekend in the wallow since it was so hot and they both were muddy like all over! So, plan B - we wait until Monday and see just how much mud she still has. Fortunately, it wasn't as hot and they didn't mud spa a ton so it was time. Before we did anything, Tom watched several videos on how to tag a pig's ear (where would we be without YouTube?) We had eaten dinner and were ready to head outside for the evening and gathered up our supplies and got to it. Bridgette is a good girl, not real squirly at all and she let Tom touch her ear and use an alcohol swab and stuff. After he had cleaned her ear she plopped down on her belly. That was a good thing since I would be the one attempting to keep her from moving around. She didn't really move or make any noise until the tag was applied and then there was a medium squeal and then it was over. Tom DID it and Bridgette is now bonafide!

Our girl is officially Windswept Bridgette

Since my last post we lost one of the turkeys. My suspicion is that it was one of the males and it was sparring with one of the other males and somehow got tangled up in the netting and ended up strangling itself. This was a very sad thing since I LOVE the turkeys so much. They are so sweet and not mean at all. They are so curious and when they are happy and exploring a new place like my garden, they making a really cute chirping sound. This morning I saw that we have two lil Toms. DANG IT! I was really hoping that we only had one. They both were strutting around and looking for some sort of reaction from the girls. Just like real guys...right?

They spent a lot of the day in the garden. Surprisingly, they didn't destroy anything. They spent a lot of time picking at the weeds and taking dust baths. Plus, it's a good play pen for them. They just do their thing, chirping away and find a little shade when they get too warm. They are so curious, so when they see something new they will examine it and then proceed with caution. Once they feel safe then it's back to happy chirping and exploring. Everyone should have turkeys!

Oh, so let's address the garden. This year's garden sucks. BIG TIME. I don't know what happened, but it is so very discouraging. The only thing that is really doing well (better than decent) would be my Salvaterra tomatoes. With everything out of control everywhere else, why not my garden too? 

The bunny population has been higher than I've ever seen it in all the time that we've been here. Even the larger bunnies are able to squeeze through the fence and we suspect that they have been nibbling on the tomatoes that are lower on the plants and probably topped all of the bean seedlings. A suggestion from a friend was to attach burlap to the bottom of the fence to keep the bunnies out. It's worth a try, so we now have 100 yards of 12" wide burlap. We'll see if it is effective. 

Three pounds of tomato goodness

Even though garden boxes are doing MUCH better than the crop garden, there are still a couple of things that are not working out great. As soon as I'm able, I'll harvest the ripe veg and then pull up the plants that are in the boxes and get ready to do some greens for the fall and winter. I will still need to protect everything from the stupid chickens, but that a small price to pay for fresh eggs daily. 

While I'm completely disappointed with the garden this year, I think back and realize that not every garden was a lush and productive as last year. One year I couldn't even get flowers to germinate! There's always next time. 

Yesterday I did a canning project. My friend Lorna came over to learn and help and we had a wonderful visit. We talked and laughed and did enough work to get the jars filled and into the canner before she had to leave. She is a treasure and I wish that covid wasn't a thing anymore so we could do more stuff together. Maybe in the near future we could do dinner or something. She is far more comfortable with not practicing physical distancing - where I am not, but with her I'm okay with it.

Today, Sunday, might be another day of canning. This time I will get the pears ready for canning. Hopefully the pear that I picked last weekend are close to being ready. It should be a nice project for a not so hot day. 

I've decided to make a long weekend so I'll be home tomorrow as well. So far the whole weekend has been filled with projects and activities - today & tomorrow will be no different.

Farm Life is a Full Life!