Once Upon a Dream

As usual, the dreamer in me has come up with a new dream...

I'm not sure how true the dreaming part is, but I can see it. Tom says that I am the one that comes up with the ideas for our farm. The hoop house, the chickens and assorted poultry...the pigs. Although, I believe that Tom was the one that was more interested in getting the turkeys and geese. I love the turkeys, the geese and I have an understanding. They are not my favorite and I am definitely NOT their favorite. They respect me though - it helps when I am carrying something to remind them that they are not in charge. 

I digress...

About a week ago I was thinking about how I "need" to grow more tomatoes. Did you know that on bushel of tomatoes (or about 53 pounds) will make 15-18 quarts of  tomato juice? Also, it will take a little less to make thick tomato sauce. I haven't been able to grow that many tomatoes in the last 4 or 5 years.  Anyway, I was thinking about how and where that would happen.

We only utilize about half of our property for our house and out buildings and critters and the garden. There are large portions that are not usable, even though it appears so. We have discovered that a couple of inches below the surface lies all sorts of asphalt toward the back of our property. These areas are where the old barn and the equipment shed are located and the weeds and grass have taken over quite nicely. 

So, we can use just about any area that is located at the front of the property - probably about half of it. We can only assume that the old farmer did not require asphalt in these areas.

This photo was taken by our neighbor across the street who has a drone and was messing around with it and took some photos for us. Our piece of the old farm consists of 2.71 acres and is the only portion that is mostly square and not long and narrow. We are guessing that the top third of the property had asphalt all around the old shed and where the barn used to sit (upper right).

My current garden space is opposite the house on the other side of the driveway. I've been very happy with this location, but now that I have discovered food preservation by way of canning (pressure and water bath) I am VERY interested in growing LOTS of vegetables. Making sauerkraut via fermentation has been one of my new favorites. The big garden has been a great space for the past few years, but now I need more space!

Back to where I want to create more space...

This space has four 4x4 garden boxes that we built waaay back in 2008(!). Those boxes are so old, but holding up well. The other garden boxes are from when my friend Mary was gardening here at our home. After a couple of seasons she decided that life was getting too busy to maintain a garden at our house and gifted the boxes to us. Really though, would she have taken them to her house anyway?

In the past three years we used the boxes for a variety of different things and they worked well. They are big though and it's hard for me to weed the 4x8 boxes without getting into them while filled with my plants. Also, they are not holding up well and the wood has completely rotted out. So out they went. Not all of them though, I still have something in one of the big boxes and rhubarb in one of the narrow ones.

This is just the beginning. We have a lot of work to do, but a little bit here and a little bit there will get the job done. We started by taking out a couple of big boxes and on of the narrow ones. The last big one has my sweet potato experiment in it right now, so that one won't be going anywhere anytime soon. 

There is enough pig poo to help the soil, but we'll need to get some sand to help fluff up the soil. We do have quite a bit of wood chips so that would also help the garden space out. We'll see how things go over the next few months.

Another reason why I have been thinking about a new space - the critters. The pigs and the chickens get into the garden boxes regularly and it's hard to keep them out. The pigs will do anything to get into a space that is alluring to them which means they have been going underneath the chicken netting that I have around my new space. That wasn't to keep them out, but to visualize how much space I would have to work with. How will we keep the critters out? Well, there is a welded wire fence that encloses the big garden, so we'll do the same with my new space. The pigs can't get underneath that fence and the chickens don't jump onto the top of the welded wire fence because there is nothing for them to perch on. 

So yeah, I am the dreamer and mostly and a problem solver - to a certain degree. Now that I don't have work issues to think about I can think about the "issues" here on the farm.

Farm Life!

It's Been a Minute

We Had a Pig Rodeo...

It's crazy to think that my last post was when the momma's farrowed at the end of May/beginning of June. Here we are nearing the end of August and we have reduced our piglet herd by six. We could still sell a couple of the babies if someone were to ask, but we might just keep them for meat. 

Last week it occurred to me that I should maybe check my ad on Craigslist. I had received ANY queries on the pigs when I usually do. Well, the first week I usually don't. When we decide to pray about the piggies selling then we start getting responses - funny how that works out. We also decided to post a flyer at the feed warehouse again. There wasn't any interest when we did that in the spring, but this time Tom got a call from a woman who wanted to purchase a boar for her one year old gilt. I also had received a message from a family that wanted to purchase 4! 

Tom's customer, Linda, had gotten his number at the feed warehouse and he was texting and talking with her about what her preference would be. The other party, from Washougal, was my task and I ended up exchanging texts with Andy for a little bit before they decided that they wanted to come and meet the piggies and at least start with two baby swine. 

They both came Saturday afternoon - oh boy... the pig viewing window went from 1pm to 3pm. They both arrived within a half hour or so of one another. I was pretty happy that the 1 pig couple came sooner than later since we could get Brutus out of the mix fairly quickly and then continue on with the family. 

Since Tom had talked to Linda about registering the hog later we had to at least get him tagged so that could happen if she decided she wanted to register him. He was easy to grab and get into the cage, but then I realized that he still needed an ear tag, poor dude. It's bad enough that he was tricked into coming close to be grabbed. Then he was alone in the cage, but now he needs to get a piercing. Not cool people...not cool. The hardest part about that is getting said swine to sit still just a little before proceeding to pierce its ear. Fortunately, the pain is minimal (as far as we know) and a little bread to distract them afterwards is always good. Later in the day I got a message from the buyer and he was settling in nicely with his new older female friend. He is an over-achiever ;) 

Once that was done and that couple left, we could focus on getting the four caught and into crates. Since the family was out and about picking up their craigslist finds they had a very long trailer that had a few large diamter PVC pipes on in. So they could not pull into the driveway. He was able to park on the path in front of our house though, so not all bad. 

After a bit of discussion about AGH in general and them seeing our hogs they decided to go with getting four baby swine after all. Two boys and two girls. They hope to breed for future meat and to maybe harvest one or two of these for meat for their fam. 

Oh, so I mentioned that we reduced the herd by six, if anyone was keeping count...we had a random sale a couple of weeks ago. A woman who was at a week long church reunion next door to our farm came to tell us that a couple of our pigs were outside of the fence area...Blah Blah Blah. We were ready for church and on our way out the door when she dropped by. After a minute we saw Ethel (she's the bad one) and a couple of the babies running back then we were on our way. EXCEPT as the woman was walking down the driveway she did ask if the pigs were for selling or eating. To which I replied both. This then started a longer conversation that I am not going to post about here...it's far too long and it's an old story now. Let's just say that after more conversation later in the day and my satisfaction that the one pig that she wanted would not be just a pet, we sold her a gilt. I am not sure what kind of farm she went off to, but my hope is that she (the woman) is living the self-sustainable life that she claims and that our little pig will be a part of their homesteading journey for a while to come.

ANYWAY...

All in all, Saturday was a good day - a little hectic with the sales to two separate parties, but good. I'm very please with these buyers though, they wanted breeders and they got them! Rexy & Fiona have done a good job together in their three years. Bridgette was bred twice by her littermate, Victor, so we are fairly certain that she will continue to do well.

The vibe is definitely different now. We only have gilts left - maybe they miss their brothers...hard to say. They might have been traumatized by the activities of Saturday afternoon. 

Four of the girls on Sunday morning

Hopefully they will move on from their funk and back into their piggy shenanigans before too long. Their purpose will be a year long project as we are venturing into selling meat on the hoof. That's a different chapter in this farm story though, so check back for that.

Farm life is the best life, even when sending pigs to new homes.