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.
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.
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.
On July 9th a vendor that the fire district deals with ended up testing positive for Covid 19. This person really isn't a vendor, but someone who provides a service to the district and to members for personal requests.
Since I am the person who has the first contact with anyone coming to the station there was a possibility that I was exposed to the virus. So I was sent home and instructed to contact my Primary Healthcare Provider. Blah Blah Blah...I got the nasal swab and was then told to quarantine for 14 days (from day of contact). I am now on day 14 of my quarantine and will be going back to work tomorrow (July 21). I have yet to receive my results, but have no symptoms and feel fine.
After spending several days waiting for Quest Diagnostics to get my results sent to the doc I have been working on a couple of things around our farm. It was time to learn how to use my brand spankin' new All American Pressure Canner. I've only had it since May, but I have been a little apprehensive about figuring out how to use it and put it off.
I've been using the Turkey Fryer stove thing
Well, having to quarantine and opting to just have the time off and not work remotely gave me a little bit of freedom. Of course, now I decide to jump into this toward the end of my isolating period. That's how I roll people.
On Thursday of last week I decided it was time to at least figure out how to prep the monster and try out a test run. I had to do that anyway. After watching a couple of YouTube videos I got my supplies and had Tom show me how to use the Turkey fryer stove. Easy-Peasy.
My first attempt was to make sure that I was actually placing the lid on correctly and making sure that it was properly sealed. It wasn't and there was water sputtering out at different parts of the canner. So, my thought was that I probably didn't tighten the wing-nuts enough. Sure enough by batch number three and tightening each time, that was the problem. Lesson learned - just keep twisting until they can't move anymore!
Saturday afternoon I went ahead and did a batch of broth. I took several containers from the stand freezer to process and this is what we ended up with -
Two Chicken, Two Pork and one with a mix of both
So, these turned out and all of them were bubbling like crazy when I took them out of the canner. The next morning I ran another batch of four jars and they also turned out well! Today In an effort to clear out the freezer even more I canned my Salsa Verde from last October.
Broth & Salsa Verde
I think I got this canning thing down. All I need to know is how many pounds of pressure to do and the length of time to process. It's really not as scary as I thought it would be.
We have been joking about me canning everything. Well, I'm not going to do that, but I will can a lot of stuff! I'm still hopeful that I will have plenty of tomatoes to make sauce. If I'm lucky I'll have some pumpkins to process and instead of roasting, pureeing and throwing into the freezer I'll can cubes of pumpkin! Depending on how our potato harvest goes I'll can that too!
My impressions of pressure canning now that I have figured it out is that it's a good thing and a lot of fun! What I like is that we have freed up a bunch of space in the stand freezer and the refrigerator freezer. We'll be harvesting more meat chickens in a few months so I'll need more space to store the 26 birds that we have in the brooder. Since we switched to a different type of meat bird, one that will grow larger, we'll need the extra space to store them.
What needs to change. As pictured above, I have one choice to use my canner. Since my stove top is smooth, it was not recommended to use my canner on. Okay, Plan B....hmmm. I was concerned that I would either have to return the canner OR get a separate single burner type thing. There was no way that I would be returning it! After some research and thinking I remembered that we have that turkey fryer which we found on craigslist and bought it specifically for scalding our meat chickens on harvest day. SCORE!! The fryer unit was either on the floor in the garage or Tom got it down for me and I hoped really big that the canner would fit in the ring. Now that I have had a chance to try the canner out on the turkey fryer stove I decided that a knob with Lo-Med-Hi would be nice. None of this guessing stuff with turning the valve incrementally until I reached the proper heat level. The first real canning session I ended up turning it off. I lit that back up so fast! Anway, MORE research brought me to this:
Camp Chef Explorer (photo credit CampChef.com)
Then I decided that I needed to see if there were any video reviews on YouTube. What kind of question is that? Of course there's a video review! When I typed in Camp Chef Explorer Review this video popped up.
So this will be our next BIG purchase for the farm. Most of the purchases we make are to add to the farm somehow anything from equipment like the Troy Bilt rototiller to livestock/chicks and everything in between. This isn't a huge purchase, but it will be a good one!
With the food system as it is, kinda broken, this canning thing will be a regular occurrence in our home. We can buy things like dry beans in bulk, meat on sale and oooh...the boxes of fresh produce at Wilco! Since my bean plants have been attacked by something, probably a bunny, I'll have to buy beans to put-up. I'm not a fan of canned beans, but my other half is. Doing things to keep him happy is always a good thing. Then there are the two giant pear trees - another thing I'm not a fan of :( I'll have to try canning a fair amount of pears this year. Maybe this will be the year that I gain an appreciation for pears. We'll see...
Here's to another canning session coming this weekend!
