critters

Thought I'd give you an animal update. Here's a picture of some of the calves using the waterer (I let the cattle use it before I got the rest of the rock down and you can see how quickly they made an indention in front of the waterer)

There is a year and a half old heifer in the middle, back (no horns) and she is surrounded by five bull calves that were born this summer. They are almost the same size.

Here are the piglets, with the escapee sow, chowing down on some fruits and veggies.

Here's more piglets, with that same sow and one of the boars.

 And here are our "farm cats" doing what they do best - NOTHING!

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livestock-go-round

or Musical Livestock, if you prefer. No matter how you say it, there has been a lot of moving of animals in the past week. The first of which was to separate the sows from the piglets. I managed to separate and move them fairly easily. Then came the hair sheep and combining the rams and ewes. That was easy, all I did was open up the fence panel between their pens. Next came the cattle, I setup poly-wire around some of the alfalfa and moved the cowherd onto that. I even managed to get a boar moved from the garden into the sow pen and a sow into the garden with the other boar. A few delays but nothing unexpected. So far, so good right?

Well, then that sow got out and I chased her around the farm and got her back in. While I was looking for tools to repair the fence, she proceeded to run right back out the other side (this pen just has one electric fence wire). By that time it was dark and I had no idea where she was. So I fixed the  fence and called it a night. Later that night, Jamie was concerned that something would happen to her so I went back out with the spotlight and found her. I proceeded to chase her around the farm yard again and I almost had her but I ended up losing her and decided to wait until morning. The next morning Jamie and I chased her around again (ok so I chased her around but Jamie helped stage blockades) and eventually got her in the pen with the piglets. We decided that was good enough and would bring the boar to her. After some coaxing with the feed bucket, we managed to get the boar in too.

Then came the cow. Cow #27 is the "Escapee cow". I have seen her go under, over, through most fences on our farm. And I'm tired of it! This weekend was the last straw when I found her and a bunch of heifers out and some of my poly-wire down. We decided then and there that she was not going back with the herd; although she did not get the memo. I've been working with the cattle using the animal handling techniques I learned but there's not much you can do in that particular situation. So I ended up chasing her around the farm on a four wheeler. Throughout the course of the day she jumped over (and temporarily got stuck in) a barbed wire fence and three electric fences. I did get her into the corral up towards the house though and that's where she'll have to stay since she'll get out of any other sort of fencing that I have on the farm. Of course, she has a four month old calf too but he was with the herd at the time so I was only able to move her. They are both bauling but I can't get the calf to leave the herd so I'm not sure what to do. He's definitely old enough to wean but I prefer to keep him on through the winter to help him gain weight faster. I'm thinking that he will make his way to her but we'll see.

I thought I would draw it up on the board for you to help clear things up...

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Homemade biscuits and gravy

Oh, how homemade gravy used to be the bane of my existence!  I could never make homemade gravy to save my life.  And for some reason I was determined not to use any cornstarch...to me that felt like cheating.  I wanted to be able to make gravy from flour and from scratch no less.

Well, I figured it out!  All it took was a Thanksgiving edition of Real Simple and Pioneer Woman Cooks.  Which if you haven't heard of Pioneer Woman, you must not be on the Internet very much!  Since last year's Thanksgiving, I have successfully made turkey gravy, chicken gravy and now homemade biscuits and gravy.  Oh boy...was it good...

Hot and steamy...perfect on a cold fall day.

And the best part was that I used our sausage from our boar that we butchered.  Let me tell you something...I am not a fan of sausage.  I've never really enjoyed the taste unless it was smothered with gravy and on biscuits.  But this stuff was delicious.  I don't know if it was the pork, which was voted on the Slow Food Ark of Taste, or the way our local processor spiced it, but man it was good! 
And for being a fatty or lard type of pig, there was hardly any fat on this sausage.  I had to add some butter to the roux, because there wasn't enough fat.  I"m actually excited to try more of this sausage since it was so darn good!

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A day at the pumpkin patch

Yesterday, we celebrated our four year anniversary by going back to the place where we got engaged, Vala's Pumpkin Patch.  Jon proposed down in the big pumpkin patch by making me find the biggest pumpkin I could find.  This was after I had decided I wasn't going down to the big pumpkin patch, because I just knew we were going to get in trouble.  And I like to follow the rules!  It took probably half an hour of convincing before I would go down there and him pretending to talk to a worker who gave him the okay to go down there.

Down there was the scene!  I had no clue what was going on, because I found the big pumpkin that had my name on it and "Will you marry me?" and told Jon...."Oh look, someone got engaged here and they even the same name as me!"  Duh.....it was for me.  Told you I was clueless!

We hit up the pumpkin cannon and the goats.  It's seems so silly to me that my favorite part was the goats considering how many animals we have at home.  I love their goat tree house that they build, so the goats can wander up and down the ladders.

Another highlight was the pig races!  So cute and the best part was they used heritage breeds.  To our surprise, the first pigs up were Guinea hogs!  Just like ours!  The other two breeds were Red Wattle and Gloucestershire Old Spot. 

That last little lady had too many cookies that day and wasn't really interested in running around.

It was such a nice day out, just a little bit cold and breezy but just right in the sun.

This is how most of Farmer Jon's pictures turn out when I try to take pictures of him.

So, he turned the camera on me and I gave my best Zoolander face...

Nah...that's not me!  This is me, complete with the crinkly nose from laughing too hard...

And one nice shot of us both.

This was our little girl's first trip to the pumpkin patch and Jon and I will be so excited to bring her next year when she can actually see everything! 

And because I know some family reads this blog and always want to know how the baby is doing...we are at 33 weeks and feeling pretty good!  Just getting excited to meet our little girl!

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Mr. Rooster...I've got your number...

There may be some rooster butchering around the farm this weekend.  Highly likely in fact!

It all started when I was feeding the chickens one day and I felt a thump on the back of my legs.  I whirled around and there was a rooster just standing there like nothing had happened.  My first thought was that the dog had dropped something on the back of my legs to get me to play with him.  Then Jon said that he had the same thing happen to him.  Thump on the back of the legs and there was a rooster!

It escalated last night.  I was feeding the pigs and I hear little footsteps coming at me fast.  I turned around as fast as I could and I'll be darned if that dang rooster come to a sliding stop within a foot of me.  Of course, he was very nonchalant after that like he was saying.." Who me?  I wouldn't dare thump you in the back of the legs...I'm just an innocent little rooster...."

HA!  Innocent rooster, yeah right!  That darn thing was going to claw my legs and I know it.

Here's a pic of the culprit.

And even further proof that he was out to get me...this was taken a few seconds after I walked by him.

Definitely out to get me.

Plus these darn roosters crow all day long as part of a competition.  It was cute at first, but now it's extremely annoying.  And I just figured out why Max was howling in the mornings.  He was answering the chickens!  He did it a little tonight while I was feeding the pigs, which is funny because he never used to howl.

A rare picture of the diversity of our farm.  I spy a chicken, a pig who is out of his pen, a spunky little kitten and a dog who wants nothing more than to chase the rest of the animals in the picture.

Our remaining Royal Palm turkeys who thankfully turned out to be a male and a female.  Can't decide if we should breed them or eat them.

And a little fellow who was very curious.

When I ordered chickens, I ordered a straight run of Silver Laced Wyandottes.  But I'm pretty sure this guy is a Dominique.  You just never know what you will get with a chicken order!

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Farm Report

First off, WE HAVE EGGS! Not exactly sure who's laying them but we've had about one every morning for the last four days. Of course, they are in the yard in front of the chicken coop rather than the nest boxes but we'll work on that...

Here's the view from our front porch. It was time to move the cattle off of the warm season grasses and back onto the cool season. So I moved them across the farm to start the next round of grazing. Of course, moving them across the farm turned into a five hour event - I had to trim and/or cut down cedar trees, pull up old barbwire and other junk, create a gate in my existing electric fence, put up posts and polywire to create an alley and then set up a water tank. All I need to do now is put up posts and hi-tensile wire and I will have a new permanent alley to move cattle around the farm.

I had to snap a pic to show our critters living together so well, with the ducks in the cow pen and the chickens in the pig pen.

I aspire to take pictures as great as Jamie's but, for now, they are a work in progress... I hope you can still enjoy them.

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It's been a busy week around the farm.

There's been lots of this...

And this...

Lots of wallpapering scraping and birthing of pigs.  Speaking of birthing pigs...see that Americauna chicken up at the top?  I call that the guardian chicken, because there is ALWAYS one near where the little piggies are.  For some reason they like to hang out with the pigs and eat when they do too.  Sometimes they even get a ride on the pigs backs!

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from around the farm

Spunky little things aren't they. I wish I would have had a camera with me when one of them was laying with a chicken yesterday.

Here's an older one the morning after a heavy rain (the stuff is still set up from the Pekin ducks). First are the runner ducks and then I find the other four ducks...

Here's a shot of Jamie's brief time on the mower. She's always been more of an artistic/abstract type and apparently that carries over into her mowing...

She never made the upcoming turn but she did manage to stop before running into the tree. 

POOLS FOR EVERYONE (wait where's our pool!?)

Here's Max chillin' in his own personal pool. I've had to move his to the east side of the house so the ducks/geese quit getting into it and making it all muddy. They have their own pool too.

 They boars have really mangled their plastic pool but it's still holding water. It'll work for this summer. I have grand plans for next year though.

Even the cattle get to swim. They're still skinny and we can't figure out why so we moved them to a big area with shade trees and a pond to see if that would help.

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Piggies and a new calf

More babies on the farm!

We knew one of the mama pigs was going to have her babies very soon, but we were pleasantly surprised to check on them Sunday night to find five baby pigs!  Which was rather odd, because the next morning we could only find four.  We have video proof that there was five, but for the life of us we could not find the fifth one. 

 They were so curious and came right up to me.  But if you moved too fast, they would squeal and run away.  These guys are also tiny.  They are just about the size of small kittens.

Their favorite position in the world is to be lined up head to tail with each other.  It's funny to catch them sleeping like that.

Aren't babies wonderful?  They were out exploring the world and ran squealing back into the lean to when a big pig grunted at them.

Our cows just hanging out.  Poor girls, they have so many flies around their face.  We have been trialing a fly trap, but I'm not so sure how much it is working.

And there is the new baby!  I love how all the calves have different coloring.  This one is a girl...finally!  There is way too much testosterone in this round of calves.  I think we are up to 7-8 boys and 2 girls.  Not exactly the numbers that you want.  But we will have plenty of grass finished beef in a couple years. 

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Never enough

hours in the day! We are SOOO SORRY for neglecting our blog duties. We have been very busy around the farm but I promise we will do better.

In case you haven't heard, it's hot! And in case I forgot, I have text message weather alerts that come to my phone that love to remind me. As if reporting the upcoming temperatures wasn't enough, they add fun descriptors too - "Thu: Hot and Humid 102/78; Fri: Hot and Humid 98/68". My phone may end up somewhere in the pasture, depending on how far it flies when I throw it.

We are keeping a closer eye on our critters with the heat. The ones we need to watch the closest are the boars. Right now we are pasturing them and there is no natural shade around. I have some shade structures set up which may or may not be sufficient but since they can't really sweat they probably need something more. Mud wallows are ideal but I don't really want a bunch of mud holes all over the farm, since we move them fairly often. So, I'm trying a Pig Pool:


This was Max's pool but I gave him a bigger one. I put this out yesterday afternoon but I've already swapped the pools again this morning. The bigger pool has taller sides so we'll see if they can get in/out but at least all three would be able to fit.

Here is a random pic of a cow. She hasn't calved yet, hopefully soon though. Our cows are looking skinny so I was out taking pictures of them and testing the Brix levels of the grass. I need to calibrate our refractometer since this is the first time I've used it but I was getting readings of 4-9 Brix readings. Which I thought was low but Jamie thinks that is not bad. She's probably right.

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There's been a lot of death around the farm this weekend...

One was planned and one was not.

We had planned on butchering our Pekin ducks this weekend and that went according to plan.

Coming back from church and finding our favorite pig with his neck ripped open was not.

I know that there is life and death on a farm, but my heart hurts to think that pig was in pain.  He had to have been.  He was laying outside the pen, so he must have gotten out.  He was in the pen with the other three before church and something happened in the meantime.  I'm not even kidding when I say it looked like someone tried to cut off his head from the top down.  We looked and looked for a clue as to what happened.  Jon blamed Max right away, which I knew he didn't do.  I've seen Max with blood on him and there was not a single drop of blood anywhere to be found on him.

We eventually did find a few drops and smears of blood around the females and into the bull pen.  My guess is that he got caught on barb wire trying to go under, panicked and ripped his neck open.  Jon thinks that a stray dog or coyote got to him.  We won't ever know, unless I can get Max to speak human. 

Like I said, I know there is life and death on a farm, but seeing an animal in so much pain was difficult.  The most difficult part was we only had a shotgun, instead of a .22.  Thankfully our neighbor had the gun and my husband was able to put him out of his misery.  That helpless feeling was overwhelming at times last night because I COULD NOT MAKE IT BETTER.  You may think I'm too attached to a pig, but this guy was special.  He was always the first to run up to you for a rub and was just a friendly guy.  Next time, if there is a next time, we will be more prepared.

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Hollywood here we come

Well, we had our interview with NET yesterday. I can't say that I've been on camera like that before so, needless to say, I felt pretty silly. As soon as it was over I was wishing we could rewind and do it all over again. I didn't even think about the fact that I should be looking into the camera and there were so many things I wanted to say but didn't. Oh well, they have hours and hours of interviews that will be cut down to 30 minutes, so I'm hopeful that they can pick out a couple minutes that make us look/sound good.
The documentary is about local foods in and around Nebraska. They asked us to interview because they wanted someone who was just getting started. We talked to the producer about coming back to follow our progress, so we'll see.

Farm updates - I fixed the tiller yesterday and (shallow) tilled up a small area. Jamie said we need to shallow till and then pull the weeds out before we do the deeper tilling. Beats me, I'm just the farm hand... Tried to move the pigs to a different pen so they could graze but they decided they didn't want to. I thought I could coax them with food but I was wrong. They weren't in a hurry to run off but they definitely weren't in a hurry to go where I wanted them to. After 20 minutes, I finally called for reinforcements and Jamie helped me get them back in.

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Ever seen a pig yawn?

Now you have!

We bought 8 sows and boars from Black Sheep Farms on Saturday.  And they are the cutest things I've ever seen.  I've never had pigs before, but Jon has when he was growing up on the farm.  I love to listen to their little grunting sounds, especially as you get closer to them.  And they've already started rototilling the temporary area we have them in now.

The four sows are due to be farrowing soon, which always makes life more interesting!  Is it sad that when I look at them I get hungry for bacon and ham?

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Naming cows and new farm additions

Jon and I decided that naming our cows was the best way to help identify them.  It's so funny how different cows have different personalities.  There are shy ones and not so shy ones.  Bossy cows and meek cows.  Loud cows and quiet cows.  I really do enjoy watching them and interacting with them and getting to know their personalities.

First up, my favorite heifer-Teddy.

She is a part Jersey and all cuteness.  I just love her coloring!  Not sure how she got so muddy though.

Another heifer-Patches

Another heifer-Queen Latifah (with Teddy to the left of her and Spot-another heifer in the back)

Our yearling bull-Boy George (Don't ask me how my husband came up with these names, but he named 90% of them)

Our two-year old bull-Wooly Bullie

Another of my favorites-Jezabelty

And next up are the Mean Girls.  Do you guys remember that Lindsay Lohan movie, Mean Girls?  Well, we have three of our own and we decided to name them after the characters in the move.

So, we have Regina...



Gretchen...

And Karen...

These three are the most social of the bunch and also the meanest.  We unrolled a bale of hay and Regina went walking right down the middle of the hay tossing her head from side to side to stop the other cows from eating.  Naughty cows...

Oh, I can't forget Roan of Arc!  She has such a pretty roan coloring...

Heifers are so curious if you stand still..

Not sure how, but our cows and heifers got out two days in a row.  The first day we think the polywire got snagged on our neighbors tractor when he dumped a bale.  The cows were actually all where they were supposed to be until Jon went to put the polywire back up.  Then five cows rushed him and ran out of the paddock.  He was able to get three of them back in by himself and called me in for back up for the other two. 

The next day after the memorial service for Terry Gompert, we went to check on the cows and noticed the heifers had managed to get off of the farm grounds and were grazing in the ditch.  We have no idea how they did it.  When we went closer to their water, there was a couple step in posts on the ground and I couldn't even find the polywire end.  Not sure if it was a deer or maybe the heifers got to head butting each other and knocked the fence down.  They got to the right spot pretty quickly when I pulled out the range cubes.  Nothing like bribing some cows...

Since we aren't crazy enough as it is, we've decided to add some more animals to the farm.  Four pregnant sows and four boars will be making their way to the farm soon.  They are Guinea hogs.  They are a smaller black pig who does very well converting rough forage into pounds and are great for bacon, ham and lard.  Can't wait to see some piglets!

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