Blossom is the black pig in front of Sue, the other black pig in the background 

I quickly locked Blossom into the pen I’d set up for her, with some food to keep her happy. I set out for the nest she’d created 200 yards into the woods. Once up there, I discovered eight piglets; I’d only counted seven each of the other times I’d visited, but black piglets snuggled up to a black mama makes it very hard to count how many.

I was able to capture five piglets; four girls and a boy. I tied up my jacket’s arms and hood to make a bag to carry them home and made note of where at least two other piglets were hiding and set off to return them to their mama. After getting the piglets settled in, I started back only to hear some of the older pigs grunting in their “something is upsetting me” way.

Then I spied The Little Piglet Who Could. She was running down the hill toward the pig huts and making a her little piglet “I need my Mama” noise. After watching her tiny form maneuvering through the woods and mud, I started videoing as she got close (see below). This tiny 3.5 day old piglet ran all the way from the nest 1/8 mile away, through woods she’d never seen, following her mama’s scent (or something) to get to safety!

After settling The Little Piglet Who Could in with mama and her sisters and brother, I returned to find the last two piglets (girls) and brought them home. What a day! And what a big week! I’ve now seen piglets born in person and witnessed the most amazing feat by a tiny piglet!
 

If you want to see piglets being born, I managed to video five of the births! I hope you enjoy them; it was amazing!

2.620 eggs Our hens graced us with 2,620 eggs last year!!!

2,032 duck eggs were laid by around 18 ducks (numbers fluctuated throughout the year). That’s over 178 eggs per duck! Our chickens laid 588 eggs from, on average, 6 hens. That comes to 98 eggs on average per bird! To be fair to the chickens, their numbers were more variable this year as we had some new chicks coming online, a few older hens, and quite a few losses to foxes. Also, the chickens seem less inclined to lay where they are supposed to! The new duck coop is going to provide housing for the chickens as well. Chickens enjoy height and ducks enjoy floor space, so there’s room for both.

February/March is the time of year when the ducks start laying in earnest. Their peak laying month in 2019 was May, whereas it was March in 2018 and April in 2017. Likely the peak laying times are a combination of weather and how old the ducks present are. Younger ducks lay more!  At this point they are beginning to show signs of a slight increase in production with the daily egg average going from ~2 to ~3 eggs per day (from all 18 ducks).  Chickens seem to start laying in earnest a little later. In 2018 their peak laying month was June. Last year it was October, but that is because 5 new chicks started laying in the fall! Before the chicks, June and April were the next top laying months.

My first step is to make the bacon. Lately I’ve been using the oven to cook the bacon; it cooks up crispier and I can easily fit all my bacon on the tray, leaving extra bacon in the fridge for other recipes. After it’s baked, I drain the bacon and put about a tablespoon or two of bacon grease in a skillet and add scrambled eggs (eggs, herbs, salt, milk, and a bit of parmesan or romano cheese). While they’re cooking I often make a bowl of mixed veggies. They add to the yummy flavors and a serving of veggies is perfect with such a heavy breakfast! By the time the eggs are cooked, the bacon is cool and the whole meal is plated up. I pour the mostly-cooled bacon grease into a glass jar (jelly jars are best) and I keep it to use with various recipes (Alfredo sauce is great with a roux made of flour and bacon grease). Hammi is always happy with a spot of bacon grease on his food too! I love that in about 20 minutes, I get a lovely breakfast as well as bacon grease and cooked bacon to use in many other meals!
 

But I digress. What I really mean to say is that you have an opportunity to have your own tasty bacon to add to the eggs you already buy! We often have custom pork and lamb available for you! 

Buying in bulk is a great way to save money while getting the best quality meat possible. Bulk means not only is the price per pound less than retail cuts, it also means you can make choices you can’t make buying retail. You can pick your favorite sausage flavors, buy thicker or thinner cuts of meat; whatever your preference, have your sausages made into patties because that’s the only way your four-year-old will eat it, and you can ask for the bones and leaf lard if you’re inclined!

To purchase in bulk, just follow the instructions above
Email me or visit our online store to place a deposit (choose local pick-up for your shipping method). I will contact you with further details.

Some of my favorite conversations with customers happen when they tell me how they’ve used our products in ways we hadn’t even thought of!

The other day a customer commented that she’d had a knee replacement and as a result had one spot on her leg where the nerves didn’t heal quite right. She had some numbness and the worst part was it itched terribly, especially at night. She happened to have some of our Ditch the Itch Poison Ivy Salve on hand, so one night she tried it on the spot when the itchiness was particularly bad. She immediately felt relief and was able to sleep at last, after being kept up due to the itching. She now keeps her Ditch the Itch next to her bed!

Another customer uses a compression sleeve and has found our deodorant helps relieve chafing from the sleeve. She just applies the deodorant to the uncomfortable spots before she pulls the sleeve on (or after it’s been on a bot if she forgets). Other clients have found our deodorant to be helpful in areas where skin touches skin and causes sweating and chafing, especially in the summer.

A third customer found herself with a sore backside after a long first day on a European biking tour. She happened to have a roller of Mary Jane’s Last Pain in her first aid kit and found it worked to relieve the discomfort and she was able to ride again the next day.

Many customers have told us they use our body butters on their chapped noses and lips during cold weather or during illness. I did that myself after I couldn’t find my Gardener’s Salve during my last cold!

How do you use our products? We’d love to learn about your discoveries!

Pigs are very hardy but they still need shelter and warmth during the winter. One of the pig huts I have needed some changes before winter arrived. It’s made with a cattle panel frame, which is great but doesn’t hold up well to heavy or wet snow. Earlier this year I’d added some T-posts to help hold up the roof but apparently some pig thought it was in the way and the already-bent post became more bent, so a new, straight post was needed. Next, the back end of the hut was open fo allow breezes in the summer. Last year I just covered it with a tarp but pigs find tarps are great fun to play with and they’d ripped it apart last year. I wanted to keep the tarp as long as the tarp could last so with help I sandwiched it between two sets of pallets. It works great!

Finally, the area I’ve been using for the piglet’s feeding time is needed for the sheep, so I decided to create a  “creep area for them to eat in. A creep feeder is designed so the smaller piglets can get into an area where bigger pigs can’t. I just created it this morning so I haven’t tested it yet but I have high hopes it will work! I basically created a box out of panels, with one side raised so little pigs could get in. It has a gate I can ope to enter to feed.

See the pictures below for both before pictures of the pig hut and after pictures of the pig hut and the creep feeder. All the huts need is more straw to fill them and as it gets colder, I usually find things like old comforters to suspend from the ceiling to block the wind (let me know if you have anything thats stained but still in good shape and I’ll pick it up)! They do destroy it eventually but I haven’t found much else that works as a temporary windblock; in the summer I like it to be open and breezy!

“It was a beautiful, bright autumn day, with air like cider and a sky so blue you could drown in it.” ~Diana Gabaldon, Outlander
This quote describes today perfectly! The sky is cerulean and the air is crisp with lingering warmth from the sun. It’s gorgeous outside and even inside, as I bask in a ray of noon-time sun.

Each day as a farmer is full of repetition and disruption. The two ends of the day are nearly a complete duplication as the chores don’t change much, but the activities during the day are always different.

My day generally starts sometime between 6-7:30 am. Usually I’m able to wake up without an alarm (this is totally awesome). After getting dressed, I start preparing feed for the chickens and ducks, which I keep in the house (for now). The feed is drained since it’s soaking in water and then I mix it with minerals, kelp, and fish meal for protein. I often put the food out for them early but don’t unlock their coops until 8:30/9, when Hammi the farm dog has had plenty of time to run and play, and hopefully scare off any lingering foxes.

Next, Hammi and I move on to the pigs. I prepare the food the night before, so I grab the buckets.. so many buckets… I can’t tell you how much feed exactly as it changes often but my back can tell you how much it weighs! The pigs learn quickly to separate themselves into their feeding areas. I try to lock adults into their own pens so there aren’t any squabbles. Teen pigs and piglets eat in groups. The little guys share feed troughs but later graduate  to their own feed pans.

As  the pigs eat, I go back up the hill to the feed room and prepare the afternoon feeding. Sometimes I have to refill my soaking bucket with new feed and water. I generally refill the it every 2-2.5 days, when they’ve gone through about ~80 lbs of grain. The drained pig feed is put into their buckets and mixed with pig minerals, kelp, and fish meal. This is also the time to add anything else needed. For instance, my boar has been limping and since he’s not keen on me examining his foot, I’ve been adding my CEEG tincture mix (link in this email) in case there’s an infection and turmeric to help with inflammation. As soon as I started adding these he began to limp less and now the limp is nearly gone after two weeks.

I return to the pigs to let them out of their pens and to make sure they’ve got clean water. Finally I go home to let the chickens and ducks out and to collect eggs. Hammi is locked in at this point so he doesn’t “retrieve” the birds for me.

Now it’s time to start the middle of my day. Sometimes I spend the day with my kids, like when we go to our homeschool co-op. If it’s nice or there is a pressing matter, I spend the day on farm chores, like fixing fences, updating pig huts, or sometimes even working on the new coop! Other days I work on creating batches of our Botanical products, and still other days I work on finances and paperwork. Once in a while I even clean my house…

The evening chore time changes drastically with the season. In the summer, I often forget to come inside until after 8. Right now I try to finish up feeding the pigs again by 6:30. In winter they’re fed at 4:30 pm! They’re ready to snuggle into their straw nests by then, and I’m ready to return to the woodstove’s warmth!

I enjoy the balance between routine and random. I love predictability but a prosaic life would bore me. Unexpected events and tasks get my brain working but I would not relish a life of uncertainty. Usually, I feel like my life is the right mix of both! 

Shhhh... I'm secretly a fall-lover. I tell myself (and others) how much I love winter, but there is something invigorating about fall. The crisp air and blustery wind makes me feel alive!

This is a very lengthy segue to letting you know that all of a sudden we are back in what I call “body butter season”.

Last month I had a few jars of body butter around the house. I didn’t really know where; they aren’t used much in the Summer here. But in the last week or so, I have found all of the jars and they’re now planted in strategic locations. The largest is next to my bed. I keep that for my hands and feet before I go to sleep. The second (also large) is in the bathroom for after showers, and a third is near the kitchen sink. Finally, there’s the jar in our coffee table drawer for dry hands while watching TV; it doesn’t get much use because TV watching is also clothes-folding time, and body butter and clothes-folding don’t work well together. But, I know where it is just in case!

Without frequent body butter applications in the fall and winter, my hands get dry and cracked. Beyond looking unsightly, they hurt, and the scruffy skin catches on clothing. With body butter, my hands feel like… normal hands! They’re soft and moisturized even in the middle of winter when the cold winds are blowing and the woodstove is sucking all the moisture from the air!

I wrote this on a Tuesday morning, as I was dropping two pigs off at the butcher.

This is one of the hardest days for a farmer. Today two of my piggies are going to the butcher. One of the ways I know that I am a farmer is that it is so hard for me to do this. To me, that means that I have given these piggies everything that I can so that they can have a good life. I eat meat. I’ve tried being a vegetarian for ethical reasons but I just feel ill (and get sick) after a few weeks with no meat. And for me to eat meat and have a conscience, I need to know that the animals had the best life possible. So this is why I do what I do. I love these piggies from the time that they are tiny piglets. I give them scratches. I talk to them. They know they are loved. And beyond all of the things I do to keep them healthy, that love is the part that I think makes all the difference.

So I celebrate these piggies. And I celebrate the pain I’m feeling right now.

I feel the same with my other animals, but pigs hold a special place in my heart.

I’ve go a project/anecdote for you!  My friend Tammy showed me how to make a drying rack for clothes from an old bike wheel and it is amazing.

All you need is:

• an old bike wheel (try freecycle or just ask around)
• three zip ties (optional but helpful)
• ~36 clothespins
• some rope
• a carabiner clip or similar (see the anecdote below)

1. Spray and scrub down the old bike wheel. It doesn’t have to be spotless, but anything dirt on the wheel may end up on your drying items!
2. Attach the three zip ties equidistant around the wheel, loosely (larger zip ties are best)!
3. Use three same-size lengths of rope to the zip ties and together (for this, I deconstructed a topsy-turvy tomato grower and used some of the metal hanging wires).
4. Optional – attach three lengths to the carabiner rather than tie together
5.  Tie more rope to the three lengths/carabiner; use enough to be able to hang from a tree or whatever you can find.
6. Finally, attach the clothespins and you have your drying contraption!

This works GREAT for small kitchens cloths but especially for cloth tissues, like the ones I showed you in a previous email. This is something you can easily make and use in a small backyard and even inside if you have the space!

And now for the anecdote… Tuesday I did a bunch of laundry without paying attention to the weather (note to self: that wasn’t smart). When the sky darkened I ran out and carried in my drying racks and took down the clothes from the lines but it was already sprinkling and I didn’t want to take each individual tissue and cloth off of the bike wheel rack, so I did the next best thing… I covered the whole thing in a poncho! It worked! Two hours later I returned and everything was no more damp than it had been before the rain! Now I think I should install a clip so I can remove this drying rack before this happens again but in case I don’t get to it, at least I know the poncho trick works!

Molting is a normal process for birds that disrupts egg production for me every year. Sadly, I tend to forget about it until the feathers start coating everything and the egg numbers go wayyyy down. I was just looking back on last year’s numbers and saw that the chicken molt didn’t start until the last week of September but that the egg numbers never really recovered whereas the duck molt was most of September and October but recovered after that. 

Birds molt to replace their feathers. It’s important even for birds that don’t fly much because feathers are their insulation! Over time, feathers tend to get a bit worn and unkempt. To replace the feathers, the birds lose their old feathers and then regrow new ones. This process requires a lot of protein so the chickens redirect the protein they usually use to make eggs into producing new feathers. To support them, I raise the protein level of their feed to help them molt more quickly and easily, but it still takes time. Chickens can have a hard molt or a soft molt. The hard molt is when they lose their feathers quickly and look half naked. My chickens rarely do this. Instead, they do a soft molt where they gradually begin losing feathers and replace them all more slowly. This means they look a bit scruffy but rarely do they have bald patches. It takes a bit longer and this is why I don’t have many chicken eggs in the fall and winter!

Ducks molt a bit differently. They do a hard-core molt and are generally done in a few weeks. They don’t all do it at the same time, so I usually just have fewer duck eggs rather than none! The other day Abby brought me a duck who was limping slightly to check. She didn’t know the duck was molting (growing feathers can be rather sensitive so I try not to handle the ducks too much during molting). After checking her feet, I was able to take two great pictures of her wings with their feathers growing in! Check out the images below.