Today is Thursday October 19th and it has been a busy week. God has truly blessed me with a wonderful life. It is busy and crazy but I couldn’t imagine anything else. Since we talked last we have added a couple new members to the family. Daisy the milk cow and her calf Poppy(bull). Our friend Mark who we use to get raw milk from text me about buying her because he is recovering from knee replacement and doesn’t think he will be able to start milking again. So we now we own a milk cow. A whole new adventure and set of chores.
We are excited about the prospect of truly fresh hand milked milk from here on the farm but it has been kind of busy so for now we have let Poppy get the milk. We plan to calf share, meaning we will stall both Mom and baby at night where they can see each other but not let Poppy drink. This way we can milk first thing in the morning and let Poppy get the rest of the days milk production. This will hopefully make it easier on us only having to milk once a day. On those days we can’t milk we can let Poppy get all the milk. Other additional chores is feeding of hay, adding sawdust and woodchips for deep bedding daily, and we bring her and poppy out for a few hours a day and tie them up on fresh pasture but we we eventually work out a rotational grazing plan with them using electric fence.
On another note, our sow Penelope came into heat on Tuesday so we called Shaffer’s Goldrush and order a couple doses of baby juice as my wife calls it. Our sow is a mix of Large Black and Berkshire. We decided to add Landrace to see if we could get a little more length and quicker grow out. We plan to keep working on our breed till we have the New Norm Farm pig that does best here at the farm on pasture and continues to give great tasting pork. We gave the first dose yesterday and she stood fine but it was mine and her first time at the process. She still showed signs of being in heat today so we tried to give a second dose but she would not stand. We hope that the first dose gets the job done. They recommend to give one dose then 12 hours later another dose just to be sure. If the first dose took, we should get piglets around February 10th. As the pig gestation period is three months, three weeks and three days, for a total of 114 days(it can vary). We should ween about eight weeks after that and have little pigs to sell. We should know in 21 days because that is when she will either go into heat or not.
We are also trying to prep for winter time which means getting the garden cleaned up. We trying to spread 12 inches deep of wood chips over the orchard and part of the garden area for a back to eden style garden/orchard. The part we were able to make 30” wide rows we will try to clean them up and cover them with a heavy tarp. That way it will be ready to go come spring. Also on the winter prep project is making an outdoor heat exchange. With the cool air moving in, my time is running out fast.
Well till next time. Get in the Dirt & Get Growing!!!
Kyle – a bearded farmer
