Pregnant??

It has been seven weeks since we inseminated Pig.  I dutifully checked her on the weekend of April 26^th but was unable to confidently say whether she was in heat or not. 

• Her appetite was really good – good sign – not in heat
• She was really vocal and wanted tons of attention – bad sign – in heat
• She wasn’t rubbing or scratching the house too much – good sign – not in heat
• Her back end was slightly swollen and red – bad sign – in heat

Since Pig wasn’t giving me any tell-tale signs of pregnancy then I may have to resort to the high tech route with the veterinarian and the ultrasound.

In the meantime I resorted to the interweb to see if anyone had an inexpensive way to determine if she was pregnant – low and behold – pigs have a pregnancy indicator.  All I can say is leave it to a VT farmer to figure this one out! 

(This picture is directly from his post).

Back out to Pig’s pen I went – grumbling as I crossed the yard to find that she had toppled the newly constructed shelter for Zeb – our new Gloucester Old Spot boar.  Thankfully he is still in the shed as he is too little to take notice of the bottom strand of electric fence.   I went into the pasture and began the process of resurrecting the shelter in hopes that she would leave it standing for a couple of days until I could get some reinforcing posts driven into the ground.  All the while she is having absolutely none of my being in her pasture or near her house.

If I am carrying food, water or hay, then I am allowed to go anywhere in her pasture.  If, however, I dare to enter her space, especially to work on this new structure – then I am to be banished and quickly.  Now, I am no small whisp of a girl, but this 600 lb. sow is no match for me when she has her mind set.  I retreated to the fence line while Little man and his father brought over a bucket of fresh water.  Back inside to look at her backside – ta-da!  From what I understand, the weight of the growing piglets pulls down on her insides which are connected to the outsides and voila – pig pregnancy indicator.

Now Pig is five years old and has had several litters before so her backside does not look exactly like the gilt in the picture.  So here’s hoping that this built in indicator means piglets in July.

In the couple of weeks since, Little man’s father has done a pretty good patch job on Zeb’s shed – which is to say that Pig hasn’t knocked it down, yet.  Zeb is getting fed up with being stuck in the shed, perhaps next week we will try to get him out into pasture – he should be just about tall enough to reach the bottom strand of fence.  Of course we will try introducing the two of them first to be sure Pig will tolerate him adjacent to her space.  If not, then there will be some re-engineering going on and fast!

It is spring around here folks and there is lots happening, please bear with me as I try to eek out some more time to get more posting done.

First harvest of asparagus

We planted it three years ago, last year there were a couple of spears, enough to be a palette teaser.  Our first real harvest of any vegetable for 2014 yields enough for dinner for the three of us and there is more coming!

Pig - Breeding successful, only time will tell

With the box’s arrival at the office last week came several comments and jokes from my colleagues.  Was I going to play soft music, did she get a nice dinner first, and EWWW were among them.  I hadn’t gotten a call back from the veterinarian and although I joked back, I was genuinely concerned about how well this was going to go.  I had done the research and it didn’t look all that difficult, but I was still worried that I had just thrown a couple hundred dollars out the window.  That is certainly an amount of cash that this farm and its caretaker cannot just toss.

Saturday morning I went to the farm store and looked up and down the aisles for lubricant.  Well they don’t sell swine lubricant in anything less than a one gallon jug!  Not knowing whether something for people would work just as well on a pig, I have plenty left over.

I had decided to wait until Little man’s father got home in case she didn’t want to stand still.  I didn’t want to worry about where Little man was while I was attempting to ‘work’ on the business end of a 600 lb. sow.  Allegedly if the pig is truly in heat, they will stand board stiff when you put weight in the middle of their backs as if they were prepared to take the weight of a boar.  If my calculations on her heat cycle were correct, I would have nothing to worry about.

Little man gave her a sweet muffin while I went behind her, cleaned her up, and lubed the inseminating rod.  She stood almost completely still.  When she decided I didn’t belong back there Little man’s father leaned in the middle of her back – she stopped moving completely. 

Like many other things on the farm that I have never attempted before, I was amazed at how easy it was.  All the contingencies had been pre-planned and thankfully didn’t need any of them.  Saving a a few dollars by not having the veterinarian out to the farm was an additional bonus.  If Pig doesn’t go into heat on the 26^th, then we will know that it took.

Got milk? Not from this farm for a while!

I posted to Facebook yesterday about dairy goats - as I look at my grocery cart and see so much of my cart filled with diary products, I wonder if I should get a lactating animal to offset some of the costs of dairy at the store.  Being the thorough researcher that I am, its off to the library for books on the subject, talking to friends/neighbors/mentors, and perusing the internet reading stories and looking for advice before I take on such a big adventure.  Each time I think about adding a cow, (July 2012 and this week) I look back at the following answer which I found a couple of years ago.  As much as it could be valuable to our farm - until I am ready or able to make this kind of commitment- there will be no dairy cows/goats. 

The cow is not going to supply you with milk for less than you are paying at the grocery store.

Besides that, think about getting 3-5 gallons of milk a DAY from the cow....what are you going to do with all that milk?

As a little experiment, I sugest doing this. Buy yourself some books on home dairy cows, and buy yourself a little stuffed cow.

Do this for one month straight:

1. Go out every morning at 5AM, and get your stuffed cow out of the pasture. Lead your stuffed cow to where you are going to milk her. Now sit on a stool for 30 minutes with your stuffed cow, and read your books. This is the minimum amount of time a beginner would spend milking. It does not matter the weather, or if you are sick, or have an important meeting. NOTHING else happens before the cow is milked!
2. Now put your stuffed cow back in the pasture. Take your buckets of invisible milk (you didn't forget the buckets did you?) inside, and get them properly cooling. Just putting them into the fridge is not good enough. Your books will tell you all about how to properly handle the raw milk.
3. Now you can change clothes, shower, and get on with your day. Be sure you are home at 5pm sharp! Go out and get your stuffed cow again, and repete the entire process.

I'm sure you think I'm being a smart a$$, but I'm not. Honestly doing this is going to give you some idea what an impact on your life a cow is going to have. She needs to be milked twice a day, 12 hours appart, NO MATTER WHAT. You can be sick as death with the flu....cow still needs to be milked. Doing this exercise with your stuffed cow, is only going to give you a tiny fraction of the work a real cow will involve....but it will be a reality check, when you find out you cannot go on vacation, to a school function with your children, or work overtime....because the cow need to be milked.
 
I'm going to answer a couple of the questions you asked:

Vet care....you need to learn how to give shots, and worm the cow yourself, as well as trimming her hooves.

If you need a Vet present for the cows delivery, send her off to market to be butchered. No I'm not kidding, and no I'm not a cruel person. She is going to cost you WAY more time, money and trouble in the long run than she is worth, if she cannot deliver a calf all on her own.

A lot of family milking cows are only breed every two years. Milk production drops offf some in the second year, but you probably do not need 3-5 gallons of milk a day anyway.

A good family milk cow, who's well cared for will live 20-25 years. A commercial dairy cow is lucky to see her 5th birthday.

In all honesty, if you want milking animals, serriously consider looking into dairy goats. They will give a much more reasonible amount of milk. Another plus with dairy goats is they cannot kick your face off (yes, I mean the skin of your face clean off and laying on the ground).   I've seen (in person) a farriers face kicked clean off, and laying on the ground (by a horse). I've seen a woman who's lower jaw and cheek bone on one side were nearly gone (totally caved in) from a cow kick.

My Great Grandmother spent 12 hours in a manger, holding the horns of a formerly friendly cow, who very suddenly decided she wanted to kill her. It was 12 hours before some got home. Are you physically strong enough to do that?

By the way, you do not have to pasturize your milk like another poster stated. Raw milk is delicious, and very healthy for you. It must just be handled correctly, so bacteria does not grow in it.
 ~Garnet

Homesteading/Farming over 20 years

Original post found here in the answer section

Oh the UPS Man's Face!

Mud Season = lots of water, not necessarily where I want it

Warm weather this week has allowed us to venture outside and start those tasks which have been eagerly awaiting snow melt.  I took out my farm planning list from March last night and frowned at how much wasn’t crossed off.  A few such tasks were moved up to March from later months based on the warmer winters of the past couple of years; perhaps 30 years of living in northern New England should have cautioned me to leave them in April.  Lessons learned.  When I sit down this fall to update my farm plan I will do it with the 2015 Old Farmer’s Almanac and my disparaging notes on this winters weather.

The fifth season has arrived here with the increase in temperatures.  Copious amounts of water pour down the driveway and running past the front of the garage creating a pond out of the driveway.  Over the past couple of years we have not maintained proper grading of the driveway, changed the parking plan and removed two huge rock maple trees from beside the driveway.  What this means is that water that historical was used by the trees, fell off the side of the driveway or ran through the back yard, this year, ran straight down the driveway and into the garage.  There are drains in the garage and in any other year water in the garage wouldn’t be a big deal, this year, the rabbits are still in there.  Imagine what several inches of water can do to your nice neat piles of pine shavings underneath your rabbit cages.  Quite the mess!  But even wet rabbit pellets and pine shavings are pretty east to clean up.

The water continued flowing and the drains were by then plugged with wet pine shavings; water went over top of the threshold and into the chicken coop.  Chicken droppings are not so structurally sound and when mixed with water simply create muck!

I shed my jacket as I shoveled what seemed like feet of slop out of the coop (in reality it was only about two inches, but it was heavy and I am out of shape!).  From the coop I moved to the garage floor shoveling, scraping and sweeping wet, sloppy pine and poo section by section.  Little man’s father worked diligently on the frozen drainage situation and was finally able to get the water to start flowing away from the garage.  By Tuesday night I was finally done cleaning up from Saturday and Sunday’s water damage.

Yesterday I continued the work of cleaning up the mess that December’s ice storm made out of the pine tree.  The pile is big and waits for a day of calm winds before it can be disposed of.  The brooder box in the garage was cleaned and disinfected, the reflector lamp tested and a new light bulb added to the shopping list.  The last turn of the eggs in the incubator was done this morning – some of the eggs are already moving!  New baby birds will be here this weekend.

As I sipped an adult beverage and watched Little man run up and down the driveway, the smell of boiling sap wafted down the hill from our neighbors.  We decided not to make our own syrup this year.  There comes a time when you are forced to realize that you can’t do absolutely everything.  Not boiling has given way to progress in other areas and some quality time with my son.  I will gladly barter or trade some rabbit, chickens, pork, eggs or vegetables, for our syrup this year.

Seed swap, decluttering and waiting - IMpatiently

Spring on the farm is very slow in coming this year.  There is still plenty of snow on the ground.  The driveway is starting to melt, hinting at the mess of mud season yet to come.  The ground in the green house has thawed slightly allowing me to clean out the detritus from last years’ plants and move the dirt around, if only just a little.  Slightly more than the top inch has thawed, teasing me into thinking I could get all cleaned up and ready to plant this past weekend.  If the sun comes out as predicted this week, even though the temperatures are cool, I should be able to start turning in some compost and plant some cool season crops next week.  My original seed starting schedule had me sowing seeds during St. Patrick’s Day week – it is looking like they will be a full two weeks behind this year.

I was also hoping to be sharing pictures of baby piglets right about now…  Best laid plans… <said grumbling>.  Many of the farms in our county and all of the blogs I follow are showing off their brand new farm babies.  I am getting more than a little jealous.  But life gets in the way.  The plans are to still breed Pig.  I was a little worried about her farrowing in late June/early July, but her house is in the shade of a 150 year old maple tree and half of her pasture has some great overflow from the same spring that provides water to the farm house.  Pig is expected to go into heat the first weekend in April and I am proud to say that enough money has been set aside to buy the sperm and pay the vet.  The email arrived this weekend letting me know that the boar I hope to have as a companion to Pig’s farrows was born on the 6^th of March and is doing great – I should be able to bring him home right around Easter.

I purposely held off on putting eggs in the incubator in February as the almanac did predict a cooler than expected end to this month – I am certainly glad I waited.  The baby chickens will arrive the first full week of April.  That gives me another week and chance to get the brooder box cleaned off (as Little man’s father has taken to using the chicken wire covered top as a shelf), disinfected, the heat lamp located and tested, and the box ready to house new baby chicks.

The order for meat birds is due into the feed store shortly so talk this week turned to remodeling chicken coops and whether the parts to the old washing machine would work for the motor, belt and drive for the chicken plucker I am planning to make.  Unfortunately the door to the section of the barn where the old machine is stored is frozen shut and blocked by a snow pile still well over six feet tall.  In talking with my cousin yesterday, he is planning on milling some posts and beams for a barn my uncle is building – maybe there will be some left over material that I can salvage for the support structure of my plucker.

As the snow melts I am starting to pick up and clean up from everything that was left outside over the winter.  My old car (my favorite so far in all of them that I have owned) was carted off to the salvage yard today.  Little man’s father went out on Friday afternoon with the tractor and dug out around it then on Saturday afternoon attached the tow strap to it and yanked it free from the ice.  I miss that car!!  De-cluttering continues; perhaps there is a little more money to be made from clearing out the junk to put toward solar fence chargers, metal roofing, or hydraulic hoses.  My monthly project list is being held hostage by the weather and lack of snow melt right now. 

Tomorrow night I am headed to the first (annual I hope) seed swap in Enosburg to trade some seeds, meet some other like-minded folks and to drum up some business for the local farmers market.  Even though I might not be able to vend much this summer, I like the market and hope to get back to it soon.

With forecasted temperatures in the forties next week – here’s hoping for the beginning of a great season!