Manure

I've been a little less than thrilled with the amount of produce coming from the gardens this year. Let me restate that. Given the input of time from me and the plants generated, I'm a little disappointed with what we've been getting out of the gardens. Not just compared with past years, or others' gardens, but with things like the amount of potato weight out from potato weight in, the pitiful vine growth on the squash & cucumbers initially in the old garden compared with those in the new one. These 2 big flags, and any number of little ones, have pretty much told me that I need to add more fertilizer to the old garden this year than I have been in past years.

I've added a couple of wheelbarrows-full of chicken manure each fall, but this fall I'm going to aim to do a bit more. I've already dumped 2 wheelbarrows-full of chicken manure in the old garden this past weekend, from cleaning out the coop. With the digging of the last of the potatoes I had enough room for a huge pile, so I finally got that chore checked off my list. But to add more than just those 2 loads means either bringing down some dirt from the chicken's outside run, using some pig manure, or bringing some manure in from off the property.

The chicken's outside run has only been in this location since the spring when we moved the coop & created the new side garden. I'm really not sure how much good stuff that dirt contains, since it was pretty barren before it became their outside run. And even if it were great, there are so many little rocks in that soil that I would really hate to add it to the old garden, which is fairly free of hoe-breaking pebbles! The dirt from the chicken's old run, which had been used for almost 2 full years, was great for the new garden this spring though, so I am going to plan on using the new dirt in the gardens next fall perhaps, once it has had more time to accumulate the good stuff.

There are 2 pig manure options right now. The old spot got somewhat dug up by my husband and moved to the new garden this spring, but there is still a lot of dirt there that should be pretty good. However it is a barren weed-filled wasteland right now, not having had any water or attention since the spring when he removed about half of the top layer of pig poo & dirt. 

The other pig option is the inner pen of the current pig area, which has a fair amount of poo given the two pigs this year, but its pretty fresh, and it might be rocky. Also, that is future garden space, hopefully for next year as long as we get our fencing acts together, so I would hate to be doing a 'rob peter to pay paul' with that, especially since the main poo and mucked up area is going to be in this coming spring's garden expansion.

The third option, bringing some manure in from off the property, is really not appealing, as I like to move towards self-sustainability - not away, and generating our own compost/manure is something that we really should be able to do. So this leaves me with the pig manure in the old spot perhaps slightly topped up with the new area if needed.

 In the future, I hope to be working on our own compost bins and compost piles in addition to the manure generated from mucking out the animals' pens, however the grass/manure-dirt pile you see in the background of the above shot was just started this past couple months, so no useable compost yet. Also, I think I need to have the piles in a spot that gets at least a bit of sprinkler-water, as it is so dry here that I think it impedes the compost breakdown. Definitely something to put on my winter goals list - learning more about compost building! We generate a fair amount of green matter due to the extensive fields my husband has been working on for game animals and future pasture animals, so having a great compost heap should be completely feasible for us.

 Well, there you have it, the state of our poo :) I hope you are all enjoying the start of the Fall. Upcoming we've got entirely too many hunting trips, family visits, and harvesting tasks to reasonably fit into the month ahead. However, I'm sure we'll manage to make it through, although I'm sure blog posting will fall a bit by the wayside, as it does every September! Happy harvesting to you, and if you are a hunter, happy hunting!

Electric fencing for the pigs

So late last week (right about when Little M was at her crankiest due to the virus she had over the weekend!), we finished the electric fencing for this year's butcher pigs. Really my husband finished it, since I was inside with the kiddo's :) He did most of the work on the fencing, I was mostly supervisor, kid wrangler, leveler, and occasionally dirt pounder around the fence posts.

the pig enclosure goes from the pig shelter to the right, down the line of fence posts, across the bottom, and back up the left side, with the new side garden area (with the peas and hay bales) being excluded. It is about 60x90, minus the garden area.

yup, this post hole is deep enough guys!

My husband cut the posts for the perimeter himself from trees on our property, and built the charger cover from scrap wood we had in the garage, so all we had to purchase were the electric fence components (wire, charger, grounding rod & clamp, fence-post wire insulators for t-posts and wood posts, and end/corner donut insulators, and extension cords), so the whole project came in within our fairly limited budget. We initially were looking at a solar charger for the fence, but after reading and hearing some mixed reviews about the one we were looking at and it's ability to keep animals in, we decided to go with a plug-in charger that could also be used down the road for larger animals over a larger area. This meant running 150 feet of extension cord from the house down to the pig area, but we figured that the line loss would be fairly low, and that compared to the reported lower strength of the solar charger, the plug-in one would be our best bet both for the pigs now, and for other animals in the future.

The fence wire might not be the prettiest, which was to be expected as it was our first time working with electric fencing, but it is totally functional and is working great to keep the pigs where they are supposed to be. They have each encountered it several times, and know to be wary of it. Of course, it helped that they were in electric fencing with their mom when we got them, so they already had experience with electric fences. We kept the hog panels mostly up, so they still use that area for sleeping, water, and their feed bucket, but they are often out and grazing in their pasture, which is great to see!


The only problem though, is that the dogs can (and do) jump right over the fencing. Which means they can chow down on pig feed if we aren't watching and keeping them in the right part of the yard... Sigh... We so need to finish our yard fence, but it might not happen until next year, as the chicken fence is now the priority. Without a secure chicken fence to keep the chickens away from the pig electric fencing, the chickens are limited to their small (and bare dirt!) outside enclosure off their coop, with no greens and bugs to eat really. I read that the electric fence could kill them if they hit it, so until we get the chicken fence (and future orchard fence) up, they are penned up. We are currently working on that fence though, so hopefully within a week or two it will be ready. Now that the mister is back at work (and on nights!), getting things done has really slowed down. Plus the 100 degree heat we've had for the past several days has put a serious cramp on outside things apart from after the sun has fallen behind the hills in the evening.

The June Side Garden - the before & after baby edition

So following up on my post about the weed growth in the lower garden earlier this week, here is how the side garden was and is looking! Overall, this garden isn't showing the time in weed growth as much as the lower garden. Mostly with the paths being mulched, but also with the soil being disturbed so recently. I think having the drip irrigation also really helps, unlike the overhead sprinklers in the lower garden that really allow weeds to take off everywhere! Here come the pictures:

The new herb area before, and filled in more later. I can tell I'll have to adjust some plants next year as the heights are a bit off, and some of the plants are going to be too big for the space I have allocated for them.

 Here is an after of the sunflower area that Little M and I transplanted from the lower garden. The large one near the right side is one of the ones Little M grew from seed, it looks like it will bloom soon. They have a bit of drip irrigation on them but don't get all that much water, which I'm thinking is why that one is so short to be getting ready to bloom!

This before shows more than just the peas, which you can see in the background, but apparently I did a poor job taking pictures of specific plants for before shots, and did mostly overall shots. The peas are doing really well though, and have been blooming a lot, giving us the start of a decent crop of peas! We've eaten a few here and there since we've been back from the baby's birth, and soon will be getting enough to make more of a serving of them.  I'm hopeful that this totally new and distant spot from the lower garden will avoid the issue of the pea weevils we were infested with last year in the garden! The strawberries have been ripening but a little mouse is eating the berries before we get there up in the side garden unfortunately, so I've got a trap set to catch it (or them!) The raspberries are also doing well, and are blooming and hopefully we will see some berries from them in weeks to come too! So exciting to have this much more garden space than last year!

On the left in the before shot you can see the hastily put in side bed for the dry beans. The irrigation leftovers that we had remaining at that point in the garden irrigation set up were pretty meager, so this area needs extra attention to keep it happy and moist. I'm hopeful that once the beans come in fully the soil will be shaded enough that this lone strand of drip irrigation tubing will be enough to water the plants but we shall see! On the right at the bottom you can make out one of the mounds of squash and pumpkin, of which there are three. One is the most important, pumpkins for the kids' halloween carving needs, and the other two were just planted with leftover sprouted seeds from planting the lower garden with butternut and hubbard squash, cucumbers, and zucchini. Hopefully we get a bit extra food from these for the pigs!

 And of course no post of the side garden would be complete without sharing how the pigs are growing, they are getting larger and friendlier, and Little M still loves to be in with them. The dominance has changed as the browny-orange one (Copper) has grown a bit faster than the white stripey one (Stripey), and now it is Copper who bosses Stripey around, unlike when they first arrived.

In the next week or so of having both of us parents at home before my husband goes back to working nights, we're hoping to get the electric fence set up that we just didn't have time to get to before the pigs came initially, and I'll be sure to take lots of pictures of that set up and of the large area the pigs will then have to roam in. Hope your gardens are growing well!

2013 Garden in my absence

Near the end of last week, Little M and I made the trek home and back to Grammy's in one day, to pick up my husband (and the 2 dogs not already with me at Grammy's), so that we wouldn't end up with 2 cars with us after the baby makes her appearance. It was a bit of a long day, but so nice to see the garden and relax at home for a couple hours before making the trek back to stay at Grammy's for the long haul, however long that may be! He of course only stayed briefly, according to his days off work, but it was nice to spend a bit of time with him before he headed back home to work and keep a handle on the property, gardens, and animals.

When we were briefly at home, the garden had been without me for only 3-4 days, but it was amazing how much had changed - the green beans had come up, the newly transplanted tomatoes, peppers, greens, and marigolds had settled in nicely, and most of the squash, cucumbers, and zucchini sprouted seeds that we planted just before we left had emerged from the soil with their seed leaves.

In the time since then, my husband reports that the corn is all coming up, the green beans are filling in, and all the animals are doing well. Apparently there were even frogs of some sort calling from the pool of water in the pig's pen! I'm hoping they are still calling when I get back so we can ID them - he isn't much of a frog ID guy. What would be even more exciting (although quite unlikely with the disturbance the pigs make in that pool!) would be to end up with tadpoles in the pool. Likely won't happen, but makes me hopeful that in future years, once we have a little garden pond that isn't disturbed by pigs daily, we might have all that sort of wetland-y goodness for Little M to explore right by the house!

Ok, back to waiting on this baby to arrive and knitting a baby blanket for one of Little M's little friends whose mother recently had a baby boy...

Two Little Piggies

The piggies came home this week. 2 mixed breeds, unlike last year's Berkshire. We'll see how the meat compares, but honestly I don't know that we will be able to tell the difference, especially knowing the vast difference between store-bought pork to home-grown pork! These 2 are named Copper (the brown coppery colored one), and either Patpat (the second), or Stripey - Little M hasn't yet decided. I'm betting she goes with patpat like last year though.

She is just enthralled with them, which is really cute to see. She'll ask to go in with them, and then just sit down and watch them sleep, or eat, or whatever they happen to be doing. She'll 'help' put greens in for them, tag along to check on them in the mornings, and help feed them.

For now we just have them in the hog panel enclosure like we did with Pat last year, although we moved it to beside the new side garden. After the baby comes we'll spend the time to get the electric fence all set up, and let them out into that, but with them being so small, and us busy with other things for the next couple weeks, we felt that the simplest quickest solution for their enclosure for the short term would be the hog panels. Of course, they've already escaped via the accidentally left open gate into my garden, luckily not for long enough to do anything more than root around in the chicken manure pile! Oops!

On preparing to bring more pigs home!

We decided over the winter that we would like to raise another butcher pig this coming year. However, it was really my husband's decision, as I told him that with the baby coming in early summer, I would likely be off of animal chores and either pretty much worn out with the last stages of pregnancy or busy with the baby's needs for much of the pig's growing life. Since he was all for raising another one to have that tasty meat in our freezer for another year, we decided to go ahead and fit another pig into our (his!) schedule.

Of course, since we moved the chicken coop, the pig pen was all by its lonesome.

One of the reasons I think Pat did so well last year, being our only pig, was that the chickens were always there to keep him company. So I was a little nervous to have one pig all alone over there near the old orchard. Luckily my husband found two solutions:
1 - he got his 2 older brothers on board with buying a half pig each from us at cost. Sounds good to me, although that means hauling twice the amount of feed around, but since that task shouldn't fall to me this time around, I'm thinking this could be a good thing 2 pigs hopefully will gain weight faster and keep each other entertained, and we get to share how great this home-grown pork is with our extended family!
2 - he moved the pig area to beside the new side garden and chicken coop area, so the pigs will still have the chickens nearby, and we'll be gardening nearby too! Of course, this meant we decided to switch from the 16 x 16 hog panel pen to an electric pen that's about 100 x 60, where the future side garden space will extend into in future years, so a bit of added expense and work, but so worth it to have the pigs in a larger space, closer to the rest of the goings on, and to have them fertilizing, digging up, and controlling weeds in the future expanded side garden area!

It's hard to visualize without any posts up around it, but the pig area will extend from the chicken coop down to the left to the post down by the row of trees, and back across behind the new garden space that you can see off the right side of the playstructure.

We've got about 3 weeks until we pick the pigs up, and in that time we just need to figure out how to lay out our electric fence area... Yup, we like to make things interesting around here - learning how to do electric fencing in the mere 5 weeks before baby #2's due date... At least compared to making the house livable and moving in like we did when I was pregnant with Little M, this should be a breeze, right?! :)

This year we aren't going with a heritage breed like the Berkshire last year, simply because of availability. The neighbor we purchased Pat from is selling her early litter to fair 4-H kids, and has more than enough buyers for her second later litter. Since the timing of the later litter, even if there were 2 piglets available, would mean butchering later than we really want (it was quite stressful last fall worrying about Pat's water freezing, etc), we decided to go with crosses that a work friend of my husband's had. The timing is much better, and we'll get to compare whether the Berkshire was any different taste- or growing-wise.

Down the road I'd love to have a more reliable source of a breed that does really well on pasture, or even keep a sow ourselves, but we're just not at that stage yet, so this year that means trying a cross, which I am totally ok with at this busy stage in our lives!

Bringing our butcher piglet home

After putting in some hot sweaty hours over the weekend, our pig pen was pretty much ready, so Monday evening we went down to our wonderful neighbor's barn and brought our pig home. He is castrated and about 2 months old. He had a shot of deworming medicine this evening while we picked him up, and although the first day or two he was definitely missing his littermates and mother, he's really starting to settle in, get used to his chicken & human companions, and gobble down that food of his. We've named him Pat the Pig.

For his pen we bought 4 16' hog panels and a mesh-filled metal gate. We already had the t-posts, wood corner posts, and all of the shelter material except for some long screws, so that really cut costs down.

We're borrowing a feeder from our neighbor, and used some plastic pipe we had laying around for the waterer, in addition to a new water nipple. We've also got a trickle of irrigation water moistening a little mucking spot for him.

My husband is convinced that raising this pig will be too expensive for the meat to be worth it, but for me it's more than just the cost comparison of the pork in the end. It's knowing what went into the pig, knowing how it's life was lived, ending up with all the manure, and learning from the process of raising it. I'm lucky that my husband understands that for me growing and raising our own food, be it meat or vegetables, is more than a way to feed our family, it's a hobby verging on a way of life, just like hunting is for him.

If someday in the future we end up raising and breeding pigs, even just on a very small scale like our neighbor is currently doing, this first pig is teaching us valuable lessons that will help us move into that phase. Heck, it's teaching us valuable lessons about lots of things, building small structures, putting fence up, and most of all, just how to raise a butcher pig. Farming isn't something you just jump into, and the startup generally comes with increased time and cost. That's where we are at now, and I'm so happy we are :)

 

Linking up to the Homestead Barn Hop.

We're getting a pig!

Its official! We're getting a pig :)

Our neighbor E, who watches Little M a couple days a week when the Mr & I's work schedules overlap, has a registered Berkshire sow. This is her first litter. In the past, E has raised pigs purchased as piglets from others, and fattened them up and sold halves. Last year we didn't get any, but the year before we got a quarter, and it was just delicious. After that experience, I wanted to raise a piglet to slaughter size ourselves, but last year with adding the chickens we had enough going on. We were undecided until this weekend when I finally managed to convince the Mr about it.

The past couple of months we've been trying to narrow down where we will put our yard fence in, which has led to thinking on what we will have going on on the rest of the irrigated areas. There are some fences already in place that might be useable for other animals, but some aren't in the best locations. Surveying over the weekend helped us see where fences could go vs. where fences already were, and look at the lay of the land without seeing all the trees and other obstacles that could in theory be removed if they weren't in the ideal spot.

We've come to the conclusion that sheep may be our animal of choice (I've always wanted to raise sheep, and do the fleece to knit process all myself!), but a couple of cows or a pig or two might cycle in too. Next year I'm hoping we'll be able to buy a lamb to raise and slaughter, and see how that process goes, which will give us a better sense of whether sheep farming is something we want to get in to. Raising a pig or two a year, or even having a sow and selling piglets occasionally, might be something we would consider down the road too. But for the next couple of years, I suspect raising a piglet or lamb here and there to slaughter will be plenty of additional work on our plates.

In the more near future though, we've got about 5 weeks until our already castrated little male Berkshire piglet is ready to come home. Hopefully that is long enough to get ready! We'll need a nightime secure pen with some shelter from the elements, a larger area for foraging, a feeder, a freeze-safe waterer, a normal waterer for the summer months, and a place to store bulk food for him. And likely some other things that I haven't yet thought of or learned about!

Yay for the next step in our journey on this land!