A day in our farming life

“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!

February 28, 2020February 28, 2020

A secret…

`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!

Maker:0x4c,Date:2018-1-20,Ver:4,Lens:Kan03,Act:Lar01,E-Y

February 28, 2020February 28, 2020

The hardest day…

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.

February 28, 2020February 28, 2020

Making a small drying rack from an old bike tire

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)

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!
Attach the three zip ties equidistant around the wheel, loosely (larger zip ties are best)!
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).
Optional – attach three lengths to the carabiner rather than tie together
Tie more rope to the three lengths/carabiner; use enough to be able to hang from a tree or whatever you can find.
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!

February 28, 2020February 28, 2020

Where are the eggs?

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.