Last year, about this time, I sold a couple of Large Black gilts to a fellow in Manitoba. Yesterday he e-mailed me this picture of his first litter from one of the girls! 6 healthy little ones, 4 gilts. I was happy to see another generation of these rare pigs hit the ground in a good home. Neal was very happy with how good a mother she was too. Most farmers will tell you that you need a barn and a farrowing crate etc. etc. Neal even went to the trouble of building a couple of a-frame farrowing huts for the girls out in the pasture, but this sow didn't like his construction because she just built a nest of straw out in the open and did her thing. Neal mentioned how careful she was in moving about the nest so that she wouldn't lay on anyone. This is entirely normal for the breed and probably normal for any breed that is given the ability to farrow outdoors in a natural setting. 
Spring work has been frustrating so far this year. The 766 is working well, but we have encountered some unexpected field conditions while plowing the new land. There are some pretty good sized rocks about 6 inches below the surface and we have broken the plow twice. On top of that, we sprung the back arm on the plow and that made it almost impossible to set the plow to work properly. We tried for a couple days and only managed to plow 20 acres. Finally, yesterday, we gave up trying to plow and made arrangements to rent a very large and heavy breaking disc. We'll see how that works at breaking up the hay field. 
We brood our day-olds in an old horse water trough. It works well and is so deep that it allows us to continually add bedding all the while that the birds are brooding. We have a wire/lumber top for the brooder that allows us to hang two heat lamps over the chicks. We can adjust the lamps to whatever height we need to keep them comfortable. This year, as every year it seems, we are experiencing extremely low temps. that are well under normal. I had to cover the brooder with a silver tarp and a blanket and then set up an electric baseboard heater nearby to keep the temperature up inside the brooder. If it is too cold, the birds will crowd each other and make a big pile. The birds at the bottom of the pile suffocate and die. We know that the temperature is correct when we see the chicks off in all corners of the brooder pecking away at feed, water and whatever bugs and grass is in their bedding straw. They will stay in the brooder for a week or two and then we will set up another one and split them up to allow them to grow until they are feathered out. Typically, near the end of brooding, we transfer the chicks to the pig barn where they have lots of room to grow until they are big enough to be transferred to the field pens. Once they are fully "feathered out", they are able to care for themselves outside without the need for extra heat from lamps or an inside room. All they need at that point is a roof and some wind blockage that comes from the movable pen in the pasture.
Chicken season is underway once more. Yesterday, Cindy travelled to Rochester Hatchery in Westlock to pick up 314 day-old chicks. This year we went back to the Cornish Giant breed. Last years chickens did not grow the way we had hoped. Slower growing genetics combined with organic feed minus the growth hormones and supplements made for a season that was just too long for us to handle effectively. We have had good luck with the Cornish Giants on our own feed in previous years but we didn't like the fact that they were bred to grow so fast and do have so many health problems when placed on accelerated/medicated feed in big commercial operations. We wanted to support the smaller, less popular breeds. Fortunately for us, the Cornish Giant breed works very well on organic food. The breeding genetics make the bird grow quickly, but the organic non-medicated feed keeps growth in check and produces a very nicely finished bird. Combined with all the fresh pasture that they can eat, the end result is simply scrumptous. 
Here is the new 766 ready for the field. I gave her a quick new coat of paint, changed the fluids and cleaned out the cab along with a few other minor adjustments here and there. It still needs the decals, but those can wait until spring work is complete. Now I am ready on Wednesday to drive to the farm where the plow is waiting to be picked up and then off to the field that I am renting south of our farm. I will spend the next few days plowing 50 acres or so of alfalfa in preparation of seeding with wheat. First though, I need to take off the dual wheel on the right hand side to be able to travel down the furrow cleanly without driving on newly plowed ground and keeping the plow level.
I went ahead and picked up an old New Holland Mix Mill last weekend. It was at a good price of $400. I haven't seen one in any condition for less than $1000 so I jumped at it. It was through a friend of a friend so I know what I am getting into. It needs some ducting, but that is easily fixed with some stove pipe and some fittings that I already have in the barn. It also needs to be thoroughly cleaned out. Having sat out in the rain and snow for a year, it shows some signs of rusting around the clean outs. I will clean it up and get it running and then park it in the barn for the rest of it life. It should last me until I am ready to retire from farming (no time soon I hope). 
I haven't posted in a while but that ought to be changing any time now. Spring is almost here and with that, we will be working steadily with various projects outside. Chicks need to be ordered, equipment needs to be repaired and maintained, fencing, new hen house location, etc. etc.
Finally, we have our heritage breed turkeys! We have been looking for quite some time for a breeding pair of turkeys and I hooked up with Judy Fitzsimmons. She has quite a few heritage breeds of livestock and had a pair of Broadbreasted Bronze Turkeys. The added bonus was the fact that the hen is broody! We are very excited to have this pair of birds and hopefully, we will have some chicks this spring. We haven't seen any breeding activity yet, but it is still early. I do plan to build them a separate coop along with adjacent yards. We will try to produce a small amount of turkeys for friends and family and see where it goes from there.
Prudence was enjoying a nice mid-afternoon snack yesterday when I snapped a photo of her. It is funny how the picture turned out because it looks as though we caught her with a mouth full of food and she is saying "what are you lookin at?". 
I made a couple trips to Vince's place over the weekend. He had a fairly large pile of small, square alfalfa bales that a helper didn't tarp very well. Some rain and melted snow got through the improperly fastened tarps and rotted the sisel twine holding the bales together. Some of the bales were ruined, but more importantly, a good portion of the bales had broken apart. Vince took as many bales as he could that had held together and sold them to folks who had to travel some distance to pick up the hay. The rest of the broken ones, he gave to me. We decided to just stuff as much hay as we could into the horse trailer. It has worked well so far and we are almost complete cleaning up the pile...one, maybe two more loads to go. It is great hay too. Very rich with Alfalfa leaves and quite green. The sheep, cows and pigs are loving it. 
This is the loading ramp I was talking about earlier. It only took me 2 hours to build and is fairly simple. I made it about 36" high which should cover most farm trucks. I had to build it so we could load the large sow into the stock rack in the back of a customer's truck who had come to pick up a 60 pound Large Black Boar. Loading the little boar was easy, we just threw a big sack over him and put it over my shoulder to carry to the truck bed. Getting the sow up the chute was not as easy but it worked finally. I was happy to see the ramp easily handle the weight of both me and the 250 pound sow!
A couple weekends ago, I needed to get some more pigs for the meat market. There is an older fellow north of Edmonton that had some piglets and at the same time wanted to give me the two sows! I took both of them and then passed along one of the sows to some folks who had just bought our little Large Black Boar. I kept this little red sow. It looks as though she has some Tamworth blood and/or Duroc. She is a beautiful sow and will cross well with Bubbles, our Pure Bred Large Black boar. I have been calling her Big Red Pig and my son thought of the name "Burp" because of the initials BRP. Clever! So, Burp it is. She still has 4 little ones sucking, but they will soon be weaned. 
Here is the little boar from my last litter. He is a really good example of a young Large Black Pig. His conformation is excellent and he has really good length. I am happy with how he has turned out but I cannot keep him because he is related to my little herd. I brought in a new boar from Ontario last year so this little guy can go to a new home and spread some Large Black genetic material. The breed is actually good as a cross with Yorkshires and other commercial white breeds. The white breed is dominant so most of the piglets will look like their mom....white with little ears.
We have had two Hereford cows on our farm since early Summer. They belong to friends of ours that were short of pasture and we had an excess. Besides, it was alright for our cow Henny to have a little herd with her and her calf. Alas, the time came for us to process these two cows and downsize the "herd" considerably. Instead of simply trailering the cows to a processors where they would be scared and stressed, we hired a mobile processor to come to our farm and take care of the business without transporting them at all. It really is the best way to process meat for your own use. Stress is a common problem with transporting animals and decreasing the quality of meat. All of this is besides the point that perhaps the traditional method of processing meat is not the most humane procedure. I'm not sure about that, but what I am sure of is how easy it was for us to accomplish the task on our farm. We hired a fellow to come to the farm and he quickly dispatched the animals and bled them. The hard part was over in a matter of less than 2 minutes. After that, the cows quickly started looking like the meat that we know and appreciate. He skinned, gutted and split the carcasses using our old Allis Chalmers tractor with the front end loader to hold them above the ground. We loaded the quarters into the truck where they were carefully wrapped and from there, he took them to the meatcutters' shop where they are now hanging. For our troubles, our friends have given us a quarter of beef. We will intruct the cutter on how we want our meat cut and wrapped and fairly soon we will have some nice organic pastured beef in our freezer! 
Over the holidays I made a trip down to Lethbridge Alberta to pick up our newly purchased flock of Clun Forest Sheep. I bought three ewes and a ram. This picture shows the group of young rams that I had to choose from. We have been researching sheep for several months now and have been thinking about them for the farm for a lot longer than that. For several reasons we decided to track down and purchase the Clun Forest breed of sheep over all the others. We have talked to many people, read many books and publications and made a list of the priorities that we had, or the goals for our flock. Since we are a diversified farm and we have little experience with sheep, we wanted a breed that had tremendous mothering instincts and the ability to lamb without assistance. Nothing would turn us off of sheep quicker than spending the spring pulling lambs and dealing with orphans and dead lambs and ewes. I cannot overemphasize that different breeds have different characteristics. We want sheep that do well on a grass-based diet...not grain. We want sheep that are hardy and resistant to disease and parasites and most importantly, we want sheep that can produce a good crop of lambs with little help from the shepherd. Clun Forest fit the bill in all these categories and we are excited for the future of our herd. They are a multi-purpose breed that make good gains on pasture for the meat market and also produce a fine wool that is in demand by spinners. We plan to direct-market our meat products in the same way that we sell our pork. The lambs will be processed by a licenced facility and the wrapped & frozen meat will then be delivered directly to the customer. There appears to be a good demand for farm fresh lamb and of course, our lamb will be produced organically with a grass based diet to make it even more desirable by customers.
