Spork learning to operate equipment on the farm
Most kids would kill to be able to operate equipment on the farm. For some reason, Spork isn’t really interested in driving tractors and trucks. Whenever I give him the chance, he’s not really interested and begs out of it unless I really need him.
The other day I asked Spork to get on the skid steer and do something for me. He wasn’t really excited about he idea but I talked him into it. Once I had him on the tractor I told him to drive around and smash watermelons. Suddenly the tractor looked pretty good to him and he enjoyed the game of smashing melons with a tractor.
Here is a video of Spork at work.
There’s no kill like overkill.
Pigs aren’t having sex anymore.
I read this article to Lamont, our boar, recently. He seemed mildly interested, sort of like when you hear that kids are starving on the other side of the world. It’s touching but it’s not right in front of your nose so it doesn’t seem real. He then sauntered over to Penelope and continued his courtship, immediately forgetting the plight of “normal” pigs destined for our traditional food system.
Lucky for Lamont, I’m not getting that personal with Penelope. She’s already bitten me once, and tried more than once. The idea of trying AI with her just isn’t appealing for more than the normal reasons.
You can tell this isn’t a ninja cow because…
The cow in this news report didn’t use ninja stars nor swing from ropes like a true Ninja Cow would have. Just a wannabe ninja trying to chew her cud.
Update to the new name for Bok Bok
We’ve had a number of submissions on Bok Bok’s new name.
The current front-runners are:
Wildflower (because she’s WILD)
Cowgirl (because she’s a girl, and uh, we have cows)
Wonder Woman (She’s a tiny little thing but she hit’s way above her weight)
Sugar ( we already had this one).
Please keep them coming, these are so much better than what we’ve come up with on our own.
Thanks to Cassia for a huge list of awesome suggestions!
A new name for Bok Bok, we need your help.
So as you’ve likely noticed by now, everyone routinely talked about on our farm has some sort of nick name. A big part of this is SWMBO (my wife) does not like the kids names used in a public domain. I used to think this was overprotective but now it just seems to be common sense. No sense making things easier to bad people. But back to the nicknames. My son is “Spork”, my older daughter is “The Princess”, and my youngest daughter is “Bok Bok”. The issue is that Bok Bok now needs a new name. But before I get into that, let me share some history.
For some reason nobody really questions Spork but for back story, he was named by my neighbor when Spork was doing something somewhat slowly and not quite right. He was a really little kid and was doing the best he could but certainly wasn’t moving at adult pace. Anyway the frustrated quote was, “I don’t know what you’re going to be, you’re not quite a spoon and you’re certainly not a fork. I think you’ll just be a spork the rest of your life.” It was a strange statement but it stuck. Now with men, your nickname is supposed to be not especially flattering. My neighbor, who is a man, was saddled with Alice. If you’re wondering about how all this nickname stuff works, there is an interesting article here at The Art of Manliness website. You’ll note that there is quite a bit in that article about how nicknames are not flattering, and complaining about them only gets you in trouble but since SWMBO nor Bok Bok have or will read the article, they don’t care. They want a new name for Bok Bok.
Now The Princess is easy. My first girl, my little princess. Every father with a girl has his little princess but my girl isn’t a princess with a little p, she’s a princess with a big P. You see I had to do some research for work on my genealogy and in doing so I found that our line goes a LONG ways back, back to Scotland and specifically back to Robert De Bruce. Yes, that Robert De Bruce from Braveheart. So it turns out we are distantly related to Scottish royalty which is pretty cool, and why my little princess is my little Princess.
Bok Bok was given a name because by that time everyone had a name. I really don’t know what made me land on this name but I do know where it came from. That’s a commercial from when I was a kid. No she wasn’t born on Easter and no she doesn’t especially like eggs, or bunnies, or chocolate, no more than any other kid. However, she and SWMBO have decided that they hate Bok Bok and they no longer want her called by that name. The issue is what is her new name. I planned on waiting till she earned her new name by some action but that time frame is apparently not acceptable so I’m turning to you, my friends, to help name this young lady. Per the folkways and mores of traditional man interaction noted in the article above, she should get something horrible as punishment for complaining but she is my little girl and I do love her so, so I’m letting her out of her punishment and hoping to find her a good name. We have some preliminary draft names already, none of which are clearly ahead in the polls. I’ll detail them below along with pictures of Bok Bok.
She’s rough and tumble, sweet towards animals, the baby of our brood, and she needs a new name. Any suggestions? We could sure use them.
Recap of the 4th of July weekend. Lots of pictures!
Having The Princess bake an independence day cake is becoming a tradition at our house. Fluffy cake, whipped cream, and fruit stars and stripes all put together by her Highness. This is a tradition I can get behind!
Every day we go to two farmer’s markets to collect all the fresh produce that they cannot sell due to damage. We collect about 2500 pounds per day by my rough guess. That’s 365 days a year or over 900,000 pounds of produce a year to feed our animals which is pretty much their only feed besides what already grows on the farm. Here we are loading on the 4th. Yes that is three pallets of watermelons. This doesn’t show the heaping full truck bed already loaded with other produce. The next day we put FOUR pallets on the trailer and still had the truck full. That was a personal best for me for one day. Cows LOVE watermelons, as do pigs, and chickens, and kids for that matter. The cows are starting to figure out how to break open watermelons and it’s funny to watch them chase the round melons around the pasture. While all the rest of us (animals both in the house and out) still love watermelon, SWMBO is getting a bit tired of watermelon juice covering her counters. Looks like its time to switch to peaches.
This pallet was full of sweet corn husks, watermelons, squash, zucchini, and I don’t know what else. By the time the cows were done with it, it was just a pallet and some cardboard. By the end of the weekend, I noted that the cows were looking mighty portly. A few are showing some signs that they may need to be culled but the rest are looking fat and happy with slick coats and not a lot of signs of parasites. Right now #23, #14, and #3 (all brood cows) all look like candidates for culling, along with #28 and #40 (steers) who both had bloat but are doing better now.
The beauty of a longer weekend is even on the farm it’s not all work and no play. I took a little while to take SWMBO, The Princess, and Spork down to the shooting range to get in some practice. Spork was phenomenal, knocking down every target with boring regularity. Since he did so well, we decided to put him to work on our squirrel menace. Every year we have squirrels strip our fruit trees of all of our fruit before it has a chance to be harvested. With Spork doing so well in his shooting, it was time to introduce him to hunting. Between Spork, myself, and Alice, we accounted for 4 of the little fluffy tailed rats this weekend, with more to come.
The gun is still just a bit big for the Princess but she stepped up there and took some shots. She was nervous at first but very excited after shooting. I believe we’ll have her back again this fall when the weather is nice. By then the gun should just about fit her.
This weekend we processed our 25 freedom ranger chickens. We process on farm and despite being able to sell these chickens pretty much anywhere we want with such a high demand, in the end we are simply going to put them in the freezer and eat them ourselves which was the original plan. There is a difference between home raised chickens and store-bought chickens and we have another 50 on the way for another batch. The Princess was everywhere for processing and did every single job on the line.
You never know when catching chickens will be a skill you need to list on your resume.
A quick bleed and the worst part of the job is over. Nobody likes killing animals but these chickens lived a good life on our farm and never had a bad day till this day. I believe you should know where you food comes from and all chicken ends up on the plate somehow. These chickens went from their home to the cone, with no scary truck ride or meat factory in between.
Note the blood on the face of The Princess. For a minute that morning she said she didn’t want to be around chicken processing, but then she reverted back to her old blood loving self and was in the middle of the fray. Playing with all the blood is her favorite part, unless you count identifying all the organs, which she is quite good at.
She’ll probably grow up to be a vegan, but she’ll know where food comes from and how it gets to the plate.
Concrete floors, bleach for cleaning, and plenty of water to work with. A pretty good setup. We need to switch to food grade water hoses and tweak a few other things but overall the processing setup is working nicely.
When we couldn’t keep enough work for her to do, she reverted to pulling a whole chicken from the ice bath and plopping it on her hand then proceeding to run around acting out scenes with her “chicken puppet.” It was very cute, and quite twisted which at least for me and Miguel was funny. I’m sure someone would say that she’ll have emotional scars from seeing chickens killed or any of the other things she chooses to do on the farm. Folks, playing with a recently deceased chicken couldn’t be more normal. Scarring comes from having the world hidden from children and then they learn reality when they are adults.
For those of you who were put off by the previous images, this probably looks more familiar. Our chicken, grocery store ready, cut into traditional cuts and ready for SWMBO’s magic act of turning this chicken golden brown and yummy.
This chicken was walking and clucking this morning, now it’s our dinner. Thanks to SWMBO’s efforts in the kitchen we sat down to a healthy and hearty meal. Yes it was as good as it looks.
And don’t think she’s a one trick pony, just working in the kitchen. Here is SWMBO, still in her workout clothes after having worked out for two hours, bailing us out on the processing line by taking the quality control and packaging station. She saved us because we were getting backed up with not enough hands to do the work. Thanks Honey!
This was just a small part of our weekend. Yesterday evening Spork was excited telling SWMBO about what he and dad were going to do tomorrow. She had to break the news to him that dad had to go to work tomorrow, that he would have to wait for the next weekend to spend the day with dad again. Broke my heart to hear that I was letting him down for today but I guess that means he had a good 4th of July weekend. I know that I did.
Beer and BBQ festival at the farm, the results
Last night we had the BBQ dinner we’ve been talking about for a few weeks. I don’t think it could have gone any better. The weather was warm but not too hot with a light breeze and no rain. The bugs weren’t too much of a problem, at least till we turned the lights on which was just when we were cleaning up. Everyone who showed up was very nice and seemed to have a good time. We had enough room for parking, which was a concern originally and people seemed to enjoy the food and the beer.
It wouldn’t be an event without some drama and we had the right amount mixed in. Wil with Beltline Brew Tour’s showed up but running late because of an earlier event and to make matters worse his help did not show at all. Fortunately Wil had already been out multiple times to set up so his stuff was pretty much ready to go, except for his beer dispenser which had somehow lost both of the washers that make it work. Miguel grabbed me and handed me an oversized washer that needed to be modified to fit. A few minutes in the shop and we had new custom washers for Wil and the beer was flowing. Mike with Mike’s BBQ was MIA, but he had a very nice and capable lady handling the event for him. Unfortunately her help quit at the last moment so she was by herself. All this was happening as guests were arriving because what’s drama without witnesses. Needless to say there was some scrambling going on. Fortunately, Miguel had elected to stay and “see a white people party” so he jumped in and helped things flow smoothly. Mike’s lovely wife showed up and made everything perfect with the table setup. Also Alice, The FOG, and Bar-B-Jew were on hand and they helped park cars and whatever else needed doing. The end result was nobody in attendance had any idea we had issues, which is exactly what you want, to look like a duck. Calm on the surface, and paddling your butt off underneath.
Cassia and Johnathan also showed up and Cassia began to tutor me in the modern world of marketing and websites that I don’t use, which I need. She grabbed my phone and put me on Instagram and then proceeded to take fantastic pictures and upload them for me, all while sporting her Ninja Cow Farm shirt showing her support for our farm. Here are some of the pics from our event. You can click on the picture to get it full size.
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SWMBO was also taking pictures. Once she downloads them I’ll post them in a later post.
Thanks to everyone for coming out. There was talk of doing another version of this at a later date. I’ll let Wil do the legwork on that one.
The Ninja Cow, immortalized in song.
I know we don’t have the only “Ninja Cow” in existence. There have been ones before, and there will be ones again (that’s sort of a zen/Battle Star Galactica thing). However, I do believe we are the only farm to take it on as our moniker. With that being said, I’m glad to see that the Ninja Cow has been written to song so we have a sound track to go with our little farming adventure. You can see the video of the song here.
I think I’ll reach out to the guys and see if we can adopt this song as our own.
Getting ready for the BBQ and Beer fest on June 28th
When you come on the 28th to have beer and BBQ, you’ll be having an Ossabaw hog that was born and raised here on our farm. He never had one ounce of commercial feed and has lived in the open in our woods since birth. He was born here, and died here, having never ridden in a truck, been in a cage, or had a bad day. On his last day he had a breakfast of farmers market sweet corn and never knew what happened.
This is as good of pork as we can produce and we’re excited to have Mike of Mike’s BBQ try his hand at our pork.
If you don’t have your tickets yet, better get them soon. The 28th is coming.
I’ll be delivering this hog to Mike on Monday so he’ll have all week to do his magic with brines and rubs.