We were contacted about a week ago about bringing some animals out to a church for their Kids out Loud program. I responded that we couldn’t bring animals to the church but the kids could come here. I really didn’t know what a kids out loud program was. I mean, I know we drop our kids off at a program at church and they do stuff. And I know the kids come home with more bible knowledge than I have, but I don’t actually sit through these things, I go to boring adult church. I also didn’t know who Fairview Baptist church was. Are they big? Are they small? Don’t know, didn’t have time to look.
Surprisingly they agreed they’d come out here instead and after some wrangling of schedules, a last minute decision was made to have them out last night.
The kids arrive on their activity bus
About 7:15 the bus showed up with 36 kids and assorted adults. I had Spork and The Princess come out to help. All these kids traveled to our farm to experience farm life. My kids, who live it every day, wanted to know if they could see the inside of the bus! Too funny, they’ve never seen the inside of a bus and had only heard stories. Everyone got to see something new so there was much happiness.
Walking down the road towards the pig paddock.
The kid were really well behaved and the adults did a great job of keeping everyone together so we strolled to our first stop, the maternity ward.
Petting a day old baby Large Black pig
Thanks to Cindy for sending me these pics. You can barely see the little piglet for all the hands and kids. This was a highlight of the trip. How often do you get to see a less than one day old baby pig? One of the Large Blacks that we purchased had delivered 7 beautiful piglets just that morning. All were sleeping and snuggling in their farrow house that afternoon so I was able to sneak one out for the kids to see and touch. Perfect timing.
It was like being a movie star and being mobbed by fans.
Yes there is actually a little pig in there.
After the baby pig, we walked back to the bee hives where everyone was able to take a quick look at the bees. I love watching the bees, but bees are boring to kids so we quickly moved on to seeing the cows. I’d quickly unloaded the new trailer before everyone arrived so we had room for everyone to ride. I’d also put a pallet of watermelons onboard for entertainment. We rode down to the cows and I hopped in the trailer and starting handing out pieces of watermelon to the kids to throw to the cows, who were most happy to gobble it up to the kids delight.
The view from the trailer
After feeding about 6-8 watermelons, it was time to go. We all rode back to the barn where the kids loaded up and left but not before many thanks to their farmer. They were a joy to have and I’m glad I made the time for them. I also was able to meet one of my neighbors who came along. I didn’t know her so it was great to have a chance.
Yesterday morning I had a meeting with a very nice lady from CFSA about being part of the farm tour this coming September. I gave her the obligatory tour of our farm just so she could see what sort of craziness they were getting associated with. Actually it was neat to go around and show what we do to someone who has so much exposure to our type of farming. You can always learn from people, even if it’s by their questions and she had really good questions.
Despite spending an hour with me they still want us to be part of the tour this September 19th and 20th so mark your calendars to see not only us but 25 or so other farmers who will be putting on their Sunday best and opening the barn doors wide.
Before I could handle all this tour stuff, we had another issue to deal with. We received some new pigs in about a week ago. As usual, Spork jumped in the trailer and sorted out each piglet, grabbing them one at a time and handing them out of the trailer. He also identifies if it’s a boy or a girl for those of us outside the trailer. The girls get a quick once over, a dose of oral dewormer, and they are tossed in the paddock. The boys get the same thing, except they needed to be castrated. However this trip, Spork forgot his birds and bees lesson and missed one of the boys who made it through without being castrated. Of course it’s not Miguel’s or my fault for not checking behind him since we of course handled the same pig. Oh no, what is the point of having child labor if you can’t blame them for the mistakes.
Having throughly convinced Spork it was all his fault we made plans to catch the uncut male yesterday morning and castrate him before the tour. Catching him was easy enough as Miguel, the pig whisperer just grabbed him easy as pie after putting out some food. In fact this boy, with his hind end completely up in the air being held by Miguel was still eating. It was pretty funny. Miguel brought him out and I went to work. As I located his naughty bits, I commented that he looked like he might have a hernia. As I took the first testicle out, about 6″ of intestines came squirting out right behind it. Ugh! Miguel held onto the piglet while I ran to the house. My vet bag has everything in it except sutures!
My emergency medical kit comes in handy
I keep this Adventure Medical Kit, along with all the rest of the zombie apocalypse medical first aid stuff at the house. I’d love to claim that I’m some sort of doctor in training, but I didn’t even sleep at a Holiday Inn Express last night. This was the first time I’d opened this kit since it had arrived, which is always a bad idea. It took me a few minutes to find the sutures and the wound irrigation syringe but after some fumbling, I was pushing guts back in, cleaning up, and suturing away. They say the way to learn to suture is to do it on pig skin. I don’t think they meant one that was still squirming. 15 minutes and about 10 stitches later, the piglet was cleaned up, sutured, castrated, and back in the pen. Since he had more than a normal castration, he also received a shot of penicillin and an ear tag so we can identify him later as having had anti-biotics, as is our normal policy. This piglet is now #17.
Pig 17, post sutures and prior to being cleaned up
I was dismayed to find out that this big kit only contains two sutures so as soon as things settled down, I ordered two large packs of sutures, along with some more doctor goodies that were on the list for the next order to save shipping. I can’t guarantee it’ll be pretty, but it you have a boo boo, I do promise I can sew you back together.
On Monday we took three of our hogs to the processor, something I failed to mention on the tours I gave the previous weekend. While everyone likes to know where their food comes from, some folks don’t like knowing that trip is quite so imminent. With Vicente and Miguel both here, loading pigs goes pretty quickly.
Pigs on the trailer, ready to be cross loaded onto the stock trailer
Have I mentioned how much I love the pig trailer we built? All we do is back this trailer up to the gate much as you see here. We then drop the trailer by raising the tires on their built-from-junk custom pivot axles, then open the gate to the trailer, open the red gate you see in the picture, and drop a little food into the trailer. The pigs fight each other to get on. Once we have the pigs we want onboard, we close the trailer gate and I hop in and start sorting out who we want off. By this point the food is gone so the pigs are agreeable to get back out. With out selected pigs on board, we lower the tires, which raises the trailer, and we drive back to the barnyard where the stock trailer awaits. We back up gate to gate with the stock trailer, using the hydraulics to make the transition level with the stock trailer. The pigs step across the opening with little to no encouragement and we close them in the stock trailer ready to ride.
Pigs on the trailer, ready to be loaded onto the stock trailer.
It takes about 30 minutes from the time we hook the trailer up to the time we are unhooking the trailer, done. The pig walk onto a level trailer, and walk off of a level trailer with no slipping, slapping, or pushing. It’s SO much better than what we used to do which involved sweating and foul language as the main ingredients.
These pigs are destined for three things.
One, we have a new customer, Neuse River Brewing Company who will be opening shortly in Raleigh. They will be serving our pork snack sticks at their tasting bar (which is awesome btw) so that’s pretty cool. This is the first time any of our products have been available in a restaurant/bar/whatever. Not that we don’t get inquiries but we just cannot produce the volume that most restaurants need. The snack sticks are an exception because we have plenty of pork available and they use the grind/sausage which is easier to come by.
Two, our other wholesale outlet, The Butcher and the Baker in Fayetteville has become woefully short on pork. They actually have a wait list of people waiting on Ninja Cow Farm pork products. Not that I like to keep people waiting, but these are folks that I’ve never met and don’t know. I haven’t had a chance to sell them on why our products are better, show them our operation, meet their kids, etc. They simply bought our product out of a freezer and liked it so much they are willing to wait on ours vs. getting someone else’s pork that is available. When you work so hard on your product, it’s great to get validation that is that clean and free from bias.
Three, our pork sales freezer is looking pretty sad. There is more air than pork in there currently so we are going to restock the freezer so everyone has plenty of selection. We should have all the sausage and bacon and whatnot back in about a week and a half. I’ll post when we get it in. We are getting Italian sausage and breakfast link sausage back in stock with this order, and also restocking on BBQ so if you are getting low, we’ve got you covered. If you want me to put a hold on something when it comes in, just shoot me an email. I do it for people all the time.
On May 12th, I went to Clemmons, NC to visit No Goats, No Glory farm and to look at some hogs that they had for sale. Kim, the owner of the farm, and I reached an agreement and I bought three Large Black sows, and one Large Black boar. Note these are Large Blacks, not just big black hogs. Large Blacks are a breed we’ve looked at in the past and Kim was a registered breeder for these hogs, of which there are only a few in NC. The idea with these new hogs is, we’ll start raising on own piglets on purpose, as opposed to the immaculate conception pigs we’ve had in the past. We’ll supplement when we need to with other breeders, utilizing ones that we prefer as opposed to the random ones we come across as we search for feeder pigs. And when we get too many pigs we can sell off some feeder pigs rather than buying all the time. Hopefully by having a surplus of pigs, we can be more selective on what we do and have better throughput with our feeding system and the seasons.
The rest of the gaggle of pigs
In addition to the breeding stock, we purchased a good sized group of pigs that we can add into our system. Buying pigs this big isn’t a money maker for us, but it allows us to meet demand and say yes to our customers, which we desperately prefer to do. In this mix are some Chester White/Large Black crosses, some Hampshires, and some Large Blacks. All the pigs have settled in nicely and soon will be regular Joes on the pig tour.
All the pigs were dewormed and ear tagged when they arrived. No more repeats of the sicknesses we had before.
Miguel noticed that we had a pig in our finishing paddock that had hurt itself. It had injured its mouth and didn’t appear that it could eat. We were able to catch the pig but found that we didn’t have the right stuff with us to treat her. When we returned with the tools and medicine we needed, the pig was onto us and wouldn’t get within 50 feet of anyone. We tried enticing the pig with food with no luck. We tried chasing the pig. Yeah right. We tried using hog panels. The pig weight 250 pounds and blew right through the panel. Miguel explained that Mexicans were sneaky, so we’d wait till the pig laid down and he’d sneak up on her and jump on her. Miguel has been skipping lunch lately apparently because when he landed on the pig, she just stood up and threw him off before I could close a 15 foot distance and add my weight. After a few hours of chasing this pig, we were defeated.
We finally decided that we’d wait till Thursday, the next day, because Vicente would be here!! Well first thing Thursday morning we all three tried again. We tried sneaking. Nope. Chasing. Nope. Hog panel. Nope. In the process of trying to corner the pig, she bolted through us and tried to jump over some fallen logs. In the process she ripped open her leg, badly. Like 30 stitches needed badly. And she still wouldn’t get within 50 feet of anyone. The wound didn’t slow her down at all. There was no choice at that point but to shoot her and dress her out here on farm. I really took my time to get a clean shot as this pig had already been through enough. Lucky the shot was clean and Miguel, Vicente, and I quickly scalded, scraped, and gutted her.
Heading towards the cooler
She’s now hanging in the cooler waiting to be broken down into cuts. Oh, and when I was gutting her I found that her stomach was full so she was eating. Although we had to treat her no matter what so the only thing is at least she didn’t die hungry.
After we finished with the pig, we had to go get a crazy cow that was still at the neighbors. This cow went crazy when it was time to leave last week and gave us a merry chase around the pasture, then down the road as it blasted through a gate and escaped. This cow was definitely channeling the Ninja Cow and I was worried after the disaster of the pig, that this cow would be just as bad. I was right to worry. He was actually worse.
When we arrived at the pasture, with food in tow to bait the cow into the corral, we found horses that weren’t supposed to be in the pasture had been put in by our neighbors. So much for using food. The only option was to work the cow into the paddock by walking him in there. We borrowed a four wheeler and started trying to work the cow in. Any normal cow has flight zones where you can apply pressure and direct the cow where you want it to go. It’s not a perfect science, but it works most of the time. You close on the right shoulder, the cow turns left. You stay parallel to the shoulder, the cow moves at the same pace. You drift back to the hip bone, the cow speeds up. I’ve been moving cows this way my whole life. It works. As I worked this cow across the pasture, it literally did everything wrong. No matter what pressure was applied, the cow went the wrong way, period. That’s exactly what it did in the other pasture when my neighbor was trying to move it. This cow was wild, and crazy. Instead of applying pressure to the cow and it reacting, I literally had to push it the direction I wanted it to go. Understand this is from a moving four wheeler while the cow is at full gallop. Not something I’d recommend. I’ve never seen a cow react this way. This thing was one of a kind.
Finally we got the cow into the paddock area. It immediately tried to go through a wooden fence and “got its head stuck.” I put that in quotes because as soon as I jumped off the four wheel it magically freed itself and tried to bolt past everyone now on foot. Rather than let the cow escape back into the pasture I jumped on the cow’s head and began to bull dog it down to the ground so he couldn’t get away. Think of those guys who jump off their horses onto the cow’s head at the rodeo.
Kind of like this, but without the hat
At the same time Miguel grabbed the back end of him. I’m not sure what Vicente was doing at this point, probably thinking he should have stayed in Mexico. I think we were pushing opposite directions but once Miguel realized I wanted the cow on the ground he went right down.
Ear tag of the crazy cow
Finally, we had the cow down and thanks to Vicente being home we had someone to grab some ropes and hobble the cow by tying three legs. After that we brought up the trailer and began trying to work the cow into the trailer to take him to the auction as there was NO WAY he was going back to my farm. Not acting the way he did.
Now we began a process of trying to move 800 pounds of cow with 500 pounds of people. We used a rope to hold his head, and more ropes to keep him somewhat hobbled but with enough freedom of movement to finally go into the trailer. We worked this cow every way I know or have heard of, from being gentle to trying to pick up his front half and set him in the trailer. We finally even resorted to using a hot stick, something I almost never use but have on hand just in case. He fought every inch, every second, and nothing we did would get him to move forward. The closest we ever came was one foot in the trailer, one that Miguel had overpowered him and lifted it in, with him straining with all his might to get it back out. This whole process went on for some time and he never gave an inch. Eventually in all his craziness, he managed to get the rope too tight around his neck and before we could get slack into it, he hung himself and died in a matter of seconds. I was dumbfounded.
I’ve never lost a cow to anything like this, and I’ve never lost a pig the way we did. To have both on the same day made for a horrible day. We walk our cows, rather than run them. We name them. We hand feed them. We are as gentle as we can be with them. We even left this cow alone for a week to calm down rather than push him when he was excited. None of that mattered with this one. When an animal goes wild, there is only so much you can do. If they would let farmers use tranquilizer guns, I’d have one. Sometimes, there just isn’t anything you can do although I’ll be figuring out some sort of solution for going forward. We cannot have a repeat of either situation.
Today is going to be better. I’m not sure how it could be worse but I don’t want to temp fate. I’m just going to go forward saying it will be better and see if it is so.
Tomorrow Miguel and I are going to have an old fashioned hog killing. Then we are going to make authentic carnitas. This is something we are doing as a thank you to our farmer friends whom we receive all our produce from every day. Having fresh meat, warm from the carcass to the pot to the tortilla is something you can’t get in America but it’s something people from Mexico recall fondly. We have to kill, scald, cook, and deliver all this pork, in addition to our normal farm work tomorrow so it’s going to be a busy day.
Here you see our scald tank as I fill it with wood and blocks. The wood is for the wood fire we will build to heat the water to 160 degrees. The blocks are because I made the legs too short when I made the tank.
Here is the tank filling with water. The white plastic and stainless steel tubs will hold meat waiting for the carnitas pot. You can see he handles of the bell scrapers we will use to scrape the hair off of the hog after it is scalded.
This is the copper carnitas pot we use to make the carnitas. We will run about 200 pounds of pork through this pot tomorrow, feeding about half of Raleigh I think. Of course we will have to sample it ourselves to make sure it’s not poisonous.
Everything will get a scrub down in the morning and I’m on my way to run all the butchery stuff through the dishwasher and sharpen knives. We have to move efficiently tomorrow. There is no extra time in the schedule but it should all work out, Lord willing.
Normally when I have someone email me with a product they are looking for, I will print the email and treat it as a picking ticket. I take the printed email, pull all the cuts they are looking for, bag the cuts and the email together, and put the whole thing in another freezer to hold for them until they arrive. That way, if I’m looking a week later at a big of random cuts, I have who it’s for right there in the bag.
About a month ago a nice lady contacted me and asked if I could get her a whole ham. “Sure, no problem. Next time I take a pig to be processed.”
I didn’t print the email because I hadn’t pulled the cut yet. Now I’m looking at a shelf occupied by this ham and I for the life of me cannot find the email to recall who it was that wanted the ham. If you are the person who wanted this ham, please let me know so I can get it to you. If you aren’t the person who wanted this ham, but you’d like one anyway, please let me know because I need to make room for all the pork that is coming our way this week. I don’t want to bury this ham behind all the new pork and have it sit longer.
Our friends Tommy and Chuck raise feeder piglets for us. Whenever they have a litter that is weaned, we drive over and pick up the whole lot which means a new batch for us, and no Craigslist crazies for them. It works out well and they are our preferred breeder. However Tommy and Chuck both work full time jobs and aren’t always available. The pigs you see above are SLIGHTLY bigger than feeder pig size. In fact, they are market size. With the bad winter, their schedules, my schedule, and a whole comedy of errors, these pigs lived most of their lives at Chuck’s place and the first time we could get them was last Saturday. Don’t worry, these pigs will be going to a different market since they haven’t been raised in our program. We received 11 pigs with an average weight of 267 pounds each.
These pigs are pretty big and fat, however they will loose about 20% of their body weight by being on our farm. I’ve not really seen our pigs next to a conventional pig. The difference is this
Fat Albert, for those of you who don’t remember who is.
compared to this.
Well maybe not quite a ripped
You can see it in these pigs behavior and in how they look the difference of working for your food vs. unlimited handouts. These pigs lay down and go to sleep pretty much anywhere and any time. In fact, while I was talking to Chuck just after loading, one of the pigs started snoring! This is 5 minutes after being loaded into a strange trailer. I’ve never heard a pig snore before, it was pretty funny. However it was also pretty telling. Carrying around all that extra weight does to a pig what it does to us, none of it good. We are processing one of the pigs to see what the meat is like and do some side by side comparisons. We’ll know in a few weeks what we have and we’ll report back here I’m sure. In the meantime, these pigs are going onto the Ninja diet. We’ll get them into shape.
Yesterday we loaded pigs to be carried to the processor. When we hooked up our pig trailer and went over to the paddock, we found what you see here waiting for us in the cow pasture. The mottled pig closest to the Princess is the one we needed especially because he was going to our friend Kimberly as a special order pig. A few weeks ago we dropped off some pigs and this guy rushed past Miguel and jumped onto the trailer. Yesterday he didn’t even wait for that but instead was already out of the paddock. We stopped and dropped the trailer to the ground and he almost got on out in the pasture. Instead he followed us back to the paddock and ran back in with everyone else. I’ve never seen a pig so happy to get onto a trailer before.
After some back and forth shenanigans, we were able to load this guy and two more pigs to go to Acre Station and I headed out on the four hour drive there and back. Everyone offloaded fine and we’ll have more pork in a couple of weeks. We’ll also be working on all the hot wires today, after we move cows to the new farm.
