Recap of the 4th of July weekend. Lots of pictures!

The Princess bakes a 4th of July cake
The Princess, post cake creation and prior to gobbling it up

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!

Loading watermelons for our cows
Spork taking a well deserved break while Miguel loads the last pallet of watermelons

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.

Feeding cows fresh vegetables
Feeding the cows a pallet of food. This is one of three that day.

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.

Spork shooting a 22 rifle
Spork shooting his sister’s 22. He went through about 30 rounds and never missed!

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 Princess shooting a 22 rifle
The Princess trying her hand at shooting.

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.

Father and daughter preparing to process chickens
Dad and The Princess off to process chickens.

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.

Catching chickens
The Princess did every job at least once, but this job she did all of the chickens, all by herself.

You never know when catching chickens will be a skill you need to list on your resume.

Killing cone for chickens
Miguel using our new killing cone. Miguel made the cones and they worked perfectly.

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.

Whiz bang chicken plucker in use
The chicken plucker in action. This is a home made version of the whiz bang chicken plucker.

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.

The Princess, killing chickens.
Did I mention she’s quite ok with blood?

She’ll probably grow up to be a vegan, but she’ll know where food comes from and how it gets to the plate.

An overview of the process. Chicken butchering on farm.
An overview of the process.

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.

Chicken puppet
The Princess’s chicken puppet.

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.

Chicken on the counter, ready to be cooked.
Chicken on the counter, ready to be cooked.

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.

Fried chicken, straight off the farm.
Fried chicken, straight off the farm.

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.

SWMBO vacuum sealing our chickens, getting them ready for the freezer.
SWMBO vacuum sealing our chickens, getting them ready for the freezer.

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.

Getting ready for the BBQ and Beer fest on June 28th

Old time hog scalding tank
Getting the fire going for the scalding tank

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.

Hog going into old time scalding tank
Ossabaw hog going into the scalding tank, 140 degrees.

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.

Pork on sale, we’ve hit the bottom of the barrel

Cow trying to lick the bottom of a barrel
Are you sure there aren’t any more pork chops?

Folks, we’ve hit the bottom of the barrel. With the help of Kayla at The Butcher and the Baker in Fayetteville we are officially out of EVERYTHING porcine except for fatback, pigs feet, and smocked ham hocks. Everybody knows that fatback and smoked hocks are great for collard greens and we won’t have any good collards till this coming winter however there are other things you can do with those cuts. Before I talk about that though, let me tell you about feet.

I made pork stock (foot soup as SWMBO called it) and used two pigs feet in the stock rather than pork bones. I simmered the stock for about 24 hours, drained all the chunky bits, and froze the stock in vacuumed bags. Easy! Darling Wifey decided to use some later for a recipe and folks, let me tell you, that stock was jello! I don’t mean it was thicker than the watery stuff you get at the store, I mean you could stick a spoon in it and it would hold it upright. It brought a richness to her cooking you just can’t get any other way. If you’ve never tried homemade stock before, get a couple of feet from us, they are on sale, and find out what real stock is all about. Pork stock isn’t something you can buy in the store like chicken or beef stock. If you aren’t sure what to do with it, there are some good ideas here and a recipe here. You can substitute pork stock for pretty much any stock you would use. It’s a neutral taste and not “porky” but it’s oh so rich.

Now onto fatback. Here is a quick blurb on fatback from Fine Cooking. Have something a bit too lean, add some fatback to make it awesome. Think fat is bad for you? Then read this, or this to learn the truth. Your brain is 60% fat. Give it what it needs. We have a ton of fatback left, it’s time to give fat a try. If you are cooking for your family this weekend, sneak some fatback into the recipe and watch them react to the flavor when it hits the table. Fat makes everything better.

Lastly we have smoked ham hocks. The best breakfast I ever ate was red beans and rice, sitting in a little hut in Tamarindo, Costa Rica. I can’t promise you the view I had, but with some of our smoked hocks, you can have the red beans and rice, plus a whole lot more. Check out these recipes for some ideas.

I can hear you saying now, “But I want PORK CHOPS, wrapped in bacon! When are you going to have that?”

The next pig we have processed will be used at our event on June 28th. If you want some porcine goodness that you don’t even have to cook, then get your tickets now. After that, we have some more pigs that are a few months from being done. We are currently looking to buy some more feeder pigs and should be back in stock going forward.

We also have the first of our cows ready to process. He’s going into the family freezer, but we may sneak a few cuts out for you to sample so good news, meat is on the way.

Sunday on the farm

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This morning found the Ninja Cows enjoying a cool 55 degree start to their day and some fog to make things pretty. Here is a panoramic shot of the front pasture and some of the fog that was visible.
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The pigs, having their breakfast. Hot food and fresh veggies. They are legs up in the air asleep in the shade now.

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I had a genuine farm Princess to help me this morning. She rode in the gator, drove the skid steer, and drove the farm tractor. It’s amazing what having the right headwear does for your abilities as a farmer. Thanks to Miguel for the snazzy hat.

The cows received two pallets of food this morning. Well, more like 1.5. There was a minor issue when Bok Bok was driving the skid steer and we spilled one of the pallets. No worries though. The chickens were on patrol and are picking up the pieces we didn’t scoop up with the tractor. That’s the beauty of feeding fresh vegetables. What doesn’t get eaten just becomes organic matter for the earth worms.

The grass isn’t looking great. The spring flush is backing off and the grass height isn’t as good as I would like it at this point in the season. The fescue is starting to go dormant and the Bermuda and weeds are starting to make their summer run. Right now the weeds are winning. We are mowing early and often this year so the weeds won’t have a chance to dominate. The pasture where we fed hay hasn’t exactly become lush yet but it’s the first to get mowed so we will see how it transitions over the course of the year.

Hog killing class gets a really nice writeup from CFSA

You may have noticed that I stopped posting pictures from our hog class a while back. The reason is, some of our followers, who love us and love our food, just weren’t excited to see hog parts on their daily feed (Hi Kelsey). While knowing your food and your farmer is very important, I think we can put the killing in it’s own box for a while. I’ve uploaded the rest of the pictures to the gallery so anyone who wants to see the details from our class can scroll to their hearts content. Everyone else can use our feed to stay up on what is happening currently.

Old time hog killing class
Your author Thomas, on class day.

Just because we’ve stopped posting pictures doesn’t mean we have given up on our hog class. Thomas Locke, from CFSA attended our class and fully participated. He also went home and wrote up a very nice article on the class and posted it on CFSA’s website. I can’t thank Thomas enough for his and CFSA’s support of our farm. If you aren’t familiar with CFSA, they are a great organization that is behind a lot of what we enjoy in our vibrant farming community.

Curvy BBP looking for sugar daddy for a roll in the mud, maybe piglets

pig on the beach, at sunset
Pig at sunset

 

Ok, I actually had to spend a few minutes on Craigslist looking at the personals to try and figure out something witty for this. It occured to me that I have no idea what half the acronyms stand for. In looking through the personals, it also occurred tome that I’m VERY happy to be married and have a great home vs. being out on Craigslist looking for whatever is actually on there. So insert snarky joke about liking walks on the beach and slop by candlelight. I didn’t have the heart to look at the personals anymore.  A farmer I am, an comedy writer, I’m not.

Nothing goes to waste. How extra bits from harvest help in school.

As I’ve mentioned before, we home school our kids. Darling Wifey takes about 110% of this role as I’m effectively useless because of my schedule. One thing she’s elected to do since the beginning is to be part of a co-op so that our kids “are socialized” which is the big thing people worry about with home schooling. That’s said a bit tongue in cheek, as the socializing thing is over blown. The real reason we attend a co-op is so the load of teaching is shared across multiple people and the kids have opportunities to do things in school that we wouldn’t be able to do in our own home school. Things like projects and science experiments. However with multiple people taking a role and only having to focus on one subject we are able to expand the learning opportunities.

A pig heart and lungs, being kept for class
A pic from our hog killing class. Here we’ve saved the lungs and the heart.

This year we were able to be part of helping the biology class study the human body. For anyone who’s ever watched Mythbusters, you know that a pig is a very good human analog and that pig organs are remarkably similar to human organs. They’ve even used pig parts as transplants for human parts. Pig heart valves, anyone?

Anyway, when we were going to be killing pigs last winter, SWMBO said she wanted a heart and lungs set from the pigs. I really didn’t know what she was going to do with it. Some sort of witches stew maybe? Eye of newt… Heart of pig… Unicorn tears…. Stir to combine. You never know around here. But like a good Igor I procured the pig parts as instructed and she froze them on a pan in our upright freezer. No special wraps or prep, just frozen right out of the pig.

Using pig lungs to demonstrate how human lungs work
Fluvanna demonstrating the lungs, and how they work.

About 2 months later, the parts were thawed and taken to co-op where one of the teachers used them in a display for the kids. Apparently you can buy hearts and lungs for schools, but they are extremely expensive and are stored in formaldehyde making the whole affair a stinky mess.

Using pig lungs to demonstrate how human lungs work
The lungs, showing the neat stand that was made, ready to be fully inflated.At this point the lungs were partially inflated.
Using pig lungs to demonstrate how human lungs work
The lungs inflated

I still remember dissecting a frog in school. Being able to put your hands on real parts is the difference between knowing about something and knowing something.

Using pig lungs to demonstrate how human lungs work
How the lungs were inflated. Note the foot pump, pumping to the base of the stand.

This wasn’t just a random thing to show, this was part of an overall lesson plan for the year.

Using pig lungs to demonstrate how human lungs work
The reason you do things like this.

The kids were able to touch and see up close what organs look like and to discuss how they really work. You never know where learning opportunities will come from. Since we will kill one pig a year for ourselves, I’m fairly certain this will be a repeat opportunity for the kids at co-op.

Sunday update, lots happening on the farm. Pigs, cows, and gators!

Miguel, wheelbarrowing one of the feeder pigs
Miguel, wheelbarrowing one of the feeder pigs

With Penelope having new babies, we had to move the feeder pigs we purchased into the barn. They are too small to be with the two grown boys, and too big to be around Penelope’s babies. We try to have our pigs in similar sized groups but sometimes it just doesn’t work out that way. Catching these little pigs was a bit of an adventure. John, Miguel, and I made a few laps of the pig pen chasing them around and there were a few dives into the dirt catching squirming pigs. It all worked out and Miguel was surprised to see me “wheelbarrowing” one of the pigs after we caught him. He decided to give it a try himself. We only did this a few feet, then because of their small size just picked the pigs up and carried them to the barn.

Grass in the draw in the big pasture
The bottom of the big pasture. This is the area we repaired last year. The cows will only be here one day.

Today the cows were moved into the bottom of the draw in the main pasture. The grass is growing very well and the cows now have more than they can eat in each paddock. They are getting more protein than they need and their stools are loose. I don’t have any hay to supplement them with so we’re just going to have to work our way through this period until the grass gets a little taller and has more fiber to it. The warm season grasses haven’t started coming back yet but the fescue and clover are going gangbusters.

The Princess driving the new Gator
John Deere 825 S4 four seat Gator, being piloted by one Princess.

This is the end result of years of work. I’ve wanted one of these gators for a long time and I’ve been working actively on getting one for about a year. I finally have pulled off the deal and on Friday I brought home this monster gator. We set paddocks today for the cattle and the two girls came out to help, as long as they could drive the gator and not actually do any of the work. Kids!

The good news is if you’re coming for a tour, we have more options for you if you cannot walk. Sometimes people like to bring grandma or grandpa or more often they have small kids. If you need to ride rather than walk, just let me know when you contact me about taking a tour.

More pictures of our first piglets from 2014. This time closer up.

After work I was able to go see the new piglets and get some relatively closer pictures.

Penelope with her new brood
Penelope with her new brood

I’d love to tell you that this was a sweet and happy Disney moment, but in reality Penelope and I were having an unpleasant conversation about whose paddock this was. Being that I pay the taxes and bring the food, I was under the impression that I owned this particular piece of dirt. Penelope, as a new mother, was unconcerned about my support role for all this and was quite clear that she’s tackle me and eat me if I messed with her babies. She only charged me once which for Penelope was almost like inviting me over for Christmas dinner. Remember this is the girl who bit me.

So kind reader say a special prayer for your farmer who risked mauling to bring you piggie cuteness today.

Some of Penelopes babies
Some of Penelope’s babies

They really are cute when they are just born. My theory is that God makes newborns and children cute so that we don’t kill them for all the things they do that drive us crazy. It’s worked so far on my kids. 20140425-121445.jpg

And remember, there’s pork in the freezer if you’re planning on eating this weekend. If you don’t eat on weekends, well, you know something I don’t. Come buy some pork, I have new mouths to feed!

Not a great picture yet of the piglets, more to come.

Penelope with her second litterd
Penelope, with her second litter. You can just see the piglets at the bottom against the leaves, nursing.

Penelope has been waddling a bit more than usual the last few days and it looks like it was for a good cause. Last night she had 8 or 9 piglets, all on her own and not in a farrowing crate. She made a nest and did everything the way God intended. She’s nursing well and so far, so good on the new piglets. I’ll post more pictures as we have them. Right now we’re giving her some peace.