I’m started this post while I was sitting there burning the trash from today. We generate a lot of boxes in our system and we routinely burn them in our large burn barrel. Once again there aren’t many pictures from today. I stayed too busy to take many.
I started at about 5:30 in the shop working on our new pig trailer.
Here is part of the way through construction. You can see the hydraulic cylinder (it’s the bright red thing). That cylinder will push down on the axle which is now hinged so that the wheel raises and lowers. I was able to get a bit more done than you see pictured this morning but I was held up by the fact that my hydraulic hoses are too short. Unfortunately I can only blame myself as they seem to be about the length I asked for. Oh well, new hoses on Monday. I spent 30 minutes fiddling around with them first to prove to myself they weren’t actually the right size. Unfortunately I proved it, after wasting 30 minutes of the two hours I had allotted for this project.
About 7:30 I headed back over to the house for my new daily routine which is to make breakfast for the family. This routine suits me because I can get up and work when I want to, but the family can get up when they normally do and I still get to see them. I had some great sausage an employee of mine brought.
After breakfast I tackled a few odds and ends like taking out the trash and tidying up various small to dos. Then I jumped on feeding all the animals which takes a while in our produce feeding system. Many times the products have to be taken out of bags and sorted into who eats what. You’d think all the pigs would be the same, but some pigs love mangos while others refuse to even try them. They are like kids, go figure.
Just as soon as I finished feeding the animals and was just unloading the last of the mangos, I receive a call from a lady who wanted to come by and buy some meat and maybe see a farm. I scurried down to the gate to meet not just the nice lady I’d been emailing back and forth with but also her friend and her friends cute little daughter Maggie. We headed back to the barn and all got in the Gator to take a tour. They were all interested in the pigs so we spent a good bit of time touring the different pig paddocks. Shaina had just bought a nice piece of property earlier this year and was interested in bringing some animals to her homestead. This lead to extra conversations on animals, habitat requirements, etc.
Through all this Maggie was having a ball and was cute as a button.
During the tour, I received a call from Miguel that he had a lady who wanted to buy a pig. Not just any pig, she wanted to come here and pick it out, then have me shoot it and then she could take it home. This was an unusual request but one I didn’t see a problem with as long as she was doing the processing at her place. No sooner had our guests left after their tour and meat purchases than this lady and her family showed up to pick up their pig. Luckily Miguel showed up right behind them so we all proceeded to the barn. It took about 10 minutes for them to pick their pig and about 5 seconds later I had it on the ground twitching. We hoisted it up, weighed it, bagged it and sent them on their way. Grand total time invested, about 15 minutes. That’s the way to sell a pig!
While Miguel was here, he noted that we had a dead pig in the new pig paddock. The girls had said they thought they saw another prolapsed pig and I’d been looking for one all morning. However I’d been looking for a live one, not one dead still in the piglet house. Sure enough this sibling to the pig we are currently treating also had a prolapse but it had died of something else before we could begin to treat it. Not a good part of our day. Miguel and I disposed of the body and he went back to his house to continue his day off, but only after leaving me some home made tamales and some deserts for the kids. The tamales were SPICY and I loved them.
With two pigs gone, I went back to finishing the morning’s work but Dustin stopped by to get some stone for a project he was working on. We had a bit of stone hauled in the past two days.
This is just a small part of what we stoned. We probably hauled 20 loads of stone onto the farm the past two days. With all the rain we’ve had, it’s been a soupy mess in the barn yard and I wanted to get it fixed while I could. Dustin needed a few bucket fulls which was no problem. Fortunately while Dustin was visting he mentioned lunch, which lead to a conversation about Angie’s. I had it in my head they were closed today, but a quick check of Facebook showed that they were indeed open. Dustin and I high tailed it to Angie’s because it was already after 2 and they closed at 2:30. Our plan was to get some lunch then wait for them to clear the kitchen so we could pick up our food buckets and bring them back to the farm. We both had a traditional Southern new years day meal of collards and black eyed peas to bring good luck in the coming year. Then a stop to fill up the truck and back to the farm.
After arrival, I dropped Dustin off and proceeded to get back to the mornings work. I emptied the rest of the trailer then proceeded to pick up all the boxes from today as well as some small piles of boxes from previous days. Before leaving the barn yard, I took a hard look at our newest addition.
This is a saw that is used in the forestry business. It’s for cutting the tops off of trees, or “bucking” them. The plan is to test it out for cutting firewood. It should work, if we have enough hydraulic flow, which is questionable. All it should take is a few adapter fittings and we’ll at least be able to test. There was zero cost in this saw so if it works, great, if not, we’ll haul it off and sell it.
Once I drove the trailer of boxes to the burn barrel, I cleaned all the metal wire from the previous days burning and started a new fire for today. I actually wished it was a bit colder at this point because the heat from the fire is something else. After about 20 minutes of burning, I packed it in for the evening but not before one final shot for everyone.
After a wonderful dinner it was time to work on the computer and then finish this post. As you can imagine, I’m a bit tired so please forgive me if this post isn’t very well written. I’ll clean it up when I’m not so tired.