A friend of ours sent along a link (Hi Chris!) to a video that I’m going to share with everyone eventually. However in poking around the site, there are multiple videos that are really good. They are produced and published by PBS and are short, artistic, and well done. I thought I’d share the ones I like here in various posts, and maybe give a little insight from our perspective.
This is something we get questioned about from time to time by potential customers. When they are asking about our products, they will ask if we are Organic. Note that’s organic with a capital O. My answer is we call ourselves “beyond organic” because the Organic label has been corrupted by the process and the money, as most any government program will be. There has been much controversy over that standards and you can see some of it here and here. It was interesting that when I was in New York city last year, all the restaurants that I visited had their items labeled as Organic but none that I saw mentioned the farm that the food came from. Here in NC it’s common to see the farm name beside your steak choice. To me it was a contrast between big city and small city. To consumers in NY, being certified was the standard and how they chose to place their trust in their food system. To consumers here in our area, being from a local farm is the standard. I know there are exceptions to all I’ve said, but it was the impression I had when I visited.
Another point about this video I thought was interesting was the farmer in Alabama saying that they didn’t get help going Organic and that their local advisors weren’t informed and encouraged them to just go conventional. While I’ve had that experience with some people in our farming system, I’ve always felt that there was plenty of assistance in NC for anyone who wanted to go Organic. Maybe I’m connected with more people who are on that bandwagon, I don’t know, but I see grants and assistance offered often for converting to Organic.
The farmer referenced three reasons why farmers in the South don’t go Organic. From my perspective, the third one was the most pertinent. Farmer’s tend to be a rather independent lot. There isn’t a lot of trust for the federal government in the South and the idea of having Federal inspectors come to your farm routinely to audit your practices just doesn’t sit well with this set of factors. I know it was the first thing that put me off when I initially looked at Organic certification. However I’m perfectly happy to have our friends at the Soil and Water district come by. Heck they stop by now to work and I’m not even here. They are from the government but it’s our local government and these people live and work here. There is a different level of trust with them. I’m not championing an idea here, it was just interesting to me that Southern farmers as a group don’t tend to certify Organic compared to West coast or probably Northern farmers.
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.
Pig trailer under construction
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.
Home made pork sausage
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.
Maggie meets Cotton
Through all this Maggie was having a ball and was cute as a button.
Maggie had a ball with the cows, even getting one to sniff her
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.
Freshly graveled barn yard
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.
Bucking saw
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.
Sunset at the farm
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.
Yesterday evening Miguel and I treated the pig with the prolapse. There aren’t any pictures because:
The pig doesn’t want to pose for pictures.
I’m wearing gloves because, well if you don’t know I’m not going to explain it. Let’s just say I want to eat later with those same hands.
It takes all the hands I have just to hold the pig and do the work.
It’s really not that easy to see what is going on anyway.
We are still keeping #33 in the same stall. There is plenty of food and water and overall the pig is doing well. The prolapse is starting to retract somewhat and I noticed that there is pressure to pull it back in now. However the issue is that being outside of the body and exposed to the elements has caused the tissue to develop a sort of scab which now causes it to be hard and unable to retreat back inside the pig.
Last night we treated the pig with the normal routine of warm soapy water and sugar. However with the part of the prolapse that was closest to the pig I was able to start removing the scab to expose soft tissue underneath. The pig wasn’t exactly pleased but I was as gentle as I could be, letting the soapy water do most of the work in softening everything and slowly getting it to come off. It was actually quite a success as soft pink tissue, about one inch long, was exposed with no bleeding or signs of inflammation. Hopefully we’ll see that portion retract back inside today. If that’s the case, we’ll work on the remaining area over the next few days, keeping it moist and working the scab off. Hopefully we’ll have full success with this pig which would be really nice since we’ve never dealt with this issue before. I did finally go check my pig mentors website to see what he had to say about it, and as usual he’s quite a bit ahead of me. The interesting thing to me was the link he had at the bottom for the surgical procedure for treating prolapses. We have all the tools on hand to perform such a procedure. If sugar and time doesn’t heal this thing, surgery could be the next step. I just need to work on mattress sutures. Just when I think we are making progress on this issue, my girls informed me last night that they saw a pig that looked like it “had an apple stuck in its butt.”
Uh oh, off to check the pigs today. Sounds like another prolapse from one of the litter mates to #33. And to think, I considered not keeping the barn where we keep sick animals.
We have been raising meat chickens for a few years now and have yet to do it profitably. We just don’t have the desire to go large scale on chickens to make the financials make sense and small scale is a lot of labor for very little return. With that said, we are getting out of the chicken business for now to focus on our beef and pork business, which do make financial sense.
That doesn’t mean you won’t see chickens running around here when you come for a tour, but they will be for personal use or for egg laying. I’m taking the chicken page off of our website and off of our advertisements. I know a lot of you are looking for a good source of chicken in our area. I’m sorry we aren’t going to be able to help you out however we will be able to keep you in pork and beef going forward so there is some positive. There may come a time in the future where we do dive back into meat chickens but for now I need to focus on the main product, which is beef and pork. If we get back into chickens, you’ll be the first to know.
Nothing cute today, just some quick notes on what we’ve been doing.
#36 was feeling a bit poorly last night so we hit him again with Enroflox. 1.5cc Sub-q
The pig with the prolapse was treated with warm soapy water and another coating of sugar. She wasn’t too pleased with the treatment but it’s got to be done. The prolapse is getting hard after being exposed to air all this time. I’m beginning to wonder if it would go back in even if it could. Keeping it wet, clean, and coated in sugar seems to be a good approach for now.
Two pigs that are still in the barn are doing great, but loosing body condition. They are eating plenty and showing no signs of issues. My guess is they have gotten worms. We hit them both with Ivermectin injectable, 1ml for the bigger pig. 1/2 ml for the smaller pig. I’ll get their numbers and update that here. If they respond to the dewormer, we’ll need to deworm all the pigs in the barn because they have been in close proximity for long enough now.
On 12/26 we took another coughing pig into the barn. This time dark brown one. He was ear tagged #40 and given 1/2ml of penicillin. We didn’t use the enroflox on him because I wanted to see how he responded to the penicillin. Enroflox is about $200 per bottle, the same bottle of penicillin is about $30. If they both work, then penicillin is the better choice. Plus penicillin is the stuff we read about in history class, it’s the first anti-biotic and is basically just bread mold so I feel better using it.
#39 was also tagged on the 26th. He received 3/4 of on ml of penicillin
#38, the big pig we got from Chuck, also got tagged and injected on 12/20. He got 3.4 ml liquimycin and 2.5 cc enroflox.
Today was Justin’s last day interning for us. Justin has learned how to operate heavy equipment without crashing too often, how to back a trailer, and how to handle animals both large and small. He is one semester away from graduating at C.C.C.C. and will shortly be on his way to managing his own farm.
The reason for Justin’s leaving isn’t because he was done with being an intern but it has to do with me quitting my day job to take up farming full time! I’m selling my company, with a hopeful closing date of January 16th. If that goes through I will be a full time farmer come the 17th. With that kind of change we had to cut our internship program short but I hope that this will lead to bigger and better things going forward. Very few farmers are able to make a living off of farming solely, and nobody I’ve heard of has made it on this small of an acreage but we are going to give it a go. We have growth plans in multiple areas but we will take it one step at a time and see what God has in store for us. Plan on seeing more posts, and more kids as I drag them out of the house and put them to work.
Yesterday while we were treating a couple of pigs who were still coughing, Spork noticed that one of the pigs had “something hanging out of it’s butt.” Not a typical prognosis but something that got our attention. Miguel and I sorted through the piglets and found the one with the issue. Turns out she had a prolapsed rectum. As if pneumonia wasn’t enough.
We grabbed the piglet and took her to the barn. We had to break the stall into two separate stalls to keep this pig away from all the others. The danger of a prolapse is that the other pigs smell the blood and decide that whatever that thing is, it must be food. Obviously that’s bad for the pig with the prolapse.
Once we had everybody separated, we took the piglet into the milking parlor which doubles as our emergency room. We have water, a drain, a way to secure animals, and my medical bag.
The piglet held by a rope to keep her from running away.
Here you can see our setup. The piglet was tied in a loop behind the front legs and then tied to the steel stanchion. I could tie a Buick to that stanchion so the pig couldn’t budge it. Miguel took his normal position of calming the animal while I did all the doctory/vet type stuff (sorry for the fancy medical terms. 🙂
A little better view of the prolapse
It’s hard to see, but there is about a 2.5 inch prolapse hanging out of the rear end of this piglet. I’m seriously questioning the wisdom of buying pigs from other people vs. raising them ourselves. Between being sick and now this, maybe it would be easier to just raise our own. We are space limited so my preference has been to buy pigs vs. raise. Some pigs we buy are awesome and have no issues, some have nothing but issues. At least we didn’t have another Flash Gordon
Trying to treat a prolapsed rectum on the piglet
Let’s get this out of the way. Yes, I have my hands up a pigs bum. Folks, being a farmer isn’t pretty. There is poop, life, death, and everything in between. This is a new one, but nothing worse that I’ve seen before. The point here is we are treating this piglet with all the care we can and trying to help it have a good life. This is a genetic condition, one that isn’t the pigs fault or our conditions. All we can do is get the pig healthy and move forward, and not buy any more pigs from this breeder again.
More of treating the little piglet
The piglet was none to happy having us drag it into the milking parlor. There was much squealing and fighting. However once the pig was inside and we started cleaning the prolapse, she settled right down and seemed to appreciate that we were trying to help.
Unfortunately there was no way to manually push the prolapse back into the little piglet. I talked to the vet and they couldn’t have been more helpful. After telling me that they could definitely fix the issue, but at an impractical cost, the vet told me to keep the pig isolated and to coat the prolapse with ordinary table sugar. It was at that point that I remembered that I love vets and their practical fixes to issues. Sugar is hygroscopic (thanks Alton Brown for teaching me that) and will pull moisture from the prolapse, also helping with the swelling. We are going to treat the piglet with a sugar rub for the next few days, until we can either reduce the swelling or get to a point where we need to employ the vet directly. In the meantime we treated the piglet with .5 mL of Bantomine and .75 mL of penicillin.
I’m shaking my head at Hoss. He’s trying, I mean he’s trying hard. However he doesn’t seem to be able to find a step stool or a stump to stand on. He’s just awful short for the job and the girls aren’t going to kneel down for him. I’m not ready to pull the plug on him yet but I really need to see some signs of success or he’s going to have to go.
Back in the summer, we had some young bulls who were also too short for the job. Like all young bulls, they were more than willing but they just couldn’t quite reach to get it done. However these were young bulls and full of vigor. There were no step stools available but one of the bulls didn’t care.
A young bull, jumping to try and get the job done.
It’s amazing how high you can jump when some lovin’ is the end result.
Today Miguel has the day off so I was left unsupervised on the farm. El Jefe with no oversight is a dangerous thing.
I fed all the pigs, then I made up a couple of pallets for the cows. The first one had grapes, papaya, and watermelon along with some cabbage and various greens.
I then made up a second pallet with mangos and pumpkins. The cows couldn’t decide what to eat first, and they were still full from the bale of hay from earlier. They looked pretty happy when I left.
I also checked in on the little pigs who were sick. They all looked good except the spotted one, the one that is not 34 is coughing a bit. Looks like he needs a follow up shot.
There was also a cougher out in the main paddock. I didn’t see who but we will find him and get him treated.
I fed the little pigs in the barn a case of papaya, which they loved. I also fed them two bunches of really nice bananas. They should be passed out by now, feet up in the air.
One of our friends dropped off a present for us today. She made it herself and it’s perfect!
Here is the view on the tree.
Another one of our great friends made this awesome soap and brought it to us for Christmas. When you farm pigs, you need all the soap you can get but what’s cool is that we both enjoy making soap and I am looking forward to trading soap making tips in the future.
However she has blown me away in the quality department. Plus the cool wooden soap holder is just over the top. I really need to do something with our packaging. As if the whole ensemble wasn’t enough, check out the name of the soap.
