Posts

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A funny video and a good song, especially for kids in school.

First off, full disclosure. This is not a farming related post. On our farm we do home school our children so I guess you could say this is a home school related post instead.

Second, this video is done by Weird Al Yankovic, not one of my favorite artist. He’s had a few flash in the pan successes but frankly I didn’t even know the guy was still alive. And to see he looks exactly like he did from the 90s, including the long hair, doesn’t make me feel like he’s progressed any. However for some reason I clicked on the link for his new song and I have to say I’m glad I did. Like all of Al’s music, it’s a parody of a famous song, this time Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines which became famous apparently for being a video where the models were partially naked. Don’t worry, that’s not the version I linked above.

Weird Al’s version is “Word Crimes” and has a clever video that mocks the current generation’s inability to write appropriately. You know, “C U LTR” and the like. Sorry, I had to hunt for something as an example, I don’t even know how to write like that. SWMBO and I both are sticklers for proper grammar in your writing. Not to say that I don’t play fast and loose with the words and sentence structure on occasion and goodness knows, I make enough typos to flunk English, but we do have the knowledge and the habit of writing clearly and properly. In fact what I hear often when I meet someone who has followed our blog for some time is a compliment on my writing style which always baffles me because I don’t have a style, I just write.

Anyway, I think we may have found our theme song for discussions with our kids when they start texting; which based on my current feelings should be when they hit 30 or so. Maybe 40 for the girls, or after I’m dead. Whichever comes first.

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A repost of another blogger I follow, on angry vegetarians.

I’ve followed Jenna at Cold Antler Farm for some time. I like her style of writing and enjoy reading her stories. She only has a small farmstead, 6.5 acres vs. our 84 acres but despite that we do share a lot of similarities in how we raise our animals and I often learn something new when I read her blog posts. Jenna’s quality of writing is something that I’d like to achieve myself one day, assuming I ever spend more than 10 minutes on a blog post which isn’t happening anytime soon.

Recently Jenna posted an open letter to angry vegetarians. You see, her blog is much more widely read than mine so she is dealing with the public in general whereas I am dealing with mainly friends and direct customers at this point, people who know how well we treat our animals and if they were to question our practices would do so directly vs. anonymously on the internet. I’m not to the point of dealing with people who enjoy attacking others on the internet yet, thankfully. I’m sure some day people like that will show. When they do, I’ll point them to Jenna’s post about killing her own meat.

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Double posting to Facebook. A test.

SWMBO informed me yesterday that for some reason when I publish a new post that two posts are being posted to Facebook. I haven’t changed anything concerning Facebook auto publish so I’m guessing a bit here on what is happening. My guess is that Word Presses ability to post for me natively has suddenly kicked into gear while my plug-in auto publish thingy continues to merrily post as well. This is a test of that theory as I’ve disabled my plug-in and am only letting the default settings run.

For those who’ve had double postings from us, I do apologize.

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A funny comic from Gran-SWMBO

Southern comic by Scott Hilburn, from Gran-SWMBO's page a day calendar.
Argyle Sweater by Scott Hilburn, from Gran-SWMBO’s page a day calendar.

You may not know it but we live in a house divided. No, not Carolina and Duke, nothing that dramatic. No we are a house divided horizontally, by the Mason-Dixon line. Darling SWMBO is a yankee and my family has been part of North Carolina since the 1500s. There is a never-ending feud over North/South relations. And after 13 years of marriage, I’m fairly certain the South is winning. My yankee wife is raising a boy who hunts and girls who can kill and clean their own chickens.

Fortunately my yankee mother-in-law has moved down as well and provides me with funny cartoons like the one above, in addition to all the wonderful things she does as a grandma and as a mother-in-law. Unfortunately, having your family move down with you elevates you from yankee to damn yankee. However SWMBO seems not the least perturbed by her moniker, as long as I remember she is SWMBO first.

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Children who live on dairy farms much less likely to develop allergies, etc.

Link to the study.

Keeping everything spotless and sanitized isn’t helping your kids, it’s hurting them. Selling Clorox wipes is a big business and it’s sold to parents with a marketing fueled fear of bacteria. Kids need to be grimy and develop their immune systems if they are to be healthy.

I note that they specifically mentioned dairy farms. I wonder if they will see if the kids drink their milk raw or pasteurized. I’ve yet to meet a dairy farmer that pasteurizes their own milk for consumption.

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Really cool video by the kids showing a day on the farm

I’ve mentioned before that I really like it when kids do the filming, photography, etc. It’s really neat to see their perspective on things and with our modern electronics it’s pretty surprising how good the quality can be.

We had some friends over Saturday and left the kids with supervision (that’s Bombshell in the video). The kids took it upon themselves to make an entire film all over the farm and we came home so it edited and completed. The only thing I had to do was to cut out their names (they used their actual names in the credits) and add in our normal kids names we use on the site.

I uploaded the video to Youtube but I’m not sure where the kids got the music that is playing in the background so Youtube might yank it. Also the Youtube version doesn’t have credits whereas the one on our site has the credits. Also the version on our site is a high resolution version. Here is the version on our site. Farm kids video

 

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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.

http://youtu.be/Pk21kRxXApM

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New Berkshire pigs have arrived at our farm

We have some new additions on the farm. A drove of Berkshire feeder pigs have taken up residence and are already filling out with the rich produce we provide them. We purchased them for Kayla at The Butcher and the Baker who will be taking these pigs, and lots more in the future.

Pigs in forest paddock
Some of the pigs in their new paddock
Pigs in forrest paddock.
There is some pink mixed in with our pure blood Berkshires. The mother of the pink pigs was like a big friendly dog. Her offspring are equally nice to be around.
Pigs in forrest paddock
More pigs in the forest.

I took these pics after a quick summer rain shower had passed over. The leaves of our trees were weighted down by the water and the little pigs were happily munching on the newly lower leaves.