072 Piglet mania! (and turkeys and chickens too), Memorial Day pistol range time, row covers in the garden

05/29/13 • 53 min

With the farrowing behind us this week we can talk about the 17 piglets running around the pasture and the mayhem that ensues! Mama pigs are doing great and we also share the final castration update for the season as we finish off that chore. We also talk about the broiler chickens that are here. Our Cornish X chicks arrived early and we're not ready!! In the CoopCast Community we give a nice thank you to our listeners who helped us by sharing their experience and letting us know we were not alone. It was a cool feeling! We also mention a great comment from a US Veteran on our Memorial Day post on Facebook. Ohh, Andy shares a gun range story about some not so savvy pistol shooting (smack talk - the shooting was great!). Finally we tour the veggie patch and talk about row covers and hoops. Kelli shares some of the pros: Protect from cold sun and bugs, Better growth on some stuff and some of the cons: Hard to see in-Need to check in on plants, Blowing off, Getting torn

Previous Episode

071 A sow in distress while farrowing on the farm, piglet castration and temperature extremes in the vegetable garden

This has been a week of extreme conditions on the farm physically as well as one of the most emotionally challenging weeks of farming yet. The vegetables have had to deal with a freeze of 28F one day and 90+ a few days later... any way you look at that, it's a challenge. On top of the wild weather we had to navigate piglet castration when the mama wants nothing to do with humans and icing on the cake was a proven sow who has issues while farrowing and needed help delivering 8 more piglets! While we try and keep it clean it's been exhausting and the description of farrowing a castration topics made us thing the "use caution around small children" label was appropriate for the "more sensitive" listeners. One resource we mention in this episode is the Perdue livestock "Difficult pig farrowing" guide here - Anyone who ever said farming was easy should live a week like this then come back and see us :)

Next Episode

073 Hog heritage on the farm, starting the CSA, managing the garden and succession planting

Updates this week include a discussion about the new piglets and the genetics / lineage in them and what decisions we migth be making in the comming months. We talk about the Cornish X broilers and the efforts to line up chicken helpers for the July processing day. The heritage turkeys are doing well in the brooder and Farmer Andy loves the chick wagon - dreaming of a farm of all mobile wagons. In the Veggie Patch segment we wander all over the gardens - from the greenhosue to the pasture to our haying operations. We also share some of Farmer Kelli's tips and tricks; like using a whiteboard for lists, using an iPhone for lists, using scraps of papers for lists and then making lists of lists of things to put on lists on the farm! Things like using a pencil to write on old mini-blind tags, the usage of mulching and how we are going to try and maximize our broiler fertilizer this year. This coopcast is a little crazy - just like life on the farm!