Cold..

The cold weather moved in today, ending what was a pretty nice November. I got to go deer hunting last weekend at my great-uncle Don's and shot a fair-sized doe on saturday morning, I got it all butchered on Sunday night as soon as I got home and spent Monday evening grinding hamburger. We ended up with just about 10 lbs worth. I'll be taking another 10-12 lbs of trimmings in to Saukvile to get some hot sticks made. The rest is steaks and roasts.

We have gotten some more good feedback on the turkeys from some of our customers, which we were glad to hear.

I forgot to mention a few weeks back that one of the ducks did finally lay some eggs, I got a grand total of three eggs. That was fine because I really just wanted to see how they tasted. I thought they were good, just a bit richer than a chicken egg. The first egg had 2 yolks, so that was a nice surprise.

A success!

Just a quick note to say that our turkey turned out great and I hope everyone else's did too. I ended up cooking him on the grill as he was just too big for the oven. I took about 4 hours for our turkey and I threw some fresh cut applewood on the grill to give it a little bit of smoke flavor

We got lots of compliments on the bird, so I am happy. Tasting was the last component of the decision whether or not to raise them again next year, so it looks like turkeys will be back.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Well, Sunday was doomsday for 5 of the turkeys, 4 of them have been delivered to their purchasers and we are going to eat the 5th tomorrow. I sure hope they taste good, everyone is very excited about having a farm-raised turkey for Thanksgiving. I can't think of any reason why they wouldn't be good, but I'm nervous just the same, I want our customers to be happy.

It was pretty rough killing the turkeys. I had definitely grown to like them over the past 5-6 months, but it had to be done, and unfortunately I was the one that had to do it. The remaining turkeys didn't make it any easier on me, they spent the whole day calling for their missing buddies, it was depressing.

I got a call today from Outpost Natural Foods, an organic supermarket chain in the area, asking if we would be able to supply them with any ducks for the Christmas season, I have no idea if they would be interested in the 3 that we have left, but I'll give them a call back on Friday and find out. Our LocalHarvet listing has gotten us more attention than I anticipated. It's a great resource for a small-scale operation like ours.

Hope everyone has a great Turkey Day and I sure hope our customers are pleased with their birds!

Testing, testing, is this thing on?

Hello faithful readers, sorry it has been so long since I wrote anything but the truth is there hasn't been much to tell.

We have received excellent feedback from all of our customers about our pork, and we agree. I think we have had every cut at least once already and we couldn't be happier with how the meat turned out. Kewaskum did a great job in processing and packaging everything, too. Next year we will probably not be offering 1/4 pig packages, unfortunately, because it became difficult to get everything cut to the cutomer's specifications. Next year it will most likely be 1/2 pigs only.

This weekend I'll be processing all of our turkeys, except for two that are getting a reprieve and will probably be heading to a petting zoo in northern Illinois of all things! I think it's nice that they'll have a chance at a long life, even if they will probably have kids yelling at them most of the time.

Weather-wise we had about 3 inches of snow and sleet fall on Friday afternoon, so I got my first chance to use my plow truck. It worked great, took me about 20 minutes to get the whole drive cleared off.

I'll most likely miss the opening of deer season this weekend, because I'll be at home butchering turkeys, but going second weekend is looking pretty promising. I'll be happy just to get a nice doe like last year.

The pigs have returned

I went and picked up our pork yesterday from Kewaskum Frozen Foods, you can see the spread here. The picture doesn't include the bacon or hams that were in boxes on the floor, that's quite a bit of meat! Kewaskum did a great job, everything looks really good. The only mistake they made was they gave me all of my cased sausage as brats instead of half brats, half smoked sausage. Not that big of a deal really.

Thanks again to everyone that ordered from us, I think you will be pleased with your purchase, I know I am!

Anyone that didn't have the freezer space to order 1/4 or 1/2 of a pig, you still have a chance at some pastured pork. We have a very small amount of bacon, pork chops, pork steaks, and roasts available. Check out our Local Harvest page for more info if you are interested.

Not much else is going on at the farm. Turkey orders are still coming in, we're getting close to having them all sold. The weather is rotten again this week, cold and rainy and useless. I have training this weekend for the Washington County CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) and on Sunday we're heading up to Oshkosh to celebrate all of our October birthdays. I'm hoping to get some duck and pheasant hunting in at some point this fall, cross your fingers for me.

SNOW!

I think I mentioned a month ago or so that it seemed like the doves and starlings were flocking up earlier than usual, and wondered if that meant we were going to have an early winter. It looks like that is indeed what has come to pass. We had a hard freeze on Wednesday night and woke up to a dusting of snow on Thursday morning. I don't think we got much over 35° yesterday and it's only supposed to be mid-40s today. I sure wasn't planing on running the furnace this early in the year, I hope we can get a company to come and replace the chimney pipe for our woodstove soon, none of them seem to be in too big a hurry to get back to us, though.

I harvested every tomato out of the garden Wed. afternoon, we'll see how many of them we can get to ripen indoors, also brought in all of the peppers and anything else that was still out there, just a few small zucchinis and a butternut squash. I left the carrots and parsnips in the ground and just covered them with some straw, apparently they will store in the ground just fine and we can just dig them up as we need them. I have no idea if it will actually work, but we'll see.

I had a fun 30 minutes or so on Wednesday evening. I went to go throw some more straw in the turkey pen and must not have latched the door behind me. When I started spreading straw the turkeys freaked out, as usual, and a few of them must have pushed the door open. So I suddenly had 6 turkeys walking all over the yard. With Nikki's help I got them all rounded up and back inside, but it took some effort!.

This little piggy went to market

Nikki and I pulled, pushed, shoved, wrestled and otherwise over-exerted ourselves, but we managed to get both hogs in the back of the truck this morning and I got them to Kewaskum Frozen Foods without incident.

We did really well with these piggies. My target was to get them to 220-240lbs in 6 months and we succeeded. Breakfast weighed in at 253 lbs and Lunch was 218 lbs when they were weighed this morning. They didn't seem to mind taking a ride in the back of a pickup, they were calm the whole way.

We'll be picking up the pork on October 18th, so we'll try to get everyone's orders to them on the 19th and 20th. Thanks to everyone that ordered pasture-raised pork from us, we really appreciate your business. Those that didn't get a chance to order this year, we'll probably have 3 pigs next year, so please keep us in mind.

Playing catch-up

Sorry I haven't written in a while, but life has been pretty routine on the farm lately.

Nikki and I got away last weekend to attend a friends' wedding in Chicago, we think it was the first weekend away from the farm we had together all summer, so that was nice. We stayed at a great hotel in Oak Park and had a wonderful dinner Friday night.

Pigs go to the slaughterhouse on Monday, so we're giving them lots of treats of apples and pears and just trying to keep them fat and happy. They are certainly big animals now. We may have 1/4 pig left to sell, if anyone is interested let us know!

I bought a pickup for the farm last week, so we have something to haul the pigs in. It also has a snowplow, so I'll be able to keep the driveway clear this winter. it's a 1985 Chevy K10 4x4 with a 6.2L diesel, so it should have plenty of power for plowing. That's a picture of it up above. It's in good shape for being 20 years old.
In the garden all that is left are a few peppers, a few tomatoes, and a few squash. I wish the last dozen tomatoes would ripen, it's been over a week since I've had a fresh tomato.

The weather has been miserable for the last few days, so we haven't been able to get out and do much, hopefully things will get brighter the next few days so that we can enjoy the fall colors before they are all blown away.

New pictures

We hadn't taken any pictures of the critters in a while, so last night we snapped a few to show how big they are getting. Above is a picture of 2 big turkeys. There are more in the albums at the Farm Pictures link.

The ducks still haven't laid any eggs, I guess they were just messing with my head. The other disturbing thing about the ducks is that they have started flying around, something they haven't done before. I hope they aren't planning on flying south for the winter!

We had some patchy frost the other night, I had to cover the tomatoes and peppers, and it looks like everything made it through safely.

Turkeys

Today we'll be talking turkey.

Business first. Anyone that has already ordered a Thanksgiving turkey from us, or anyone that would like to, please send an email to ardwyn_farm@earthlink.net including the following information:

1) Your name
2) What day you would like to pick up your turkey (Nov. 19 - 22)

If you have a preference in breed, feel free to include that and we will do our best to accomodate your request. New orders will be reserved on a first-come, first-served basis.

The way these turkeys are growing, the flat price of $75/ bird is looking like more and more of a bargain. If we were selling them at the national standard of $4/lb I think they might go for more.

Okay, now that we have that out of the way.
I had the opportunity this weekend to talk with an employee of one of the larger organic distributors in the country. During the course of the conversation somehow the fact that we raise a few turkeys came up and he was interested. He asked how many turkeys we raised and if we considered them to be a big hassle. The nub of the conversation was that the company is looking for someone to raise turkeys for them, but someone raising a dozen apparently wasn't worth dealing with.

I will admit that my first reaction was to think about converting the stock room and pasture area for turkeys and raising 120 turkeys next year. After considering it for a while, though, I actualy became a little upset. The concept of organic farming is supposed to be a farm full of biodiversity, with each animal and crop depending on others in a mutually beneficial way. But it seems that the tide is turning and now raising "organic" livestock is just a matter of reading the rules and not doing anything against them. A giant feedlot of steers eating organically-raised corn trucked in from 3 states away is hardly an improvement over the current system. So feeling pressured to ditch all of the other animals on the farm in favor of raising a single variety of animal makes me more wary of the growing corporate organic suppliers. It seems to me the better solution is to eat locally, see the places your meals come from, and judge for yourself if you're comfortable with the treatment the animals receive and the way the crops are grown.

No eggs yet..

..but the mallard hen has definitely built a nest next to the house. She has hollowed out a little bowl shaped area in the woodchips and has begun to line it with feathers, so it's only a matter of time, I hope.

It has been rainy, gray, and chilly all week so I haven't had the chance to do much outside other than the usual daily chores of feeding and watering everyone. It is less than a month now before the pigs go to the slaughterhouse. I'm still trying to work out how I'll get them there, hopefully I'll have bought an old farm truck by then.

Since Labor Day weekend has passed , and it is pretty much the end of summer here in WI, it makes me look back over our first full summer here on the farm. I think we did very well and I am proud.

The garden was big, but not unmanageably so, we never felt like we grew way too much of anything. the sweet corn was the only big failure and we realize now that was probably because that half of the garden has poor soil. We have cans of salsa and spaghetti sauce and soup in the pantry to last us into the winter, and memories of that first big salad from the garden as well.

We successfully raised 7 ducks to maturity, and it looks like all of the turkeys will make it, too. Turkeys are notoriously delicate in their first few weeks, and only losing one, to an unknown illness on it's first day, makes us feel confident. We have raised two little piglets into big old hogs, and have done it the way we intended, with no medicated feed, no added hormones, and giving them the best and happiest pig lives that we could.

Other benefits that the farm has given us are; knowing that we can work full-time but that there is still plenty of time for more work and play outside of our jobs, lots of exercise, less TV watching, healthier eating habits, more time spent together as a couple, a new appreciation for where our meals come from, the enormous amount of new things we have learned, giving our family and friends the chance to share in what we are doing and the products of it, and making new friends with people that are interested in the goings-on out at the farm.

Thanks to all of our faithful readers, please keep coming back and sharing your comments.

Watch those ducks!

I'm pretty sure I caught the mallard hen starting to make herself a nest next to the house in a big tangle of flower vines, which may mean she is getting ready to start laying eggs. I thought it would be about mid-September that we would see eggs from the ducks so I am happy that my prediction was probably pretty close. Although I shouldn't count my eggs before they are even laid! I bought some crushed oyster shell and started mixing it with their feed to help them get calcium for shell production. So we need to start keeping an eye on them for weird behavior and looking for eggs.

The turkeys are growing SO fast, it's really unbelievable. I am going away for the weekend and fully expect to be shocked at how big they are when I get home.

The pigs are really enjoying the fact that our pear tree was overloaded this year. They are going through a 5 gallon bucket full of pears about every 2 days. They love those pears. I also chucked a few butternuts into the pasture while they were standing at the fence and watching me hull. They have very powerful jaws, they crunched right through the shells and, judging by their spinning tails, they like butternuts too. I have also heard that pigs like acorns, so I'll try to rake some up from the big oak in the front yard.

I'm thinking about expanding next year's garden plot by tilling up some of the grass patch between the two garden areas. I've been watching the way the sun travels over that part of the lawn all summer and it looks like it would be plenty of sun for more veggies.

A bushel of butternuts

Our butternut tree produced it's first crop this year. here is the first bushel. I harvested them this morning and only got conked on the head once when shaking the limbs.

Butternuts are very similar to walnuts, but the hulls have a sticky, sort of resinous, feel to them. I am not sure what the evolutionary advantage of this is, I find it hard to imagine a butternut falling off of a tree and sticking to the coat of a passing mastodon. But, they have it anyway. So when you are picking butternuts, I advise gloves. They also stain just like walnuts do.

I got just about half of the butternuts hulled using the old corn sheller you can see in the picture. I borrowed it from my grandma, thanks grandma! I hulled 219 of them, to be precise. At that point I was already feeling a little strain in my shoulders and forearms, so I put the rest of them off until tomorrow. The black walnuts will be falling from the trees soon. I ran a few of them through the sheller today, too. They clean off a lot faster and easier than the butternuts do, that ovoid shape makes the butternuts difficult.

I also harvested some grapes today, we really got some giants this year. There were a few that were bigger than a quarter! I put some pictures up at the picture link.

All of the animals are still doing great. The turkeys are starting to create a little bit of stink, I suppose we should have realized that as they got bigger so would the mess. Somehow I conveniently forgot about that concept. Still not as bad as the ducks were though!

More canning..

Sorry I have fallen off on my posting, I'll try to remember to get on here more often and write something.

I did some more canning this weekend, salsa and marinara sauce. I am going to pick up some quart jars and try making a "chili starter" type thing this week. I'll cook down a bunch of tomatoes into sauce and add all of my chili spices and some roasted hot peppers, then this winter I can just brown up some meat and add a quart or two of the sauce to it and have "instant" homemade chili. Seems like it should work, anyway. I'll let you know in a couple of months.

We sold a duck yesterday, that was nice, that was the first of our animals that was bought and paid for. I hope it tastes as good as the one we had a while back. I made an appointment today to have the hogs butchered, October 9th is their final day. The meat locker is only charging $20 to kill them, so I think I will just have them do it. It will be very different without our pigs around, but I am looking forward to that bacon! The turkeys I will be processing myself, probably the Monday of Thanksgiving week. That day is going to be a lot of hard work, but it will be worth it. I imagine the last of the ducks will meet their doom that day as well, so the farm will be free of livestock at that point.

The garden is nearly done. There are still dozens of tomatoes yet to ripen, I have just started harvesting some of the soybeans, and there are a few melons and squashes still growing, but that is about it. I harveted our first cantelope yesterday, it was smaller than a baseball! But it tasted pretty good, all 4 bites we got out of it. It looks like the soil in our garden patch was pretty poor after all, but we did the best we could and got quite a bit of food out of it, next year will be even better!

Pickling day

Yesterday we did a "test run" at pickling and canning. We did just a few jars of sweet pickles, sweet/spicy pickles, pickled kohlrabi, pickled beets, and spicy green beans. I also made a small jar of fresh salsa just to test the recipe. Hopefully we'll be borrowing a pressure canner in a week or so and start putting up some soups and stews. We are going to have bushels of ripe Roma tomatoes soon, so salsa and spaghetti sauce are on the agenda also.The pickled stuff all looks pretty good, can't wait to eat some of it.

All of the animals are doing well, the big pig is over 200lbs now. We might end up butchering the pigs sooner than I was originally planning. We were looking at late October, but late September may be possible now. The turkeys have really hit their stride, they look bigger every day.

We had a talk about what animals we might raise next year. We both agreed on turkeys, probably not more than a dozen of them due to space considerations. Nikki wants to try 4 or 5 chickens next spring, which is pretty funny because she was dead set against chickens earlier this year, but I guess after having ducks anything seems easy. We will probably raise a quick growing "meat bird" and if they aren't too much trouble we'll get 4 or 5 more during the summer. I haven't completely decided on pigs yet. If we do raise them, we will probably get 3. I'd like to get a different breed, something that isn't white so that they are better protected against the sun. I think that would probably be it.

Home again

I took a 4 days off last week and headed up to northern Wisconsin with some friends to drink a lot of beer and do a little fishing and successfully accomplished both things.

I came home to find that the turkeys looked like they had doubled in size and a garden that had sprung to life. Green beans have appeared, as have pods on the soybean plants. The Charentais melons are the size of a softball, there are a lot of large tomatoes with a hint of orange, and there are carrots in all different colors ready to be dug up when needed. I think I will dig up a parsnip this weekend and see how big they have grown.

Breakfast somehow got a cut right underneath the base of her tail, she must have scratched against something sharp, but it is healing well and it doesn't seem to bother her at all. The pigs are enormous and growing fast, they are getting pretty bossy around mealtimes, so we have been working on the best strategy on feeding them without getting knocked over or shoved around too much. I am afraid that one of them is going to hurt itself climbing up the fence or onto the other's back, trying to get their face into the buckets while we're filling them.

The 3 ducks are doing well, it is so unbelievably much easier to care for them now. I still don't think we'll ever raise ducks again, though. Around this time next month they should be capable of laying eggs, we shall see. .

And then there were 3..

I got the last 3 Pekins butchered on Sunday, with a little help from Nikki with the stubborn pinfeathers. So if you asked for a duck, they are ready for delivery. Now we have just the Mallard hen and the two Indian Runners. Makes the chores a LOT easier not having so many ducks around. It's quieter, too.

The turkeys have had another growth spurt, they are getting BIG. Still not anywhere near a thanksgiving turkey size, but for the first time I believe they will be a decent size bird by the time November rolls around.

Still no big slicing tomatoes from the garden, but I did get up there on Saturday and rig up a new support system for thje plants using some old cattle panels from down in the barn. We are starting to harvest onions and hot peppers now . I have never been very successful at raising onions but this year they did marvellously. Especially the red onions.

I am already getting excited about next year's garden. I have done a good job of keeping next year's plot weed-free using my rotating composting system, and all of that organic matter should really loosen up the clay in our soil. I'm hoping for tomatoes the size of volleyballs.

Some relief from the heat

As you can see, the sunflowers are doing pretty well! I am 6'4" and I believe the plant on the right side of the picture is almost twice as tall as I am by now. "What are you going to do with the sunflowers?", you ask? I have absolutely no idea. I just like them.

Some other new pictures are posted in the photobucket albums at the link, you can see how big the turkeys and pigs are getting.

Speaking of the turkeys, it looks like we have just one more left to sell as a pre-order for Thanksgiving. I want to keep a few turkeys as backups in case anything happens to any of the pre-ordered birds. It shouldn't be too hard to sell the extras the week before turkey day if it turns out that we have extras. I think all of the ducks are spoken for too. I have decided to try to keep a couple of the ducks to see if they will lay eggs, especially now that I discovered that at least one of my Runners is a female.

Yesterday I discovered that our Pekin ducks can fly! Well, that is they can fly if they get a running start. And if they are running downhill. With a headwind. Okay, they can jump pretty far while flapping their wings. It was slightly impressive. The mallard hen took right off but then looked slightly embarassed that she made it look so easy and landed just a little past her cousins. Luckily the ducks always travel in a group so I shouldn't have to worry about her taking off on me.

The garden is doing well, picking lots of cherry tomatoes now. It is definitely zucchini season, we had zucchini lasagna and fried zucchini slices for dinner last night. The weather is suposed to be nice and cooler this weekend so I should be able to get some work done on the lawn and in the garden. And I'll have to find time to butcher the last 3 Pekins for those that have asked for them. Should be a good busy weekend.

Comments

Sorry, but I had to turn on the feature that requires you to type in a verification word to post a comment. It isn't too much of a hassle and it (hopefully) keeps advertisers from making fake comments like the one posted yesterday.

Not much new to report. We are supposed to get a break from this heat tomorrow, so that will give me a chance to catch up on some things I was putting off due to the heat.
I did learn one thing yesterday, how to estimate the weight of a pig. All you need is about 5 feet of string and a calculator.

How To Measure A Pig:

Measure the length (in inches)of the pig from the top of it's head to the base of it's tail.

Then measure around the body right behind the front legs. (Note: throw some corn or other treat in front of the hog to distract it!)

Multiply length x girth x girth and divide by 400 and it gives you the approximate weight in pounds.

By this calculation Breakfast is around 180lbs and Lunch is about 164lbs right now!

Another heat wave

It has been crazy hot here again, as it is everywhere this week it seems.

I didn't get much done last weekend because I was having back problems, just starting to get better now. We went to the county fair on Sunday and had a good time looking at all of the 4-H animals and eating deep-fried food. Looks like we are doing just fine with our pastured pigs, they have the same general shape as the ones we saw at the fair. I'm guessing that Breakfast is pushing 200lbs now. I need to take some pictures and get them posted soon. The pigs are doing just fine in the heat. I fill up a big mudhole for them every morning and then I give them a nice cool shower with the hose when I get home from work.

The garden is going along pretty well, picked a few zucchinis already and some cherry and pear tomatoes. We almost have enough cukes picked to start pickling them. There are a few canteloupes getting started on the vine, no watermelons yet though. Seems late, but we'll see. I'm thinking about sticking a few more seeds in the garden yet for a late crop of radishes, carrots, beets and few more things maybe. Not until this heat backs off a little though.

Duck dinner redux (ha!)

We had roasted duck, haricots verts, and garlic wild rice for dinner last night and it was outstanding! I made a sauce with red wine and some berries and currants that I picked last weekend, but the duck didn't really need it. I was amazed at how light the meat was, it was just a bit darker than chicken breast. As someone who has eaten a lot of wild duck, I was expecting it to be much darker. One duck was just about perfect for two people, there was only a little bit left when we were done. It was very rich and very delicious, but I still don't think I will bother with ducks again. Maybe one or two....

Picked a couple of cherry tomatoes out of the garden last night and they were great, some of the Yellow Pear tomatoes are getting close to ripe and I can't tell when the Green Zebras will be ripe because they stay green! I guess it will be trial and error. It also looks like will be picking zucchinis this week. I heard someone once describing their neighborhood this way, and it also applies to our neck of the woods, I thought it was pretty funny : " No one locks their car doors around here, except during zucchini season!"

Duck dinner

EDITED FOR ALL OF THOSE SEARCHING FOR A DUCK PLUCKER:


Check out the photos here for an inexpensive home-made plucker: http://s81.photobucket.com/albums/j227/Ardwyn_Farm/poultry/

Please email me at dougjonz@yahoo.com if you have any questions.


I like this picture, it looks like the turkeys are planning a raid on the ducks. Who on earth could have predicted, even just a few years ago, that we would have a scene like this in our yard? The unpredictable twists in the path are what makes life exciting I guess.

There are fewer ducks on the farm now than there are in that picture. I think we will have roast duck for dinner tomorrow night! I'll let you know how it is.

I got to use my "$6 Duck Plucker" yesterday and it worked like a charm. It is a simple contraption, just 3" rubber "fingers" cut from a bungee cord mounted around a 4" PVC end cap with a long carriage bolt as the driveshaft . I just chuck it into the drill, wire down the trigger and away she goes. Once I figured out how close to hold the bird to the spinning drum it was quick, maybe 3 minutes to completely defeather a duck. I'll post a picture of it if I remember.

In other news, it looks like the pigs may be completely sold, still waiting to hear back from someone on the last 1/4 of a pig. That is a relief, even if the last 1/4 doesn't sell we can just add it on to the 1/2 we were keeping for ourselves. More bacon for me!

Speaking of bacon, we'll be harvesting the first tomatoes this week and I can't wait for that first BLT! I told Nikki that I'm going to eat nothing but BLTs and sweet corn for a month. The rest of the garden is doing pretty good too. Some of the sunflowers are pushing 10' and they are just starting to get their heads.

If anyone is interested in a duck, shoot us an email or give us a call, we could probably spare a few.

Failure!

Since I posted an entry with the title "Success!" the other day, I thought I'd better share some of the failures so that people don't start thinking we're perfect!

Sweet corn. Total and complete failure, the tallest stalks are only about 3 feet tall and they are already starting to tassel out. I don't expect to harvest any corn from my 5 rows of corn, and since the stalks are so short the companion beans are going to need a different form of support or they will be a failure too. The only thing I can think of is that the soil is no good for corn, but nearly everything else is growing so well!

The pear tree. Hundreds of pears, but they have developed some type of scale or other disease. They are all undersized and ugly looking.They might still make good pig feed though.

Beets. The first planting of beets I did are stunted and don't appear to be growing. The second planting did great, however.

Ducks. Not really a failure as they are all healthy and happy and ducky, but I had a very romantic notion of ducks calmly wandering about the yard. Unfortunately the reality is they are loud, unfriendly, demanding and messy creatures.

We survived...

We survived the heat wave, all of the critters included. The swimming pool sure helped us, even though by Sunday afternoon the water temperature was up to 85°. A nice storm front came through yesterday evening and dropped the temp from 93° to 75° in about 20 minutes and it was very welcome. After it passed we sat down by the barn and just watched absolutely constant flashes of lightning filling the sky to the south for about half an hour. It was tremendous.

The pigs seemed to take the heat better than anyone on the farm, it actually stays pretty cool in the barn basement area that they have access to, and along with a big mudhole and a few soakings with the hose they were just fine. The ducks went through about 7 gallons of water on Saturday, luckily I thought up and built an automatic refilling waterer for them that holds just over 5 gallons, so it's a lot less work for me. I am pretty proud of that waterer, there are even some really bad pictures of it in the Poultry album.

Also in the Poultry album are some pics of the turkeys from this morning. No doubt about it, Whitey is a Royal Palm tom and is going to be a striking looking turkey when he is mature. We also have a Blue Slate tom (Ghost), a domestic Wild Turkey tom (Smarty), and 5 Bourbon Reds, at least one tom, maybe 2 (Brownie x 5). Whitey and Ghost are featured in today's picture.

HOT!

It is supposed to be really hot this weekend, mid 90s and muggy, so I am glad I finally have the pool straightened up, I might spend the whole weekend in it.

I found a really nice spot for a mud wallow in the barn, it doesn't dry out like the old spot did, so the pigs should be happy and cool. I've got another packet of Pig Gatorade on standby though in case they get stressed.

I believe the ducks are intentionally trying to aggravate me at this point. I go out to fill their kiddie pool every morning and if I walk away to do any other chores they come and stand on the sides of the pool, letting all of the water drain out over their feet. So I have to spend 15-20 minutes every morning standing there doing nothing, just to keep them away while it's refilling. I tried posting the dog by the pool but they just go stand on the other side. They also spend the night in the coop and sleep right next to the water faucet, so that there is always a nice giant accumulation of duck manure right where I have to walk.

We did have one moment of amusement from the ducks yesterday, one of them found an old bird nest and somehow got it entangled on it's bill, it looked like he had a big gray beard. This scared the daylights out of the other ducks, they started quacking like crazy and running away from the "bearded" duck and, since they always travel as a group, he went running right after them! Which made them run faster! It was pretty funny and also shows just how dumb they are.

A day no ducks would die

None of the ducks went to meet their maker last week. My neighbor stopped over and, in discussing the ducks, told me I'd be crazy to kill them now because I would be picking pinfeathers for hours, so I'm putting it off for a few weeks. They continue to be the least popular creatures on the farm, and their newfound interest in quacking their heads off is not winning them any points.

Grandma Jones and Leonard came by yesterday to see the place, they seemed to think we're doing OK . It was great having them over to see the place. We picked a couple of quarts of mulberries for my great-uncle Don, who is a big fan of mulberry pie. I hope Betty, my great-aunt, doesn't mind making one!

I picked and shelled peas on Saturday, looks like we will have enough to freeze some. I also harvested some carrots, trying to pry carrots out of our clay-heavy soil is a frustrating process. The ground just does not want to let go! Next year's garden soil should be a little fluffier with all of the organic matter we are adding to that patch. All of the tomato plants have little tomatolings growing on them now, so you can be sure that I am getting more and more restless every day , looking for that first sign of red.

In other news, the pool is open! Finally have it all filled up, balanced out and cleaned up, looks like this weekend is going to be a warm one so that will be nice. My nightmare now is that the ducks will find it, oh please, don't let the ducks find it!

Horror!

So I walked up the hill to the little woods to see if any of the wild black currants or gooseberries were ripe yet and, to my shock and horror, found a FOURTH mulberry tree growing on our property! I have decided that I am going to pretend it doesn't exist, I don't have the time to pick berries from yet another tree.

I got a LOT of weeding done in the garden yesterday and it needed it. The Yellow Pear tomatoes look like they are trying to take over the garden, they are very bushy plants. Zucchini has blossomed and so have the canteloupes and cucumbers. I also found a Napa Cabbage growing in the garden that I never planted and I do not even own those seeds, very odd .

The compost/deweeding plan for next year's garden bed seems to be working really well, hopefully it will result in much fewer weeds than in this year's garden. Basically I am hauling up the bedding from the hogs and birds and letting it compost in place in what will be next years garden. I let it sit for a week or so to kill the weeds underneath, then I turn it over into a new spot to kill the weeds there and encourage decomposition of the bedding material.

Happy Fourth of July

Hope everyone is having an enjoyable holiday. I got up this morning and read the Declaration of Independence and then got to work. I picked 4 more quarts of mulberries and a quart of black raspberries, still need to get the currants picked yet this afternoon, looks like we'll get 3 or 4 quarts of those too.

I took the day off yesterday and cleaned out the duck coop (yuck) and got a lot of weeding done in the garden. I also sharpened up the hatchet and made a special knife for dispatching poultry, at least 2 ducks are going to the freezer this week. Then I twisted my ankle and had to take a break so I spent most of the afternoon inside.

Anyway, happy Independence Day!

Mulberries

A few little-known facts about mulberries:

- Mulberry leaves are the sole food source of silkworms.

- The last Tuesday of May is International Mulberry Appreciation Day.

- The berries are very high in resveratrol, a substance from which anti-cancer, anti-viral, anti-aging, anti-inflammatory and life-prolonging effects have been reported.

- They have a very high sugar content, second only to grapes.

- We have them coming out of our metaphorical ears!

I started picking mulberries today. First, I made the annual Pact With The Robins. They are welcome to all of the mulberries at the tops of the trees if they stay away from our cars and drying laundry afterwards. I picked 2 quarts of them (pictured above) in about an hour today, just from one limb of one tree. We have 3 mulberry trees. PLEASE come and pick some mulberries to take home. I'll even provide latex gloves ( if you don't want to stain your hands purple) and cold beer. Take a duck home with you too! Hopefully I will figure out a local farmer's market to sell berries and some other produce at soon, things are just busy, busy, busy. Black raspberries are really starting to ripen and so are the currants, so I have to get as many mulberries in as I can before they distract me.

Everything else is doing well, have started to get some responses from localharvest, which is encouraging. Picked the first kohlrabi (or as I call it "the alien vegetable") today, carrots are getting to be harvestable size. Some of the turkeys are starting to strut around all macho-like, all 11 inches tall of them, it is funny to watch.

See you at the farm!

Come and get 'em

Start making your plans to visit the farm, and bring your ice-cream pails, because the berries are ripening. I picked a handful of black raspberries and mulberries yesterday, by next weekend we will be swimming in them.

We are going to be selling some berries this year, but there is no charge to come and pick them yourself, please feel free to do so.

Speaking of selling, we are now affiliated with LocalHarvest.org as a means of contacting even more potential purchasers. You can see our listing here:

http://www.localharvest.org/farms/M14200

You can also do a search and find other sources of fresh local food in your own area.

Lots of work ahead

We are just starting to see signs of ripening raspberries, mulberries, and blackberries. When they all get ripe it is going to be a LOT of berry picking, the raspberry bushes are absolutely astonishing in their bounty. I guess that's what happens when you clear out the old growth and prune them correctly. We are going to need friends and family to come over and pick berries too, there is no way we could eat all of the berries we are seeing grow right now.

In the garden my experiment in growing pole beans and corn next to each other is not working. The corn is growing too slowly to provide support for the bean vines. Next year I will try again but plant the beans 2 weeks after the corn, should be enough of a head start. I picked all of the radishes out of the garden yesterday, most of them were bigger than my thumb and wow, were they hot! Nikki and I are each giving them away to co-workers, there are just too many. That's what happens when the seed packet falls halfway out of your pocket and you unknowingly plant radishes throughout 1/4 of your garden.

All of the animals are doing well. The ducks are already big enough that I'm thinking of whacking a couple of them next week. They really are such a nuisance and so much work that I can't wait to be rid of them. Who would have thought that 7 ducks would be harder to care for and messier than 2 pigs?

Success

A while back I noted Nikki's comment that she would believe in growing vegetables from seed when she had her first salad completely from the garden. Well ,last night we had one. Butter lettuce, mesclun greens, radishes, peas, green onions and baby beets. It was great!

I took a few more pictures of the critters yesterday, they are growing so fast! The ducks are losing their down and feathers are just starting to show up, I bought them a kiddie pool to splash around in and they really enjoy it, there are pictures in the 'Poultry' album. The turkeys have been driving me batty, they are constantly escaping. They don't go far, they just sit outside the coop and yelp to their friends inside. But trying to keep track of them is a job. This morning I was cleaning out the duck's area and turned around to find 5 turkeys calmly walking around in the grass outside. So I caught them one by one and put them back in their enclosure and got back to the ducks.Two minutes later I look down and there are 2 turkeys standing in front of my shoes. So I put them back on their side of the coop and sat Cash right outside the gap between the fence and the building while I went down to the barn to get some fencing to close it up. I walk back up to the coop and Cash is still sitting there, but there are 3 turkeys outside the fence walking around him! I got the gap closed up and they were all still inside after going down to take care of the pigs, so I guess it worked.

A few new pictures of the pigs are in the 'Pigs' album at the link, they are growing fast too. I have the one picture of me with Lunch tucked under my arm that was taken just a few weeks ago, I don't think I could hold her up with one arm anymore, and I'm not sure I could pick Breakfast up at all.

The pic at the top is "Smarty", the bronze turkey. It looks like we have 4 different heritage breeds of turkey, I have my suspicions about which breeds they are but I'm waiting for more feathers before I commit to anything.

A sick pig

I went down to the barn Saturday morning to feed and water the pigs and noticed right away that Lunch wasn't interested in eating. Normally both of the pigs are crowding me as soon as I walk in the corral, looking for their food and a scratch behind the ears, but Lunch was still laying down in the barn. I tried offering her a pail of milk and when she wasn't even interested in that I started to worry. Saturday was a really hot day, so I hoped it was just the sudden heat wave that was making her listless. I made a big mud wallow in the back corner of the barn where it is always cooler and sprayed both pigs down with the hose every couple of hours. I also bought a vitamin and electrolyte mix to add to their water, basically Gatorade for pigs, and by 2 in the afternoon she was eating and walking around, by nightfall she appeared to have made a full recovery and has been fine since. That was a huge relief.

The birds are still doing fine, the ducks just keep getting bigger and bigger, I expect some of them to be at the 3 pound mark this week, and the mess they make has grown right along with them. It doesn't help that they appear to have no interest in being outdoors at all, even though they are free to move out into an enclosed pen at any time. The turkeys, in contrast, spend most of their time outside. I have the turkeys trained to come inside or outside at my whistle, another point against their supposed brainlessness. Yesterday was flight training day for the turkeys as they took turns making test flights, some of them about 12' long, up and down one of the enclosures.

The garden is still thriving, we had some friends over for dinner on Saturday evening and I forced them to take radishes home with them, I think we pulled just over 2 dozen giant radishes out of the ground that day.

Garden explosion

I don't know what changed, but the garden has just gone crazy this week. Things that didn't seem to be growing well or getting any bigger have just gone berserk. Picked a few pea pods earlier in the week, the second radishes are already huge, kohlrabi is starting to swell and the tomatoes are really putting out some serious vegetative growth. I'm having fun, but still waiting for the first big setback, I just know the insects, raccoons,rabbits and deer are lurking.

The ducks are driving me crazy. I want to put them outside due to the horrible mess they make inside but they still have no feathers and I don't know how they would do. But they are huge, some of them must be close to 2 pounds already. The turkeys have plenty of feathers and I think could go outside, but some of them are still small enough that they could step through the chain link fence.

Speaking of the turkeys, their reputation for stupidity is undeserved from what I have seen so far. They are friendly and don't seem to be any dumber than the ducks are. I opened the door to the outside pen for a little while yesterday and they figured out how to go in and out right away. At this point I am a big fan of the turkeys and am not sure I would bother with ducks again. Pretty much the exact opposite of how I thought I would feel about the birds. I am also encouraged by the prices that people get for fresh turkeys around Thanksgiving, which are much higher than I thought .

The pigs are still pigs, spoiled ones. I was reading about how other people's pigs devour grass clippings, mine won't touch them. Corn is disdained unless it has a beer or milk mixed in with it. They will dump everything out of their feed bowls to get the dinner scraps out and then ignore everything else until they get hungry later. I have cut back on their feed a little to encourage them to get out in the pasture more often instead of laying around the barn all the time, seems to be working.

Power outage

We lost power at the farm for a while last night, the funny thing was that neither Nikki nor I realized it until I went to make sure the birds had enough feed and noticed that their heat lamps were off. So at nightfall we built a fire in the firepit and roasted some marshmallows and got a surprise fireworks show from a summer festival in Port Washington. It was 15 miles away but we still had a decent view. Then the fireflies put on a smaller display above the pasture, it was a fun evening.

I've thrown everything I read about raising birds right out the window. They were supposed to stay in their bins for about 5 weeks and I was supposed to carefully regulate the temperature, decreasing it by 5 degrees per week. Well, I decided that was nonsense. The ducks were getting so big they were walking all over each other in there and the turkeys were pecking at the sides of the bin in frustration. So I separated the coop into 2 areas, threw some straw on the floor and hung their heat lamps from the ceiling and they are much happier. The turkeys alternate between resting under the lamp and making mad wing-flapping dashes all about. The ducks are still making a big mess, but they have a larger area to do it in. One of the ducklings has lost it's 'peep', it now makes a sort of croaking, strangled attempt at a quack. Still no feathers on the ducks but the poults are feathered over half of their bodies.

We had the last of the radishes from the first planting last night, more will be ready in about a week. I had to start pinching off blossoms from the tomato plants, which breaks my heart because I really want tomatoes but I keep telling myself it's for the greater good. Also took off a few blossoms from the peppers, the Hungarian Wax peppers had already gotten a good start on me so I let them go. The asparagus came up and skipped the edible stage and went directly to 3' tall fully seeded stalks, so we missed out on that.

Pictures

I finally got a few more pictures uploaded from this slow old computer on dial-up. You can see how the garden is growing and how big all of the animals are getting. I think the ducks are doubling in size every day. Above is a close-up of Lunch.

Everything is growing

Everything is growing and getting bigger on the farm, except for me. I've lost about 15 lbs already this spring and I'm going to have to buy some new clothes.

The ducks and turkeys are thriving, I've been pulling them out into the sunlight when it's warm. It is supposed to take 5-6 weeks of gradually reducing the heat in the brooders from 90° before you can let them run free, but they seem to get used to cooler temperatures faster than that. I'd say it won't be more than 3 weeks before I'll put them in their pens and give them the option of coming inside under a heat lamp if they need to. I've gotten faster at cleaning their houses so it isn't quite the chore it was before. When I'm cleaning out the brooders I put them into cardboard boxes, this morning an adventurous duckling leapt up and sat on the edge of the duck box and then flapped it's little wings and jumped into the box of turkeys. I guess it wanted to see what they were eating.. The ducklings have also had their first swim. I used a paint roller tray so that they could walk up the inclined surface easily if they wanted to get out of the water. It was fun to watch them take turns jumping in and out of the water. The turkeys' wings have lost their down and are now fully feathered. Every now and then one will start running and flapping it's little wings, no successful take-offs yet.


The pigs are growing, as well. I'm guessing that they are both in the 60-70 lb range right now. Breakfast is still ornery but seems to be calming down a little, maybe it is just adolescence.

The garden is still doing well. All of the soybeans, pole beans and corn have sprouted, we are almost out of the first planting of radishes, the second planting should be ready in about 2 weeks. We had guests for dinner on Sunday and had a salad made exclusively from the garden, and I tossed some potato wedges with olive oil, sea salt, and fresh garden herbs and roasted them to accompany a beer-can chicken from the grill.

In wildlife news, we now have a rooster pheasant strolling around the yard and squawking. He walked within 30 feet of us sitting outside on Sunday. Haven't seen the fox again, but there was another wild turkey sighting Saturday morning .

Morning chores!

It just hit me , I have morning chores. I'm going to have to start getting up a little earlier.

This morning I headed down to the barn to feed and water the pigs. Breakfast was even bossier/crabbier than usual. I can't wait to eat that annoying pig!

After that it's up to the coop. First I checked the temperature of the brooders, it was a little chilly, I'll have to lower the IR bulbs a little bit in the evenings to compensate for the cool nights. Then on to cleaning out the brooders.

Let me tell you, ducklings are smelly, messy creatures. They fling water and feed all over the place and their droppings are quite foul smelling. I would rather clean out the pig barn any day. The turkey brooder was a piece of cake compared to the duck's. The ducks also seem to eat a lot more, but it may be that half of their feed is flung against the walls. It is always party time in the duckling brooder, I guess.

Next on the list was checking on the garden and giving it a good drink of water. We had a little rain last night so it didn't take as long as it might have. All in all it's about 30 minutes of work.

We've got birds!

We received a phone call at 6:15 this morning, "Hi! This is the post office and we've got a box full of peepers for you!" So I hopped in the car and went to pick them up. It was a small cardboard box with lots of holes and various small bills and beaks popped in and out of them on the drive home, accompanied by a lot of peeps and chirps.

I finished the second brooder box last weekend so everyone had their own home right away. We got 7 birds that are definitely baby ducklings and 9 more that are little chicks or turkey poults or some combination thereof. The ducks took to their new home right away and started eating and drinking with a fury. The turkeys were listless at first, but once I got them underneath the heat lamp for a while they perked right up. I dipped their beaks in the water and then in the feed and that seemed to help them figure out where everything was and when I left they were merrily dashing around and running over each other.

I tried to take pictures this morning but I couldn't convince them to hold still long enough. I'll try again this afternoon when I get home.

Garden List 2006

Wow. I walked up to the garden yesterday to make this list and , once written down, looks like a heck of a lot of stuff! The list looks bigger than the garden.

So here it is, the contents of the 2006 garden:

• Rhubarb
• Zucchini
• Butternut squash
• Canteloupe
• Charentais melon
• Cucumber
• Watermelon
• Pumpkin
• Sweet corn (2 varieties)
• Pole beans
• Cabbage
• Leeks
• Red onions
• White onions
• Green onions
• Sunflowers
• Radishes
• Carrots
• Beets
• Parsnips
• Bibb lettuce
• Salad greens
• Kohlrabi
• Peas
• Cherry tomatoes
• Yellow pear tomatoes
• Green Zebra tomatoes
• Red tomatoes (3 varieties)
• Roma tomatoes
• Red, yellow, and green bell peppers
• Hungarian hot peppers
• Habanero peppers
• Cayenne peppers
• Soybeans
• Sage
• Lavender
• Dill
• Chives
• Basil
• Rosemary
• Garlic

Whew!

Spring's Bounty

We have seen even more wild creatures in the yard since I last wrote. The day after first seeing the turkey in the yard he was back again, strolling calmly through the middle of the yard in the late afternoon. Later that evening as I walked into the kitchen my eye was drawn to the backyard by a flash of red. It was a red fox. She was carrying a dead rabbit, presumably to feed a den of kits. I felt conflicted on seeing her. On one hand it is really cool to see a fox, on the other I am getting my ducks and turkeys this week and was hoping to have the ducks roaming the lawn in about 5 weeks. Maybe they will survive if I pen them each night.

Our friends, family and neighbors will be happy to know that I drained the pool and scrubbed it clean this weekend. Hopefully a few cases of beer will convince the local volunteer fire dep't to stop by with their tanker truck this week to help me refill it. 27,000 gallons would take an awfully long time to fill with a garden hose.

The pigs are still doing great, getting bigger and bigger. I finally broke down and bought them separate troughs, because the big one would just stand in the old one to keep the little one out, whereupon the little one would just flip the whole thing over onto the floor. They were wasting a lot of feed that way.

Walking through the yard at this time of year is just amazing. Every day something new is blooming. Yesterday bright blue irises blossomed among the fading tulips. The raspberry bushes are now a sea of small flowers.White star shaped flowers are popping up everywhere. The mulberry trees, which were still bare 2 weeks ago, now are fully leaved and small green berries are already forming. The pear tree is so loaded with tiny pears that I don't know if the branches will support their weight when they are fully grown.

The garden is also incredible. I never dreamed it would be so successful this first year. Everything seems to be flourishing. The pole beans broke the earth yesterday morning and by nightfall were 3 inches tall! I have planted so many things that I don't know if I can even remember them all. Maybe I will go make a list and put that on the blog tomorrow.

Living the Wild Life

Oops, that should be "Living AMONG the Wildlife".

When I got home from work yesterday afternoon there was an enormous wild turkey running around the yard! I will admit my first instinct was to shoot it, but logic won out and instead I scattered some cracked corn in the general area I'd seen it. Maybe we'll get a nice local flock and my spring and fall turkey hunting trips won't require more than a 100 yard hike. Other than rabbits and squirrels that's the first game animal I've seen in the actual yard, but there were deer tracks in the garden a few weeks ago.

I was a little worried about Breakfast's eyes, the eyelids looked a little swollen and inflamed. Nikki thought I was crazy and it turned out she was right. Well, only about her eyes being nothing to worry about! They look much better now, it was probably just dust from the fresh bedding I put in there the day before. That is a relief.

Speaking of the pigs, it looks like we have one entire pig sold already! That's pretty cool, I wasn't even thinking about trying to sell them until the fall, especially since they still have about 180lbs to gain between now and then. But I guess many people are interested in what we're doing here at Ardwyn and are interested in the final product, too! I have been getting a lot of comments on the blog, I think it's amazing how many people are interested in a couple of goofs just trying to raise a little food. But I'm glad people are enjoying this, don't be afraid to comment!

Queen of the Pigs

I believe that Breakfast has decided that she is the Empress of all things Porcine and that I am simply a vassal, providing her with her twice-daily royal meal.

When she hears me open the door to the feed room and start mixing feed she will walk out of the barn into the corral area and begin grunting at me. If she determines that I am taking too long she starts pacing back and forth and gives an urgent series of squeals, telling me to get with it.

Yesterday morning I decided to see just how far I could push it. I filled the feed bucket, walked into the barn and just stood by their trough. Breakfast started off by shoving her head against the back my calves, grunting quite loudly. When this failed she started trying to flip the feed bucket out of my hands with her snout, squealing in frustration. When I raised the bucket up out of her reach this was apparently too much for Her Highness to accept, she started biting my shoe! I was put back into my place because that tactic worked.

The garden is doing great, except for the 4 tomato plants I put out. Mother Nature decided to throw me a curveball and have a nice frost on the morning of May 22nd. Our last frost before that was, I think, April 14th, so I wasn't even listening to the weather forecasts at this point. So 4 of the plants I have been tending to indoors for 2 months are now quite spectacularly dead. I'm just glad I didn't put all of the plants out!

A good day's work

The ground was dry enough that we got a lot of work done in the garden today. It is now entirely fenced in, and today we planted butternut squash, zucchini, watermelon, muskmelon, some kind of French melon (freedom melon?), pumpkins, cucumbers, 2 varieties of sweet corn, and pole beans. I also moved 4 tomato plants to the garden from indoors.

I built one of the two brooders needed for the birds coming the week after next. I used a giant plastic bin and cut a hole in the lid and covered it with wire mesh. The infrared light will hang above that. Then I built a platform for the interior out of the same wire cloth, it looks like it just might work. I think I've read enough now about how to brood ducklings and turkey poults because I'm starting to find conflicting information, so I will probably just ignore all of it and do whatever seems to make the birds healthy and happy.

Tomorrow I'll start getting the lawn mowed and then up to Green Bay to see Lexi.

Now I'm Uncle Farmer Jones!

My little sister had her baby, so I'm a first time uncle. Alexia Morgan Haight was born on Wednesday afternoon and, by all accounts, is the prettiest, happiest baby in the land. I can't wait to meet her, we will head up sometime this weekend if the new parents are up to it.

Not much new on the farm, the bats have returned and just in time because I saw a gaggle of mosquitoes trying to carry off my dog last week. Sunflowers have sprouted in the garden and I got in there yesterday to attack some of the weeds that exploded during this recent deluge. The grapevines have started to grow leaves so I must not have killed them all with my slash and burn pruning this winter, that is encouraging.

Have been researching how to care for ducks and turkeys, every reference I find says that ducks have amusing personalities and are fun to watch. I will somehow have to convince Cash the dog that they are not for him to eat. I talked to the production manager at the cheese factory that is on my way home and he had no problem with me picking up a bucket of whey for the pigs every week or so, the pigs will be happy with that.

Life is good on the farm and we're enjoying spring, even though there are many projects to work on. I really have to start getting the pool ready for summer, I should call my cousins and have them yell at me about it, I'm sure they could motivate me to get to work.

A new plan

A decision has been made and yesterday I ordered one of the "Barnyard Combination" packages from McMurray Hatchery. We'll be receiving 9 ducklings and 6 turkey poults sometime during the week of the 29th. I'm not sure I want that many turkeys so I might see if the guy at the feed store will try and sell 2 or 3 for us.Of course I should probably take into account that some of them won't survive to adulthood. The package we ordered lets the hatchery choose which varieties of the poultry they send, so it should be interesting to see what we end up with, they will probably all be just plain white! They are also a "straight run" which means a mix of males and females. I'm looking forward to the possibility of duck eggs, I hear they are pretty tasty.

The rain has continued and is supposed to continue continuing, so getting any seeds into the garden this weekend is looking more and more doubtful, but we shall see. At this point everything I have planted has sprouted, parsnips are finally up and the cabbage is just starting. The onions are enjoying the drenching, they look amazingly healthy. I still haven't finished fencing in the garden, have to get on that before rabbits and deer clean us out. If I do get anything in this weekend it will be sweet corn and pumpkin seeds and maybe a few tomato transplants.

Nikki took some really great pictures yesterday of a rainbow to the south of the farm, even got a few with the pigs in the pasture and the rainbow behind them. I put a few in the Pigs album at the pictures link. I also tried using one of them as the new header for the blog, seems to work differently on different PCs, I don't know why. I guess that's why I'm not a web developer.

No pheasants...

..at least for now. We had a grand total of one chick hatch from 17 eggs and it died sometime Saturday night. I guess they must have been shaken up pretty good in transit since both shipments had broken eggs in them. Nikki was at the feed store on Saturday and the owner said he's getting 300 pheasant eggs in soon, maybe we will try again. Otherwise I have thought about maybe getting a few ducklings and skipping the whole egg segment of the life cycle. We'll talk about it and make a decision later this week.

The weather has been absolutely awful, cold and rainy. Luckily it didn't get cold enough to damage anything in the garden but I am glad I resisted the urge to put tomato plants in early. If the rain doesn't let up I might not even get the tomatoes in by this weekend, the soil is much too wet to work right now.

I was gone all day Saturday seeing my good friend Ron deliver the student commencement address at UW-Oshkosh and taking Mom out for a surprise pre-Mother's Day lunch.Came home Sunday morning to find the pigs had a growth spurt. I can't believe how fast they are growing. They look more like pigs and less like piglets after only 2 weeks. They cleaned out their trough completely from both feedings yesterday, so I added another cup of each of the 3 components that make up thier feed. So now it's 3 cups of spent brewer's grain, 3 cups of cracked corn and 3 cups of soy meal twice a day.

May is 'Eat Locally' month

Well, I had a big long diatribe here about industrial agriculture but I deleted it because I vowed to myself when I started this blog that I would keep politics out of it and I was getting awfully close to the edges.

So instead you get this. May 2006 is "Eat Locally" month.

Try to prepare even just one meal a week with ingredients grown in your area. The local McDonald's doesn't count! I know it's difficult right now in Wisconsin because there aren't many farmer's markets open yet but a meal of fresh fish, asparagus, and rhubarb crisp sounds pretty good and all of those things are in season right now. Look around, get to know who is producing wholesome, fresh and trustworthy food in your area. I guarantee you'll enjoy your meal, and not just because it is fresher than anything you'll find in a supermarket.

New pictures of the yard and it's springtime blooms are in the photobucket albums. New garden pictures too!

No pheasants yet and today was day 28. I think we got duds.
Edit: I forgot that we got some more 3 days later, all hope is not yet lost

Waiting is over, the work begins

Well I have proved to Nikki that you can plant seeds and get plants from them, she is still skeptical though. I believe her statement was something like "I'll believe it when I have my first salad." So I thinnned out the leaf lettuce and salad greens yesterday and washed them off and served her a tiny salad of what a high-priced restaurant would call "microgreens". Mission accomplished!

The garden is growing very well, the beets sprouted sometime when I wasn't paying attention, so only the parsnips and carrots are left to sprout from the first planting. Cabbages got planted on saturday. I'm thinking of cheating and putting some tomato plants out a little early since it has been so warm and sunny. Since I have 19 plants started indoors I'll be all right even if some of them don't make it. By the way, does anyone need any tomato plants?

As far as the critters go, the pheasants are supposed to hatch sometime this week, still no activity there. The hogs are gettting bigger every day. I posted some new pictures of them at the Farm Pictures link, in the Pigs album, naturally.

Nikki and some of her girl friends went out for dinner on Saturday and at the end of the evening one of them said "we should give the leftovers to the pigs!" so they asked the waitress for a styrofoam box. She said the look on the waitress' face when she came back to the table and saw all of the plates scraped clean and only the one box was priceless.

That's all for now.

Birds!

Since this our first spring at the farm, I am learning more every day about some of our seasonal residents, the birds.

Yesterday morning I hiked down to the barn to check on the pigs and was greeted by a male barn swallow as I flipped on the lights. He flew up and hovered in the air like a hummingbird, not 2 feet from my face. He seemed to regard me as though committing my features to memory. Then he perched on a fence rail and watched me feed the pigs, making sure I didn't have any designs on his new nest in the far corner of the barn. As I walked back up to the house the bubbly squeaks of starlings and the coos of mourning doves filled the darkness.

Coming home from work, after stopping at the feed mill, I parked in the driveway and while getting out of my car saw a hen pheasant bobbing her head in and out of a tall clump of grass near the grapevines, maybe keeping an eye on her cluster of olive-colored eggs? A prehistoric raspy croak drew my attention skyward where a trio of
sandhill cranes glided on enormous wings toward the top of the hill, below them a merlin floated on a rising wind, his black-barred tail announcing his species as clearly as a name tag. In the raspberry bushes near the house a cardinal called "what cheer, what cheer" and I had to agree.

This morning, though, was the most amazing thing. As I walked toward my car I pressed the 'unlock' button on the remote so that I could open the hatch in back. The short "beep, beep" of the alarm sounded and 2 seconds later I heard it again. I was fairly sure I hadn't accidentally pushed the button a second time, but shrugged it off. As I was unloading some things from the back, I heard it again, "beep beep". I stepped back from my wagon and pressed the button, the car beeped and immediately the sound was repeated from a cluster of pines at the bottom of the hill. I stood there laughing for a minute or two, pressing the car alarm and listening to the response from an unseen bird. I wonder if he thought he was wooing a partner?

The pork chops have arrived.

Here are the two newest additions to the farm, Breakfast and Lunch. Lunch is the smaller of the two and has already proved herself an able escape artist. I had to pen them both up in the barn while I re-pigproofed the pasture after she snuck between a 5" gap in the boards of her pen.

So far they seem content to walk around munching on grass and haven't tried to escape from the pasture.

In other news, the garden is doing great, I've got 3-4" pea vines and lots of radishes and salad greens growing very well. Other stuff is a little slow to sprout, but I think the beets and carrots are just starting, hard to tell with the weeds around them.

Early spring = waiting

Right now all we do is wait. Wait for the garden to sprout, wait for the eggs to hatch, wait for the pigs to arrive, wait for the first time to cut the grass (already?!), wait and see how many more shoots come up in the "greenhouse", etc. Obviously there are little tasks to do, turn the grow lights on and off, turn the eggs, water the garden, but for now the predominant mood is ..expectation.

We are up to 19 tomato plants inside. I love tomatoes, but I don't think I can eat more than 3 plants worth. I foresee a lot of canning late this summer, and homemade salsas and marinara. Many people have already commented that they are going to raid our garden so maybe I won't have quite the surplus I envision.

What the heck is an Ardwyn?

I suppose I should explain the farm's name. No, it's not some elf from the Lord of the Rings, or a Nordic princess. Ardwyn is simply a Welsh word that means "on the hill". Since we live in a mostly flat state, it is our farm's distinctive feature.

Last year I sold grapes to a Madison co-op that resold them to some of the best restaurants in Chicago (Charlie Trotter's, the Ritz-Carlton, etc.) They wanted to have a name to send checks to, and to have something fancy to add to the menus. So I did some research on farm names and learned that it is common in the UK to name your farm or home. Ardwyn sounded like a nice name, and since we are on a hill, and my family has some Welsh ancestry, it fit. So I just decided to keep it going.

The garden got a nice start on Sunday with mild temperatures and some light rain in the morning and early afternoon, much better than a intense storm to wash all of the seeds away.Seedlings indoors are doing well also. Right now I have 15 tomato plants, 10 bell peppers of various colors, 6 different hot pepper, as well as some marigolds.

A new corral, and patience.

Spent the day yesterday working on finishing some renovation inside the house. Then, to escape the paint fumes I did some work down at the barn. We needed to have some way of getting the pigs out into the pasture without letting them get into the yard, so a new fence was necessary. I decided to put a gate in there to make my life easier. Pics are at the link, in the Barn album. As you can see, it was a 3 beer job.

Talked with Jack Krell, the plan is for him to bring the pigs over the first weekend in May, so a little bit more patience is needed. But, better for him to feed them than me! He says I can feed them up to 40% spent brewer's grain, if that turns out to be true we'll be feeding these oinkers for practially free.

This morning I got the first seeds into the garden. Peas, carrots, radishes, turnips, parsnips, kohlrabi, etc, etc. All of the cool weather things. Nikki is dubious about the whole "growing things from seeds" process. Hopefully there are lots of successful plants to show that it really can be done.

Regarding Pigs

So why are we raising pigs?

Well, for one, they taste good! In the words of Homer Simpson they are a "wonderful, magical animal!"

I figured that since we have a barn we might as well have something living in it. Pigs seemed to be a good choice because you can buy a feeder pig in the spring and it is ready for slaughter in the fall. Which means it's a relatively short term commitment when compared to other livestock. I was just kind of kicking the idea around when Nikki told me she knew a family that raised pigs over near Hartford.

So we went and visited the Krells' farm. They are a Certified Organic farm and they raise a couple of litters of organic pigs every summer. We got some good information and some pork steaks! They agreed to sell us 2 of them and so it was set, Jack Krell should be bringing us our pigs this weekend or the next.

Our pigs won't be 'organic' because the spent grain I'll be feeding them from the brewery isn't certified organic, but they will be pasture-raised, hormone-free, antibiotic-free, and should taste pretty good!

The eggs are here!

Unfortunately, the post office decided to step on the box a few dozen times. Of the 15 pheasant eggs we got 7 that weren't crushed. Hopefully the guy has a few more he can send to replace them. Pictures of the eggs in both states are in the Pheasants album in the link.

First post

Welcome to the Ardwyn Farm blog. Not much to report yet, but soon we'll be hatching pheasant eggs and getting our pigs. Right now we are just trying to get the barn and pasture set up to be pig-proof.

The garden has been tilled and weeded, started plants are doing well in the "greenhouse", might get some seeds in the ground this weekend, we'll see!