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.