Pork order forms are out!

I emailed pork order forms to our customers today. If you ordered half a hog from us and didn't get a form, let me know!

Finally got some rain yesterday, we were getting awfully dry around here.Not much else has been going on. I had a rebuilt transmission put into Black Betty, the farm truck last week, so she's in fine shape to take the hogs to market. I found a GIANT squash in the garden of a variety that I don't even remember planting, it must have been one of the plants I picked up at the garden center when they were closing everything out. It's about as big as a basketball and growing.

Please get those forms back to us by the first week of September, we need to know how you want those pigs!

Canning season has begun!

I started canning things that were otherwise going to go to waste this weekend. I did 4 pints of pickled beets, which were slightly disappointing. I used the Chioggia beets, which have great alternating bands of red and white, like a bulls eye, unfortunately 30 minutes in the canner cooked pretty much all of the color out of them. I also canned 6 quarts of spiced red cabbage relish. It smelled great when I was cooking the pickling liquid, lots of different spices in there including mustard seed, mace, coriander, allspice, and cloves.

I also started an experiment in homemade sauerkraut, about 12 pounds of cabbage went into it and it is trying to ferment down in the root cellar. This week I am also going to start a crock of pickles, there are starting to be enough of them to pick some every day. This year I will actually follow the recipe I have for pickles, since trying to "wing it" last year left us with jars full of tasteless flabby trash. I found a recipe for bread and butter zucchini pickles that I am considering trying, we have an awful lot of zucchini still!

The tomatoes are really starting to come in now, so far the Black Krims are my favorite. I still haven't made an "all-farm" BLT with the last of last year's bacon, but that might just change tonight. And no, I am not baking the bread myself, but I might make homemade mayonnaise.

What is a Garden Share?

This is!

That's representative of the box our customers receive every Friday. The idea is that they pay a set amount in the spring for 10 weeks of boxes of produce from the garden, basically buying a "share" of the garden. This box is from 2 weeks ago. It included heirloom beets, cauliflower, banana peppers, broccoli, radishes, multi-colored carrots, zucchini, white onions, leeks, snap peas, a big box of salad greens, and baby red potatoes

In other news, Pepper the Pig decided to fall sick again on Sunday. She was stumbling around like she was drunk, and generally being uncoordinated. I figured out yesterday that she probably had an inner ear infection, so I used an old-time remedy and poured a capful of rubbing alcohol into each of her ears. I figured I would have to do that every day for 3 or 4 days but, incredibly, she was acting completely normal within 3 hours! A modern operation would have had that pig on a full course of penicillin for 2 weeks, or just culled her to save cost! I am a little tired of the drama from Pepper though, she had better be one delicious pig to make up for the hassle she has given me. Speaking of that, the appointment has been made and the pigs are going to the butcher September 10th.

An interesting morning

The saga of Pepper the Pig continues...

Friday morning, I was enjoying a cup of coffee when I glanced out the window. "Hmmm", I thought, "That is a really big dog in our yard!"

It took about 3 seconds for the truth to fight through to my still caffeine-deprived brain "That's no dog, that's a PIG!" I shouted something incomprensible to Nikki, along the lines of "puh-PIG! Yard Help Loose!" Luckily it was enough to make her realize that something was wrong and she followed me out the door.

My first action was to run down to the pasture to see how many pigs had escaped. Luckily, the other three were contentedly grazing or lying in the mud. I closed the gate and began the pursuit of our escapee. It took a few tries and about 10 minutes, but eventually we got her back where she belonged. I can only imagine how tough it would have been to wrangle 4 of them, so we got very lucky there. Our friends Mark and Amy, who were visiting this weekend, found the whole scene very comical.

Not much new..

Looks like I will not have any ripe tomatoes by the Fourth, dangit. They are not far off though.

The rest of the garden continues it's spectacular run, we've got too many snap peas to deal with right now. Soon we'll have bell peppers and some of the hot peppers are ready to pick now. Black raspberries are ripening and boy, are they sweet this year, best tasting crop we've had. I'd like to dig up a hill of red potatoes and see if there are any baby new potatoes yet, but I'm trying to be patient. Let's see how long that lasts! (Patience has not really ever been one of my strong suits, ask anyone that knows me.)

Those of you that ordered a 1/2 pig from us will be getting an order form in the mail, or by email, sometime this month. It is pretty self explanatory, but please contact us with any questions you have. That is why we are sending it out early, we want to make sure you get exactly what you want. If you do not receive it by the end of the month, let us know!

What else? I've got a full 5 gallon bucket of mulberries for my homemade wine, about 30lbs worth. That should be enough, along with 70lbs of grapes or so, to make a fair amount of wine. I have to look up some recipes.