2016 Accomplishments

At the beginning of the year I sat out a list of things we were going to try to get done. You can find that here.

As I write this I recognize that I completely and utterly failed on getting gutters installed. Along with cisterns, ponds, and tree planting - though I did order in all the supplies and seeds, so we'll try that again in the spring. I was pretty pissed at what I didn't done until I sat down and wrote out what we did get finished. Overall we moved the ball forward quite a bit this year.

Here's a list of what we did get accomplished:

1. Moved Andrea and the Reds to Texas with possessions and Pug dog intact. A special thank you to Bill and Diane who were gracious enough to drive the Reds to a memorial service for their great grandparents in Michigan, and then on down to Texas.
2. Bill built two spa benches after arriving in Texas.
3. Built Andrea a Farm Table and bought the wood working tools to go with it as a Mother's Day/Birthday Present.
4. Built a kitchen island that turned out awesome.
5. Got a great deal on two top bar beehives and will try to add bees come spring.
6. Found a really good looking registerable, full blooded Belted Galloway Bull.
7. Went in halfsies on a shorthorn steer that will be in the freezer next fall.
8. Bought a Red Wattle barrow and a Red Wattle/Duroc cross barrow. Sold 2 halves and put the rest in the freezer.
9. Got 6 paddocks set up and working.
10. Figured out how to better ground the electric fence and had 0 breakouts this year.
11. 20+ broiler chickens put up.
12. 25+ laying hens raised and should start laying in March 2016
13. Bought and installed a pellet stove to keep the house Africa hot for Andrea during the winter.
14. Bought a large smoker.
15. Bought a tractor, shredder, disk, hay fork, blade, and plow.
16. Bought a cattle trailer.
17. Bought a car hauler to haul our vehicles as they age and inevitably break down. :-)
18. Bought a four wheeler.
19. Picked up a aerator, sprayer, and seed spreader from a generous co-worker.
20. Bought organically grown hay from two neighbors and put up 18 bales for winter.
21. Bought several new farms tools, pull ax, pitchfork, etc.
22. Andrea picked up a used washer and dryer.
23. Let a buddy use my Seqouia and got a small deep freeze in exchange.
24. Worm bin.
25. Put in a clothesline for Andrea.
26. Composted a ton of grass clippings.
27. Picked up a large deep freeze and filled it with meat we raised.
28. Added two additional garden beds for the 2017 garden.
29. Found a compost supplier locally and brought in and spread 8 inches of compost on all the beds.
30. Raised 2 hogs successfully and have greatly enjoyed reading them.

2017 Goals will go up soon.

Graduation Day

No plan survives first contact with the enemy. All of our Thanksgiving leftovers were placed in a feeder, along with their normal ration of feed. Bacon jumped right into the trailer, Chorizo on the other hand wasn't having any of it. As we tried to coax him into the trailer, he figured out that the hog panels were no longer secured to the posts, and made his way under the panels in short order. Chorizo apparently is much more of a salad connoisseur than a lover of stuffing and cranberry sauce.

Much swearing ensued. I was a jerk to my sweet wife, honestly at times I don't know what she sees in me, but I digress. The 4 wheeler once again proved invaluable, that and Chorizo's lack of focus on cardio. I was worried I was going to have to shoot him if he made it out of the pasture. Disaster was averted as we got him back into his old pen. After a few more minutes of swearing and trying to coax Chorizo into the trailer, he finally made his way in. There was much rejoicing. And much apologizing to Andrea.

I picked up the Red Wattle hogs back on August 13th when they were about 10 weeks old. So the 28th of November puts them just shy of 6 months old. They've proven easy to raise. Happy in both the heat of summer, pouring rain, and coolness of early fall.

Raising them really couldn't have gone better, the pen was cheap to build, and they didn't escape until their last day on the Snow Compound. The last thing we have to do is load them and take them to the butcher. I'll let you know how much they end up weighing.

Thoughts on Hogs

Bacon and Chorizo enjoying pancakes.

I love bacon, but besides that, raising hogs has been one of the more straight forward endeavors here on the homestead. They've been healthy, thrived in the heat, rain, and even managed to turn up hard black clay soil for me. They don't attack live chickens, but have turned the snake victims and Cornish Cross chickens that succumb to growing too fast into sausage and pork chops. If that ain't magic I don't know what is .

It has been awesome having 0 food waste go out in the trash, and the lack of guilt over throwing food away or not seeing some left overs in the back of the fridge is pretty sweet as well. Interestingly enough the hogs don't find every morsel and crumb that we throw to them, but the little 236 layers come through their pen a couple times a day and make sure nothing is going to waste.

The Red Wattle Duroc cross is showing typical hybrid vigor and is probably 30 pounds heavier than his litter mate that arrived on the farm on the same day. Both have been castrated, but the bigger one is using his bulk to bully the other out of the food trough. I've bought another trough and think this will take care of that problem.

I'll do the pigs again in a heartbeat, whereas I'm really questioning doing more Cornish Cross as they seem so un-chickenlike. My next step is to find a place to dumpster dive or a ongoing source of cheap higher quality food than the hog pellets, supplemented by table scraps, that this pair have had. Cheaper food would make the hogs a very viable income stream for the homestead since pork is so popular here in Texas.

This Little Piggy

As time progresses I'll do my best to take pictures of the hogs from this angle so that you can watch them progress size wise. To date they haven't been affected by the heat or rain that we've had this summer. I expect to see them really take off growing with the cooler fall weather that's just around the corner.

If turning table scraps, cracked corn, spent brewers grain, and pig pellets into bacon isn't Alchemy I don't know what is.

They should graduate to the freezer shortly after Thanksgiving. We're hoping for about 150 pounds of meat from each hog, it'll be interesting to see how they dress out.