We have been really busy here on the farm. We are out growing pens and houses and its GREAT! We have taken over our old feed shed to put cement done and make into 3 farrowing pens and then a boar pen and a cow pen with still enough room for feed storage. We just can't store our tillers or tractors in there anymore. Which is fine by me! The 3 farrowing pens are for the 2 current sows we have and we are talking about getting a just weaned gilt this summer so next year she can be our 3rd sow. We are doing pretty good with selling our pigs. I am hoping it picks up more, that would be nice.....but out of 2 litters we only have 2 piglets left to sell that are not for meat for our family. There were 14 piglets on the farm so farm....that's quite a few piglets! :) We got an offer from another pig farmer that is looking for a pure bred Yorkshire gilt just weaned. Hammy our boar and Petunia our one sow are both Yorkshires. Petunia is due middle of August and I am hoping she has a girl this time. The other pig farmer is going to barter with us. His Duroc gilt for our Yorkshire gilt and that's where our 3rd sow would come in...well next summer anyway. She would need to be a year old before she can breed. Anyways we are building the girl's pens into farrowing pens right away so they have their own space whether they are having babies or not. They get more outside space and so do the piglets and its wonderful! I love giving them more freedom! Yea, it does take longer for them to fatten up....but the point is to raise happy healthy pigs for meat that is healthy and lean, not real fatty...even though they are pigs! LOL
We have been able to sell our eggs finally. We actually have a larger demand then we do eggs! So we ordered more chicks offline and I am praying there will be enough to cover the demand! It's not a bad thing, I just wish we had more eggs!
The Spring veggies/fruit are just about done. We have gotten quite a bit of strawberries this year! Which is great for the strawberry jam. We also planted more shelling peas this year and WOW they are so delicious! I LOVE peas! They are not flowering as much, there are like 4-8 plants yet that are still flowering, but other then that looks like Spring season is over and we are moving right into Summer season. Green beans are about to flower, the peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes and corn are loving this weather. Our little corn field we did this year is doing amazing! Our fruit trees are struggling. I think the weird frost we had after everything started to flower killed them off. We only have 1 apple tree with a few apples on it and our peach tree is doing wonderful. The blueberries are doing better then last year as well. They have not grown in size, plant wise....which worries me a little, but we shall see how it goes the rest of the summer.
We are also about to venture into making our own fridge incubator. We have got an old broken fridge here and we need more chicks for eggs and meat, so we are going to see if we can do this! We found some pretty easy instructions online with nice pictures and when the busy season of the farm slows down, then we will try our hand at building this thing!
We are also due to have baby #6 in about a week, so I do not know when I will get to post next! Have a happy summer!
