The Menu

 What am I going to eat this winter?

Mindy had to calve this year, live and healthy, to save herself.  This is her fifth year at our farm, 6 years old, and the first time she's produced.  Most farmers would have disposed of her long before now.  She just calved, she's off the menu.

The other option we had planned was to put Toothless on the menu this fall.  He was supposed to be big and mean at 2.5 years old, so after breeding season, he was supposed to go on the menu.  He is getting bigger, but his temperament is pretty good, except when one of the girls is in heat.  He stays in the pasture, and he's fathered 3 calves.  So, while he may taste delicious, he really seems to be worth keeping.  His daughters won't be ready to breed until 2015, so I don't need to get rid of him yet.

We also have a replacement bull issue.  Steaks only fathered one calf, Sharlotte, at 1.5.  Murphy or Monsoon, whichever I keep as Toothless' replacement, will only be 1.5 next fall.  Old enough to technically get the job done, but I really don't want to go back to a one calf year.

I could butcher whichever one of them I decide not to keep, but they're not that big yet, which seems kind of wasteful.

The girls are also off schedule.  Dorie should rebreed for another spring calf, but Nelly could be bred now, after losing her calf, making for a very early baby next year, along with Mildred who may be knocked up for January.  Toothless never tried to get back to her after that first incident, and she hasn't shown any signs of estrus.  And now with Mindy calving in August, she shouldn't be rebred for a few months.  If we butcher Toothless, Murphy or Monsoon won't be old enough to take care of business. 

I could buy a steer or yearling bull to butcher.  But I paid a lot of money for Steaks.  And honestly, he didn't taste that great.  He wasn't bad.  But he wasn't Casper.  Even though Toothless is a Holstein cross, he's a whole lot sleeker, solid and muscled than Steaks ever was.  Steaks arrived scrawny and never really put on any weight.  There are no feed lots around here, so I expect anything I buy to be grass fed, but still, there was something just not right about him.  I don't think I want to spend that kind of money just to put something in the freezer that may or may not meet my standards.

I could get lucky at the auction and find another pig for a steal.  I truly feel bad for whoever brought her in, they sure didn't get what she was worth.  She did feed us well though.  But that brings me back to the same issue I had in the spring- no pig pen.  And I'd need to let a pig live here at least a month, just so I'd know there were no drugs in her system.

And of course we have the meat birds.  They'll provide many meals this winter.

I didn't buy a moose tag this year, after losing Dad.  I could still buy a calf tag, but I don't think I'm emotionally ready to go moose hunting.  And of course, that doesn't give us any guarantees.

Bear season just opened.  I do have a tag.  Still no guarantees.

Grocery store?  What a concept.  I could buy meat this winter.  Oh!!  I COULD buy meat this winter.  There's a bison farm not far from here, and every time I drive by it I think I should really go and talk to them and give it a try.  This could be the year.

And then there's still partridge season coming up too.

For now, I guess I'll start by taking inventory of the freezers.  I'm late getting them cleaned out this year anyway!

Completely Rotten, Utterly Miserable, Failure of a Garden

The garden is not going well. Understatement of the year.

It should be going great. It was an early spring. It's been a warm summer. More sun than we're accustomed to. Enough rain to keep it happy.

We were late getting Pig. Then after a few weeks, Pig quit working. Refused to dig in the garden. Would only dig at night after she escaped her pen- and then, not in the garden.

My greenhouses haven't even been started yet. It's late July. They were supposed to be up in May. I'm still hoping they'll get done so they'll be ready for next year. But not going to accomplish anything this year. As a result, the tomatoes are struggling along. The cukes died. Half the pumpkins died.

The second attempt at cukes was nearly wiped out by a temporary greenhouse- the plastic came loose and flapped over top of them repeatedly on a windy night.

The rototiller wasn't working in the spring. It was fixed temporarily, but then broke again. Still not fixed. I'm working with less than half the space I normally use. A lot of stuff never got planted. I only got half a row of beans in when I ran out of space. Green beans- the most essential part of our winter garden.

I bought the strawberry starts too early I guess. Most of them died before they made it to the garden.

The peas... the one thing that I can count on- they grow all season here- were mercilessly trampled and eaten by goats. They're now fenced in, and may recover enough to give us a few handfuls, but nothing like we're used to. They chewed the tops off the beets.

Goats also wreaked havoc on the raspberries. Fortunately they're common enough in the woods that I'll be able to make up for them by foraging, but it will be more work than our patch.

Something has also been devouring the broccoli, cauliflower, and brussel sprouts. Do goats eat brussel sprouts? Do rabbits? It seems to be just a bit at a time, and they're not infested with bugs.

On the plus side- I have been wreaking havoc on the invasive purple flowers that the previous owner planted on the edge of the garden. We covered most of them over with tarps last fall, and I've been pretty diligent about yanking out the rest as they grow this year. They have large tap roots like rhubarb, so they keep sprouting more & more, but I'm hoping to slow them down by cutting off their food supply, and preventing them from going to seed. The asparagus is coming up much better this year as a result- the purple flowers were choking them out. Now I'm piling the leaves around the base of them, letting them compost to feed the asparagus. Ha ha! Take that, nasty purple flowers!

The onions and lettuce are also doing great, and the potatoes are looking respectable. I never transplanted the peppers, opting to leave them in their pots in a mini greenhouse instead. They seem happy, and are just starting to flower. I bought two garden centre tomato plants, and have kept them in there as well. They came with lots of green tomatoes already on them, have flowered more since, but nothing red yet.

Time will tell, but it's looking like our worst garden ever.

Pig in the Garden

The search for piglets has ended. With the weather turning from 'maybe early spring' to 'is it summer already?' I ran out of patience looking for piglets. I had to get the garden started. Another trip to auction, and no piglets.

I came home with Pig.

You see how bad the weeds are? The garden looks more like lawn than garden. You can see how well Pig was working though. This picture was taken the day after we set up her pen.

Pig is a sow, and roughly a year old. She's almost as big as the last two pigs we butchered were. That scared me when we bought her. The last two pigs refused to be contained in their pen, escaping several times a day and wandering off in the woods. Too much time was spent chasing them home, and worrying about what had happened to them when we couldn't find them right away.

The price of Pig made her pretty irresistible though. $105 for roughly 200 lbs of pig. Less than 99¢/pound. Even if she was a complete pain and I had to butcher her right away, I just couldn't go wrong. I could not possibly raise a piglet to that size for that price. Wow.

So home she came. And she has been delightful! She seems so shy! Very quiet, well behaved, and happy with her little pen in the garden. She hasn't shown any interest in escaping. We've moved her pen over three times now, and we're almost ready to move her again. She is doing a great job!

I've transplanted strawberries & onions that I started indoors. Planted peas, lettuce, spinach, beets, radishes, parsnips, zucchini, squash, alexanders, brussel sprouts, and a few potatoes.

New Arrival

I have been to the auction nearly every week this year, since it appeared that we would have an early spring. Two years ago we bought four piglets at auction. They lived in the garden and dug up the soil. We butchered two in the fall and two the following spring. With plenty of pork in the freezer, we didn't raise pigs last year. The garden suffered for it.

The garden is always my first priority in the spring. It's pretty big. A couple of acres, I think. I should measure it someday. It's very over run with weeds. I am a lazy gardener. The soil is not particularly good either. We add manure to it in spots as we clean out the barn. Pigs are awesome rototillers. They root through the soil and eat all the weeds. They dig out huge rocks. They fertilize as they poop. I need piglets.

So far this year, the few pigs that have gone through the sale barn have all been nearly butchering size. I want piglets. Piglets are easier to handle, and less likely to break out. And then there's the added bonus of fresh pork in the fall.

Yesterday was no different. Big pigs. But I didn't come home alone. I rarely do. Yesterday I bought Oscar. A billy goat. He reminded me of Spot. Climbing up on the edge of the pen, sucking my fingers, and even giving me a kiss. We think he's probably a yearling. Not too old. The girls seemed happy to meet him.