Goodbye Winter!

Things are cruising along right into spring and we have lots to keep us busy!

I am just sitting down to rest my winter weakened muscles and let little farm boy have some time off my back so he can get into some of his own mischief.
Seems like a good time to share some pictures of the fun that is going on around here!

Horse Pictures! Always my favourite pictures.
Here is handsome Charlie inquiring about his hay delivery.



And little filly and her goofy little ear muffs. I am sure they will be shedded out soon enough.
I am feeding the horses on their "marks" which are just piece of wood big enough for their front hooves. Filly learned in three meals that she had to go and stand on her mark, which is way quicker than the boys picked up on it when they learned!



The piglets are always a delight! Their personalities are starting to show already.



We used the deep bedding method for our chickens over this winter, which means we added a layer of new bedding two or three times a week. It was nice because it stays nice and clean on top and they say as it starts to compost underneath it creates some of its own heat. The bedding was really thick and it made for a much bigger job of cleaning up, but Oh! The compost we will have!



And then Matt did a bunch of fixing in the chicken barn. Tightening screws and resetting doors that had shifted over the winter. When we first looked at the place we thought we would never use this old barn. It shifts around every year and is very aged. It has turned out to be such a cozy spot and I can't imagine not having it! We store firewood and farm equipment, feed and tools. It winters chickens and stores hay and has made for an excellent pig nursery. In the winter it is so nice to come in out of the wind and have power and running water and critters out of the snow.



Halfway through our barn cleaning we had a quick game to see who could find the coolest old thing stored in the barn. Its full of old things. I believe I won with this neat old measuring stick, possible meant for measuring horses? Matt insists that he won value wise because he revealed a very long banister railing in great shape.



If we cleaned out the barn, where did the chickens end up?
They were delighted to be out on pasture once again. Its kind of heartwarming to see such happy critters!
Although, a few hours after we put them out it started to hail and sleet. I wondered if they had more appreciation for their barn coop after that!



The old chicken camper is back in use. We had a good laugh recently when we heard from a neighbour that there was someone asking if we would consider selling it!

Little Farm girl's favourite chickens: Buff Orpingtons. They are from our friends at Lone Pine farm and are much friendlier than our other birds. They get packed around a lot because of it!





I love seeing this. The sun hits and all the birds stretch out and sun themselves. Even the one in the doorway.

We are all loving the sun on our backs!
Anyway, back to work for me!

A Harrowing Farrowing - Round 2

This Easter weekend was not as relaxing as we had expected!

A newborn piglet in the hay

Piggy number two, or Emma, had her babies on Sunday. We had high expectations for her. Compared to her sister (who farrowed 7 babies last week) she is larger, hardier, more correctly put together and calmer.
Matt turned out to be quite the pig whisperer and has gotten her to really enjoy being scratched and rubbed over the last week. We were hopeful that we could be near her while the babies came without her being worried. Everything was set and ready, we were just waiting on her.

Emma looking uncomfortable after her belly had dropped. I really enjoyed watching her flop over and go to sleep late in her pregnancy. Her belly would start to wiggle with lots of little kicks. That pallet in the background makes a piglet nursery corner with a heat lamp just for babies.

Sunday afternoon she started farrowing. Everything started smoothly. Two piglets born. We tucked the babies under the heat lamp and kept checking back for more throughout the afternoon. They were born quite a bit larger than our first litter and refuse to stay under the heat lamp the few times we tried to tuck them away. They found and nursed from Momma right away, which was very reassuring after last weeks litter!

The next one was born all wrapped up in the sac. We lost a piglet from our last litter from not getting the sac off quick enough. I think I got there right after it was born and I snuck in and ripped the sac off its nose. He had slipped right underneath Momma so I thought I would slide him out and get the rest of the sac off him. It seemed like a good idea at the time but it turned out to be a very hard lesson learned for me. He gave a tiny squeal as I lifted him, which cause Momma to try and get up. She has been rather heavy with piglets and has had to rock herself back and forth to get off the ground. The little guy was so slippery that I couldn't get him out in time. Once she got up, I tried for a long time to revive him. I didn't realize having piglets would be so hard emotionally.

After that she got up and ate and drank. A sows womb is divided into two "horns" and there can be a bit of an intermission between when they empty the first side and roll over and start the next. I assumed this was her intermission.
Matt checked her every hour through the night, but no piglets. By morning we started to wonder if something was wrong. She was lying down and grunting with every breath and shaking all over. Sometimes we couldn't get her to open her eyes when we came to check on her.
After lots of reading, we decided that we had probably over fed her and with these large piglets one was probably stuck. My small hands made me the ideal candidate to check. I reached as far as I easily could but I didn't find anything. We checked on her throughout the morning while trying our best to get a hold of someone who knew more about pigs than us. We were pretty worried that she was in serious trouble and finally tried the vet. They were closed and we couldn't decide if this was a pig emergency worthy of an after hours emergency dispatch.
Oh the trouble with inexperience!
When it had been over 24 hours since the last piglet had been born and she didn't seem any better, we decided to give her one more feel and make sure we did a good job of it. This was pretty much the last thing I felt like doing so you can imagine we were fairly concerned.
I have never done this before, but I imagine if I piglet is stuck, it will be stuck on the way out. Once I got up to my elbow without feeling any tiny snouts or trotters, I figured that was probably far enough.

After that, I felt like we had kind of done everything we could for the time being. We just kept an eye on her. By night she was eating and drinking and her shaking had stopped. We continued to watch for piglets just in case. 
Now,we are two days after the piglets were born and we have finally called off piglet watch. Babies are doing well. Momma continues to eat lots and drink and get up and down and all that. She seems comfortable, so we are just going to let her and the babies be. As far as we can guess, she just had three in there.
And we had to learn the same lesson as last time, not to worry so much...

I have to say, having piglets has certainly brought out the worrying side of me. For me, it has been fairly stressful and a bit of a blow to my farming confidence that all the piglet losses have been on my watch. I also feel like I have gotten to know the inside of a pig a little better than I ever wanted to, but I am glad to know that if I need to I am able to step up and do what needs to be done. Matt has made a much better pig midwife than me and I am very glad to have him on my team.
We have learned a lot for next time and are feeling blessed to have seven little bundles in the barn!

Here is some pictures of our first litter at a week old:

And some pictures from around the farm this weekend, mostly taken by my very talented Mom!

These cats pose constantly, I have way too many pictures..

The horses got moved off the pasture. They will be in the riding ring until the grass gets established. Handsome Charlie is showing off how much I need to trim him again!

And the little filly dashing through the snow

I love the snow flying

And I just keep taking piglet pictures. I spend way too much time watching them...

 

In a piglet pile

They are getting to be pretty busy little things!

I feel a little bit like we have passed a farming initiation this spring. Maybe now we will feel like real farmers!

A Harrowing Farrowing

We had a big first on our farm this week.

Our first babies were born on the farm.

It was quite the adventure and a lot more dramatic than I expected.

I had been reading everything I could get my hands on about farrowing and new piglets and I thought I had a good game plan. I had everything ready in the barn and was going to implement it all once I saw signs of nesting and restlessness. I had a big round pen panel to divide the stall so they could be near each other but separate, heat lamps to warm babies, fresh clean hay and towels to dry little ones off if I needed to. Our pigs are pretty skittish so I was hoping to be very hands off unless there was a complication.

On Wednesday evening we went out to feed and do chores. At a first glance everything looked fine, pigs resting together, no nesting activity, some feed eaten, some water drank. I was about to grab a fork to tidy up when I noticed a black twitching lump in the hay. And then another. Oh boy...

As we watched, the bigger pig Emma, got up and started walking around. There was 300lbs of pig stepping recklessly close to the tiny squirming babies scattered around the stall. Adrenaline kicked in as we watched another was born and Momma partially sat on it while Emma came by and gave it a kick. We knew we had to get those babies somewhere safe and give Momma and babies space of their own. Matt searched the hay and passed me 3 piglets to dry off. By the time we got to the newly born one, we couldn't revive him. Momma showed absolutely no interest in her piglets at all and we couldn't get close to her. We were concerned that our intrusion might have been part of the problem so we got everything set up, said a prayer and left.

I made a call a local farm, Hope farm, and they gave me the best advice and probably the hardest advice they could have given: Don't worry, things will most likely be just fine.
It was excruciatingly hard to watch Momma pig settle her 200 lb+ self on a little pig and just let nature take its course. There were quite a number of times I just closed my eyes and looked away. But Momma pig figured it out and hopped up once she realized there was a squealer under her. No babies got squished or stepped on. It was so so hard to watch. So many times I wanted to scoop them up look after them myself.

We kept checking back every hour. Not a lot was changing, piglets were getting colder and Momma didn't seem to notice. We corralled them to the middle of the stall under the heat lamp again hoping Momma would take an interest. In the process of moving them we noticed one little guy was much much colder than the rest. I tucked him under my shirt but he still didn't warm. Finally I took him inside to warm him by the fire while Matt stayed with the sow. By the time I got him inside he was completely limp. He quickly perked up as he warmed but he was sort of spasming hard enough that he couldn't get on his feet at all.
Matt came in to tell me that he had slowly crept up on the sow and had been able to get the piglets nursing. We brought the little guy out and put him with the others. Four piglets had gotten the hang of things and were vigorously nursing. There was a little runt that was weak and small and the shaky piglet that couldn't seem to get it together. After an hour or so of trying, the shaky pig was cold again. Matt milked me some colostrum and I took him to the fire to try to get some into him. He was shaking too hard to latch or suck on the bottle but I was able to squirt and drip it into his mouth. He perked up again but I knew something wasn't right. He couldn't get on his feet and despite all the warming, I just could not get him up to the temperature of the other piglets.

Trying so hard to get some colostrum into the little shaky piglet. I had to hold his head still against my chest just to get the bottle in his mouth.





We spent another 45 minutes trying to get him to nurse with the others and squirting milk into his mouth. Finally we went in and set the alarm clock. All through the night we would go out and find where the shaker had squirmed to and creep up on the sow and put the runt and the shaky pig on to nurse with the others. It took quite a long time to get a bit of milk into them but it was such a neat thing to be part of. I think emotions are heightened by the lack of sleep and the darkness of the night. Lying there in the hay, listening to the sucking noises and contented grunts, there was great hope when you finally get one latched and the amazement of watching them change by the hour and get stable on their feet! Such a victorious feeling when towards the morning the little runty pig claimed his place with his siblings and fought to get the best spots. The helpless feeling of watching the little shaker slip away despite all our hopes and effort.

Such joy and tragedy. I think both are just a part of farm life.

So that is the story of our first farrowing.



Enjoying the hot water bottle until we got a better heat lamp system in place.



It was very draining but I feel like we learned a lot. Despite how urgent everything felt at the time, the advice from Hope farm was probably the most important thing we will know for next time. Despite our worries, once Momma nursed her babies she suddenly became a phenomenal mother and has been so attentive to them.
Next time we will also try to stay on hand to break the sac off the babies. Matt was right there when the last one was born and the piglet didn't take its first breath until after Matt had freed him. He said it was harder than he expected.
As far as the little shaker goes, from what I have read, first time mothers are sometimes not immune to a virus that can cause cause shaking piglets. I believe that was the problem with the little guy we lost.

The rest are hardy and becoming more capable and pig-like by the day!

Farm Action

Finally! Something to write about besides snow!

We have had a stretch of warm weather and it has really changed things up around here. After that long season of cold and quiet, we are just bursting with all the newness around us! Green is starting to show and the snow recedes noticeably over the day. There are new sounds of dripping water and the chatters of birds in the morning. Today we were delighted to find that there were cheerful robbins hopping all around our driveway! Unfortunately, in our great excitement we scared them away, but I am sure they will be back.

We have had some exciting farm developments in this last week.

This is the smaller pig (Flora). It looks to me like her belly has dropped. Its hard to see when she is lying down though. They are both looking uncomfortable, stretching lots and eating a little bit at a time all day. I was there not long ago and I have so much sympathy!

I have been taking time to sit with them everyday and just get them used to me being around. They are both due soon and I really would like my presence not to throw them into a tizzy. Slowly they have been making abit of progress, which I think is worth celebrating.



A few days ago one came and sniffed my pants. It doesn't sound very good but its certainly progress from where they were before. Then yesterday and the day before, I was able to give one a quick rub. She was just barely at the point of tolerating it but that is a start!

They can really disappear in the hay when they want to!

We also got our taxes finished up and all our numbers from our farming year tallied. We were really encouraged to see that we made our farm status amount with no problem.

It was hard when we went to pick up pigs. The area we got them from was a big farming area and the farm we went to was 7 quarter sections and known as the little farm in the area. We were driving through with such a desire to be full time farmers and seeing all the people with full time farm operations. It made it feel like such an impossible dream from where we are at.

So yesterday it was a really good feeling to see that we have grown from the previous year. Of course our farming goal is not just to make farm status, but just like with the pigs, you have to start somewhere and we are going to enjoy the journey!

Another really awesome farm development.
Last year we did our farm taxes with FBC which is a farm specific accounting group. They are there to help you all year round and we hoped we would be able to learn enough to do things ourselves in the future. As part of that we got a book keeping system that was really handy to use. This year we are doing things a little differently and don't have that book keeping system anymore. Matt took things into his own hands, and with some tech help from his parents, whipped up some incredible spread sheets.
I have been just raving about them for days! The are so easy to use! Everything calculates itself and you can tally everything by category (like pork, or eggs or hay), or customer or vendors.

Numbers are so important to running our farm as a business and this will allow us to easily keep track of ourselves, and because Matt made them, he can adjust them as we grow and change!

Now that he has revealed his spreadsheet skills I have some gardening spread sheets in mind for him to make...



I absolutely love days that we can go and work outside as a family, and we have had a couple of those recently.
The sun has warmed up the area that the horses have packed down and there is an extremely scoopable layer of manure that has thawed. We spent an afternoon just scooping and piling and dreaming about the compost it will make in the future. Who knew manure could be so exciting.

Little Filly has to be part of everything

Little girls cannot resist soft horse noses. Actually, I am not sure if anyone can...

Tex has been making a point of rolling in all this thawed manure. Some days he is wet and coated and absolutely reeks.

There is always time for petting cats

Little farm girl kept the horses busy and out of our way nearly the whole time

We could have gotten a lot more done this weekend but we got a little sidetracked. There is water melting and running and I just can't leave it alone. Its almost getting compulsive. I dig channels and free puddles, I join them all together and guide the rivers to the culvert. Even when Matt is talking to me, I can hardly take my eyes from these little rushing streams. I have spent far more time than necessary playing in this run off, and its strange because it doesn't feel like time wasted.



And I feel like I have connected with an old friend.

Yesterday I pulled out my favourite, most wonderful, trusty, steel toed rubber boots. All those days working on the farm together, slipping them on all warm and soft from the morning sun, slogging through whatever the world throws at us from the knees down.
Welcome to the world again Rubber Boots, lets see where this year takes us!

Farmy Road Trip

This last weekend we welcomed some exciting additions to the farm!
We have had our minds on the idea of raising our own piglets for quite a while and finally everything sort of fell into place. We had been keeping our eyes open for some purebred Berkshire weaners to raise this spring. While looking we found an ad for two bred gilts (meaning they have not had piglets before) in a good location for us to see. The timing worked out for us to take a little family road trip to check them out!

I LOVE road trips, and farms, and this one turned out to be the ultimate farmy road trip. It was a lot of fun and a bit of a vacation in itself.

We left bright and early. This picture was from getting all the animals set for the day.

This was kind of a neat road trip for me. For all of 2013 Matt was working at a mine up north. We talked a bit at the time about me and the kids heading up with him for a set but with a new baby it just wasn't practical. On this trip we started on the route he would take to the mine. It was neat to see places I had heard about so many times and hear stories of the different things he had encountered along these roads.

There is nothing like a big rumbly truck and the roads unwinding before you. You never know what adventures you will find along the way.



This is my favourite part though.
We have been on many a road trip, and I always feel so right heading out into the world shoulder to shoulder with my favourite man.

Along the way we listened to some awesome podcasts called The Beginning Farmer. It was almost creepy how applicable they were to us and our farm! It was a very enjoyable and informative way to pass the time.



In Dawson Creek we stopped at a store called Peavey Mart. It was amazing! My new favourite store without a doubt! They had every sort of farming gear you could want! We ended up buying a hotline spool for rolling and unrolling hotwire and the same chicken waterer we already have, but for half the price we payed for it! We could have spent a lot more time (and probably money) but we had to roll along. If you get the chance to visit a Peavey Mart, I highly recommend it!

Our destination was North of Grand Prairie. There is an Organic farm that was getting out of pigs and had advertised some bred Berkshire gilts, which was the breed we have been wanting. They had two left, a quite nice one close to 300lbs and her smaller sister who was the runt of the litter and also has an injury to her hind leg. They are both bred and due to farrow this spring, so we won't plan to buy any weaners to raise. We will be raising their babies this summer if everything goes well!



Our farm-mobile on a break. Road trips with little people require lots of breaks.
We saw some neat wild life along the way too. Moose, coyotes, eagles, the most colourful fox I have ever seen and more deer than we could count.

The girls in the trailer

Matt, in his great handiness and ingenuity, took our piglet nursery stall and opened it up into the stall next to it so these girls have a double suite.

Big and cozy

Here they are settling in to their new home

I spent some time with them today. They are pretty skittish so far. The little one let me scratch her but I got the feeling that if she was a little more athletic she would not have allowed it. I am hoping I can get them a little bit more tame before the babies come.



I don't know if its just me, but I find their piggy faces very endearing!

Welcome pigs!