New Piglets, Farm Tour, Honeybee Swarm, the Never Ending Kidding Season & More!

Lots has been happening on the farm lately including new piglets and of course more baby goats, beautiful grazing, spring blooms and pollinators, our first farm tour and even a honey bee swarm.

Two very large litters of piglets joined us in the last few days and wow, are we happy we built our little three-stall farrowing barn. With all the rain we got on Sunday morning, it would have been a nightmare even on high ground and the A-frame hutches we used to use!

The big blonde sow went first on Thursday night and has been an amazing momma once again.

Then the spotted one who we have been watching for two weeks and thought would go first had hers on Saturday night. It was wonderful to see the moms relaxed and the piglets cozy and dry despite the 3.75 inches of rain that came down Sunday morning.

This is the third litter for both of these sows and the other sow in their trio should farrow in another week or too, as well. And these are the first litters sired by our new Duroc boar.

The new piglets are welcomed as we just sent more pigs to the processor on Tuesday and have no other pigs on the farm besides our breeder boar now!

The feeder group had a great last paddock, lush with all kinds of spring growth. They had a smooth loading and drop off and we try to keep things as stress free for them right through the to end. It’s always a bittersweet day when we bring any animals to be harvested, but we are proud to raise quality and well cared for meat for your tables.

We had a fabulous time at our first April Farm Tour. No surprise, there was more to talk about then we could fit in two hours — we covered what our land had been before we bought it, how electric fences function and enable our rotational grazing practices, how rotational grazing builds soil and fosters wildlife habitat, key indicators we look for in rehabbing soil (like earthworms and dung beetles in cow patties) and lots more.

Before the tour began, I noticed a honey bee swarm on the branch of a small bush, so tour attendees even got to see the honey bees populated the hive we put out for them.

The rest of my family visit was lovely. My niece Margot is a goat girl, like me! She gave lots of pets and snuggles to the newborn baby goats and even helped with egg washing one day!

Man, it’s the kidding season that just keeps on going! We didn’t separate the bucks as early as I would have liked, so kidding season just continues!

We had 31 kids born in November, 20 born in February and seven in March and now Pippa had a buck on Saturday morning. There’s just one more doe who has kidded before who should kid again later this month or in May and two yearlings that may or may not kid this spring.

Then, some of the varsity squad that kidded in November may start kidding again at the end of the month and the beginning of May (although let’s hope that they didn’t actually take and we can all have a break!).

The only snafu recently was that Jazzy’s kid got trapped under a trough for a few hours one night/morning and when I found her and let her out, she was all wet from dew and humidity build up (and hungry!). But Jazzy, a first time mom, was confused and thought she didn’t smell like her kid anymore, so she walked all around the paddock screaming and looking for her kid while her actual kid toddled behind trying to nurse. And Jazzy kept butting her actual kid away.

So then we got them in a stall together for some extended bonding. At first while I was at the shop, Grant had to hold Jazzy to allow the kid to nurse. But eventually she calmed down, realized that the kid in the stall with her was, in fact, her kid and went back to normal.

We kept them in the stall for a few extra days just to make sure and now they’ve been back with the herd for a week and are doing great!

There’s lots of beautiful grass and clover growing for the chickens!

I set up a new lush grid for Flock 1 before the farm tour, so we could all experience letting them into the new pasture together. But then I forgot to actually take a picture of them in the clover above their heads. It was a sweet sight, though.

And although we are still selling out of eggs, we did pull the oldest flock, Flock 3, off the pasture on Friday night and started selling them as retired hens.

Our new flock of teenage birds is coming in a couple of weeks and we need to make some coop and fence repairs to get ready for them.

The cattle have been loving the forage in its spring blaze of growth!

We’ve been moving them every 24-36 hours or so and yesterday when we visited them on the tour, they didn’t bellow at us at all, even after we left and walked by a second time on the internal road.

You can of course evaluate the forage and how much they’ve eaten in a particular paddock, but they are also very good at telling us when it’s time to move. And it always feels good when we can stay ahead of their hunger!