They say the last few weeks of pregnancy drags on. They aren't kidding, although I am finding it much needed time to get things done and settled before life changes. It's hard to grasp the changes that will take place, more so because Rachel and Drew are older and independent to the point where I at least don't have to worry about them starving to death in the event I was not here/in the house for half the day or better. Plus, they've long been able to be trusted alone. I don't worry about the changes in store, I just consider the fact it will be a huge adjustment!
Livestock chores are at a bare minimum this time of year for the most part. I was hoping it wouldn't be the case with the hog feed but it looks like we'll need to run out for another load before the new baby is born and I was kind of hoping to avoid that as we won't be totally through the last. I'd much rather have that though than running out while I am out of commission!!! So, between now and a week from Monday we'll run out and get that all squared away.
We also need a bit more hay too. A couple of the rounds we bought were stemmy and/or weedy and they went through it like wild fire. Or, should I say, dumped it on the ground so come spring, the barns will have A LOT of compost material. Fortunately, Jeremiah drags it out with the tractor bucket but it is a job to get in to the corners by hand. We leave it all sit until spring when it warms up because, as horrible as all of this waste hay build up tends to look by the end of the season, it's great insulation and with the manure, it creates its own compost effect and offers a bit of a radiant heating affect.
A radiant heating affect hasn't been needed too much the past week which is quite a bit different than how January started off. One day the high was 16! I hate those bitter days. Last weekend we made it into the 60's and Monday we hit 70 something. Boy was that wonderful! Anything above 32 during the day is pretty nice in my opinion, I think average day time temps are abut 43 this time of year. It seems strange but your body (or at least mine) begins to acclimate a bit and 40's, as long as the wind isn't blowing which is usually pretty often, doesn't seem so bad.
My seeds came in, I have hope to put in a garden and lots of ideas on what to change. Last year the weeds were just so bad but this year I hope to curb that with a few techniques. My greenhouse took a bad hit last May when the horrendous hail storm that rolled through. I don't think we'll have the opportunity to fix it before it's needed but fortunately we got an awesome deal on straw and stocked the barn up with quadruple the amount we normally do. The wheat harvest was short, as in, the plants were short. We did not get rain at the right time and while I think the wheat harvest actually turned out OK, there was a severe straw shortage due to the fact that they had to cut the wheat so short to th ground to harvest the grains. I found a guy about an hour south that had left over hay, masses of it, stored in his barn he was selling dirt cheap. What was kind of ironic is that I was a little worried of what it may look like as he was hauling it up for us due to the amount we bought. I hadn't known it was from a couple of years ago (which may have made me worry a little more) but he did say it was barn stored (which doesn't always mean much) so I crossed my fingers given the amount he was asking and when it arrived, it was some of the prettiest straw I had seen in years!!! I even mentioned that out loud to him (thinking it was this years) and he said well, it's actually from a cutting I did 3 years ago. So, there ya go!
My point about straw is that I intend to do some cold frame and then use the bales to straw bale garden when the plants are ready to go in the garden in May. Kind of a 2 for one use really! We have accumulated a few old windows and 2 parts of a sliding glass door from our rental house that we had to replace that should give me plenty of room to start what I need to. Not as much as the greenhouse would give me but I also don't intend to grow as much as I normally do. I normally start enough to sell & give away on top of what I find places for in every single nook and cranny in my own garden. I really do love seed starting!
The straw bales will start their needed decomp process that's needed to get them ready for planting in by being out in the open and being the insulation and "walls" to hold up the cold frames (windows). In my mind I see it all working out perfectly! I also plan to "no till" the garden. Last fall we put the sow and her Sept. litter of piglets out on the garden and they always do a bang up job tilling it. We had a small flock of chickens in there with them eating all the weed seeds and seeds from left over produce that never got picked so I am hoping between the two, #1 the soil will be nice and loose and #2 what weeds and wayward seeds may have been left to resprout are gone. This no till method is pretty much just that. I will till the rows that I plan to plant in but I will not till the whole thing. The idea is that any weed seeds that are about an inch below the soil are not pulled to the top to germinate. And since I had the animals on it tilling and eating what was 1-3 inches under, we SHOULD be good to go! We'll see!!! I am excited about all of it, as like with any new thing.
Speaking of chickens though, we're finally starting to pick up on egg production mostly due to the late summer born chickens last year I think, the pullets. The eggs are smaller but that's okay! We still have quite a few weeks of winter but some years when winter seems to start in October, by mid-January it can feel like spring fever! Course, it makes for a very long winter if in fact it holds on until April but nonetheless, at least I feel like we've rounded the corner some! I cut back on the # of chickens and got rid of a bunch of roosters (gave them away). Sometime I guess you can get a pretty good price for them at the poultry auction in the town south of here once a month but honestly, it's too much trouble! I don't feel their carcass is worth butchering them over either and aside from humanely putting them down and giving them to the dogs, there's not enough there for me to bother with even if I skinned them with the feathers still on!
The Sept. hogs will be read to go off in Feb/March to the processor. One gilt (female) who has always been the largest of the litter is looking really really nice! I hate to send a gilt off to slaughter but that was always her destiny. I don't need any more sows and the price we fetch for butcher ready is more than I would fetch for her as a breeder so it is what it is. Her brothers aren't far behind and for the use of our boar last fall, we got a piglet in return from an Oct. litter who is finally looking like he's doing some growing!
I had a heck of a time getting the sow and gilt and the piglets to stay apart. it was the piglets who would continue to join the sow and gilt and it wasn't a big deal minus the fact the shelter was not nearly big enough for all of them and there was a perfectly good shelter in the other pasture they woudn't use and secondly, they weren't getting as much to eat as I had wanted them to and the sow and gilt were growing unnecessarily large!
That said, I put up anther strand of hot wire and that did the trick! They haven't been back in since and now I just need to run a few more posts so I can "tunnel: them to the gate. Before we always kept them way back off the gate but that proved to be a bad idea come time to haul them in because it is a CHORE to get them to cross over a place they are used to a hot wire being! If it's the gate "out" that they know to carry a zap, that can be an issue to get them loaded no matter how much food is on the other side! So, the plan is to just put a panel across the gate, mainly to keep the spring born doe kid out (they like to shimmy under and dine on the hog's feed which is making FAT does!!!) and they will know the gate isn't something to fear. We'll back the trailer up, load them and go. Easy as that! We're expecting another litter of piglets from the sow and gilt come end of March/first part of April so the process starts all over again!
Our first doe(s) are due mid-February. I am a little anxious to see how that all works out with a newborn but life carries on and I can only hope for good kidding weather. We have really cut down the herd. I think we have 9-10 does kidding this year, usually it's around 15. We kept 7 spring doe kids back, I think who were not bred so there will be some more cutting back in the fall once they are all bred and I don't think we'll keep many spring does this year. We'll also be cutting back on the bucks as well and selling at least one as I intend to haul one out from Ca. this summer along with 2 other individuals, not sure yet on bucks or does but likely doe/doe kids. They are payment for a barter, of sorts.
Lots of changes to expect this year for sure but they are all exciting and we are looking forward! My days are filled with odds and ends jobs that I have been chipping away at slowly for the past couple of weeks (i.e. making cloth diapers and other such baby gear and painting a pan's worth of wood work in the hallway a day!). I figure with a little bit a day, eventually it'll all get done and it won't seem like huge chore all at once. I'm not sure why the whole painting thing seems like such a daunting chore to me. I don't think I mind it...at someone elses house, but my own I always seem to begrudge the work! Maybe because we live here and I always have to move crap out of the way to paint anything, or sweep, etc. etc. How nice and easy it is not to have any furniture in the way to move along at a good pace, not have a basket of laundry or a humidifier in the hallway!
At any rate, that's what's going on here. I am feeling a bit sleepy as I sit next to the wood stove that has an awfully nice fire going in it. There's about half an hour left before the kids get woken up to get ready for school and I may just try to sneak a half an hour nap in before the day begins for good!
