The newby

Remember a couple days ago we got rid of two of our pigs?  So the next day we picked up another pig.  But this time it's a sow and it's a little piglet.  She's only about 40 lbs right now.  And it's crazy to think in just a few months it will be over 200 lbs!  I never thought I would ever say this about a pig but she's actually kind of cute (at least for now she is).

She's tiny enough to fit in the dog kennel.  In this picture
we just barely got home and getting ready to unload and
put her in the pig pen.

Making new friends already

Hopefully they will get along

Adios, amigos!

The day has finally come.  The moment we have all been waiting for.  Yes, the pigs got sent to the butcher yesterday!  2 little piggies went to the market, and one little piggy stayed home.  We took the 2 castrated pigs to the "chop shop" and it wasn't easy.  It took awhile to get the two pigs to finally get on the trailer.  But finally with the help of food, of course, we were able to get them loaded up and go on our little road trip.  I can't wait to get the meat back in about 3-4 weeks.  Thank you, pigs for your noble sacrifice so me and my family can have bacon, pork chop, ground pork etc for the next year or so.  To you, noble pigs, I salute you!

I've never seen pigs so eager to go to the butcher shop!

Our attempt to get them in the trailer

Getting ready for our road trip

Sleeping in

Our kids had a sleepover at a friend's house last night so this morning we were going to sleep in.  Silly me!  Farmers don't get to sleep in because there are always escaped animals you have to catch!  Hello?!

This morning we were awaken by our dogs' barking.  Most dog owners would agree dogs are kind of like babies they have different cries for different needs.  You can tell most of the time by their cries (or in this case barks) that something is up or not right.  So the dogs were barking like something was up so we got out of bed to see what was going on outside.  Now, I know I already had like a billion posts about our escape artist, "breakfast" the pig.  This time it was not just one pig that escaped, not even 2, it was ALL 3 of them!  Yup they were ALL out of the pig pen!  Breakfast is such a bad influence!  I think he's been teaching the others how to get out!  This time they actually broke the fence and all of them just got out!

Needless to say we spend our morning trying to get all the pigs back in the pig pen.  Luckily two of them were actually rather cooperative.  But one of them ran down the dirt road/driveway and went all the way down by the river!  So I quickly grabbed some pig feed and started running after this darn pig! (Yes, as out of shape as I am I actually RAN after the pig).  While I was doing the dirty work and running after the pig my husband did the easier job of fixing the fence.  I finally was able to lure the last pig back in the pen!  And that concluded our exciting Saturday morning!

They are not supposed to be free range pigs!  But they were free ranging this morning

Just chilling outside of the pig pen

This one ran all the way down by the river.  I ran after him and
I think it was probably about 1/4 mile from where the pig pen is...
so I actually ran a half mile total (round-trip) this morning.
Now I'm exhausted.  

All 3 pigs back in pen!

Love is in the air

With spring slowly approaching, it's the time of the year when flowers are starting to bloom and for animals, well they reproduce.  It's no exception for our goats and donkeys.  But one observation that I have is that animals and human have something in common....while the male is always, with any chance they get, try to "reproduce" the female most of the time, like to either play hard to get or they just don't feel like it.  I mean, let's be honest, sometimes as women (I'm not talking about newly weds or any other exceptions, but I'm talking about the "seasoned" wife-those of us who have been married for awhile and with a couple of kids) we are either just too tired or we simply are just not in the mood.  Our world doesn't just revolve around "Reproducing", most of the time it's about what are we making for dinner tonight?  Which kid has what homework due tomorrow?  Or sometimes just  simply running a household full of kids is enough to make you very tired and all you want to do is just sleep.  Last thing on your mind is to "reproduce".

Can you feel the love tonight?

Speaking on the topic of love...we just discovered something devastating yesterday.  You know the 3 pigs that we have?  Originally we thought we got 2 sows and a boar so we could butcher one of the sows for meat and keep the other sow and the boar so they can reproduce and we can get some little piglets.  But oddly enough we haven't seen the pigs being too passionately romantic with each other yet...so we were thinking maybe the boar was incompetent or something.  But yesterday we thought we saw a "curly" coming out of one of the sows (and that can't be because sows don't have "curly" only boars have that) and after looking closer at the pigs and doing some research we realized all 3 of our pigs are actually boars.  It's just that two of the pigs we thought were females are just castrated males.  That's why we don't see their...ahem...balls.  And that's why this whole time we thought they were females.  The weird thing with pigs is that both male and female have nipples.  So if you are going by nipples you probably can't tell if a pig is a male or female.  Male pigs have balls unless they are castrated.  But one of the ways you can tell a castrated male from a female is that a male will always have his "curly" sticking out, especially when they are aroused.  So now that I have imparted this useless knowledge with you I'm going to tell you that our new plan right now is to butcher both of the castrated male pigs, keep the non-castrated one and go get another sow so they can actually reproduce and give us some little piglets.

So on a side note the black "sow" escaped again yesterday!  When we were trying to catch her (now we know it's actually a "him") we came up with this bright idea!  We decided to trap and put him in the cattle chute so there's no way for "her" to escape and also so we can separate "her" from the other pigs so we can fatten "her" up then take "her" in to get butcher in a week or two.

Time out corner

That will teach you not to escape again!

Stupid, stupid pig!!!

I know I just did a post last night and I'm here at it again this morning!  As you can kind of tell by the title of this post it has to do with one of the pigs.

This morning while walking the kids out to the bus stop my husband glanced over to the front pasture and saw something that appeared to be one of the pigs, where she's not supposed to be in!  She was supposed to be in the pig pen not the front pasture.  Yes, it's the black pig!  It's the same one that escaped last time!  What a trouble maker!  And of course same as last time, it took us awhile to get her back in the pig pen but we did it!  Way to spend your mornings, chasing after and catching animals! That's our favorite thing to do!  Not!  But at least we got her back in the pen...and I'm thinking we will just have to butcher her sooner rather than later.

This is the hole she got out of.  She must have been very determined
to get out.  It must have taken her a lot of effort and strength to get out.
She must have lifted that whole fence panel up, then wiggle around for a
long time to squeeze herself out of that hole in order to get out.

Attempting to catch the pig...only if we knew how to use the lasso

Happy president's day...maybe

For most people President's day is a holiday and people usually just relax and not do too much, right?!  That was my plan too...until this morning when we were out feeding the animals the donkeys escaped the front pasture!  Why can't animals just ever stay where they are supposed to and not try to escape?!  Why do they always try to escape not once but twice in a day?!  And trust me, we don't purposely let the animals escape just for fun, nor is it a publicity stunt!

So after the donkeys escaped the first time we lured them back to the front pasture with food and before we had the fence fixed they escaped the second time!  Jenny was actually very cooperative both times.  But Jack man, he was being such a DONKEY!  He was not as cooperative as Jenny was for sure!  So we finally got them back to the front pasture and spent the rest of the day, instead of relaxing, fixing the fence! (I guess partially it was our fault we knew that small section of the fence kind of needed to be fixed but we neglected to fix it right away.  We just didn't think these donkeys would escape...but we were wrong)

While our president's day might not be the most fun, I hope everyone else had a good day!

My plan was to relax today like these pigs but that didn't happen.

This is the hole the donkeys got out of

They might look oh so innocent!  But don't let that fool you they are our escapees of the day!

Putting our tractor and post hole digger to work and get some fences repaired

Good for something

As a lot of you with animals would know feeding animals isn't very cheap.  But all the animals that we have on the farm serve their own purpose.  And that's why we have them.  We don't just have them just because so we could tell people we own a bunch of animals!  So for example, we have pigs so we can have pork and BACON later.  We have cats to keep snakes and rodents away.  We have dogs to keep coyotes and raccoons and opossums away.  We have donkeys to keep coyotes out as well.  And children, so they can be our slaves! (Totally just kidding!)

Now I know all that food we've been feeding them did not go to waste because these animals are actually doing their job!

   It looks like the cats probably killed this    

   mouse.  RIP Mickey!

   We found some blood splat on the porch this morning.  Hubby was actually the one who saw it at first and he said there was actually small fragments of bones next to the blood splat as well.

Like peas and carrots

I know I've been blogging a lot lately.  But there's so many interesting things that happen on the farm I just have to share.

So yesterday we went out to run some errands.  When we got home a few hours later we heard the goats baahh-ing.  We went to check on them and lo and behold Peas got his head stuck in between the gates.  He couldn't get his head out!  Hahaha.  And it appeared that Carrots was by his side the whole time keeping Peas company.

I think if Peas could talk he would probably say, "what are you standing there for?!  Hurry up and help me get my head unstuck!"

Never a dull moment

When you live on a farm there's never a dull moment.  There's always something happening.  

This morning at 4:45 I was awaken by hubby.  He was making a lot of noises so I woke up to see what he was doing. 

He was awaken by a yelp and followed by a distressed baahhh from the goats.  When he looked out the window he saw a pair of red eyes.  So he went to get his flash light so he could look at it better to see what it was in our yard.  But by the time he got back with his flash light the animal was gone.  So we went outside to check on the goats to make sure they were still alive.  When we went outside the goats were gone and one of the gates was wide open.  The goats must have gotten scared and gotten out of the yard.  So we went looking for them luckily they were very close by just hanging out right by the pigs but looked a little shaken. So we lured them back to the front yard area with food.

We believe it was a coyote that was in our yard but can't be for sure.  So by the time we were done putting the goats back and checking to see if there's any coyotes hanging around and went back inside and it was already 5:30...and at 6 is when we usually get up to get the kids ready for school.  I think I'll probably need a nap today!

The interesting thing about this incident is who left the gate open?  I know I didn't, my hubby didn't, the kids swear up and down they didn't.  I remember in the scripture somewhere that says the lord watches over you and watches over your flocks at night.  I think that's exactly what happened!  If the gate was not open the goats might not have been able to escape and might have gotten eaten by the coyote.

 I really don't think these goats are smart enough to open 

this gate on their own and manage to get out

   

                                 

Hubby went fishing by the river late afternoon today and
found this huge paw print...very well could be the coyotes' 

                                 

 
Does anyone know what kind of paw print this is???  Is that a bob cat or coyote?  Or something else?

The people have spoken

This is a continuation of the last post, Name That Goat.  The results are in!

Thanks to all the help from everyone, the top two picks for the goat names are:
1.  Bonny and Clyde
2.  Peas and Carrots

After a careful examination and discussion by our judge panel (AKA the kids), we have decided to go with Peas and Carrots.

Yup, the final answer is Peas and Carrots.

Thanks again for everyone who helped with this.

Peas and Carrots were conversing with the donkeys this morning