Organically produced and awesome!

Summer’s bounty is upon us!  The cooler is full of eggs, onions, snap peas, beets, turnips, new potatoes, carrots and Nasturtium flowers.  The yarn from our Finnsheep is also selling.  People are already thinking about their winter knitting projects?

Lady is almost done with her weaning.  Meaning, that her mama is almost dried up and Lady can rejoin the flock in about a week.  Just in time to give the small pasture that she and Zorro have been in a much needed break.

Mark and I weighted some of his piglets to get a baseline on their progress. They weighted between 33 – 36 pounds at 7 weeks old.  For heritage pigs in a pasture/open space conditions that is very good!  I’m so proud of Mark and what he’s done with this first batch of piglets.  And Petunia the runt?  Weighing in at a chubby 35 pounds!

Next big project for Mark is taking the two small farrowing sheds with their adjoining paddock space and winterizing them.  They can be pretty wet and the pigs make a terrible mess of them in the winter.  They really wouldn’t be fit for winter piglets as-is.  So to deter digging and keep the ground dry for the few weeks the sows are there he is putting down large rock then he will cover is with crushed gravel.

My big “win”on the farming front was (apparently) diagnosing my chickens with a severe calcium deficiency.  I’ve switched their food and also started to add a measure of oyster shell to each feeding.  Amazing how quickly their shell quality and egg size went up.  Along with their production.  Whew!  We never had enough eggs and I think we’ll be better able to meet the demand now.

Our yellow plum tree has gone berserk this year!  Plums EVERYWHERE!  Mark just put electric poultry netting around the tree.  We’ve learned that the raccoons will attack the tree about 1 week before the plums are truly ripe and eat them all.  Breaking off many of the branches in the process.  We’ll be selling fresh, organic plums in the farm stand.  We’ll also be canning a large amount of plum butter for ourselves and for sale.  I see a very busy canning weekend in our near future!