Sprouts Everywhere

Well I started my sprouting about 2 weeks ago and now they are starting to take over my house, it honestly looks like a greenhouse in here. This is just the start!

I planted my Broccoli and Onions at the same time and my Broccoli was so quick to sprout that I have had to already move it into bigger pots. The onion was a bit slower but I just bought some bigger pots today to transfer them over this weekend.

This week I planted Celery on Tuesday but it should have been planted much early. I haven't been able to find it but just happened across it at H & H Goode where I get my pig feed. A friend of mine told me its a wonderful plant and very resilient but also needs a lot of water. It does say to pre-plant 10-12 weeks before the last frost which would be like beginning of February. We'll hope for the best, no sprouting yet as you can see.

This weekend I will also be starting to plant all my various types of peppers (Jalapeno and Regular Red Peppers) as well as my Strawberries. With both of these plants I need to keep the temperature around 18c. Not sure how I will do this, might have to bring in a heat lamp from the barn (sorry Quail).

Two babies complete the day

So the day is done and we have still only had two piglets.

Steve came home and we weighed them and put some antiseptic on their umbilical cord. The little black one is almost 2.5lbs and the white and black one is just over 1.5lbs. We put them in a black grocery sack and used a travel bag scale, seemed to work well. I wanted to try and see if they were girls or boys but man they squeal when you pick them up and mumma pig was getting a little frantic so I left it until another day.

Hopefully everybody makes it through the night! I put up a heat lamp to keep them warm and they all huddle under it.

Piglets NOW

Well! I`m not sure if I have mentioned in previous blog posts but our Berkshire sow was coming to us already bred. When I purchase her in Febraury he put her in with the male right away...so lets say Feb 15th. Pigs are pregnant for 3 months 3 weeks and 3 days which would put her somewhere around June. Which is great because it would have given us time to get set up for the arrival.

But as we have discovered, nothing happens as planned in farm life.

I went out around 8 am this morning to get some more pig feed and take Summer for a walk and when I got home I looked in the stall and saw TWO BABY PIGS!!!

I quickly seperated the other large black that was in with her, which I thought was a girl but then I saw it peeing and it`s definitely not. But that`s another story.

So far we only have 2 piglets, both seem healthy and are suckling which is good. I`ve put a heat lamp in just above where the mum has made a nest to keep them warm. Usually sows have between 8 - 10 piglets BUT you shouldn`t breed a sow before she is 1 year old and from the information the guy I bought them from gave me this girl is just a year, meaning she would have been bred at 8 months (this is assuming his records are right, which since she`s having babies now and he didn`t even know she was bred could leave a good argument that he doesn`t). I am just concerned about complications regarding her being so young, but maybe she`s just going to have two since she`s quite small.
I will keep you updated, until then; here are some pictures so far. 

A glorious morning!!

WE FOUND OUR CHICKEN!!

Yay! Steve went out to take our garbage and compost to our enclosed porch area and there was a chicken just sitting on top of the green compost bucket!

It must have gotten seperated and took shelter in there, I feel terrible it spent the night there last night but thank god she is safe!

Welcome home!

Snatched Up

Sigh...Can`t seem to catch a break around here lately.

Came home to one of our chickens missing. After some searching around all I can find is some scattered feathers. Also there was a certain chicken that when I would go up to the flock she was sit down instead of running away, pretending she was hiding I guess. Anyways, it`s her that is gone so I think the neighbourhood fox came into the barn and instead of running away she tried to hide. Everybody seems in quite the frantic mood and I really don`t blame them, watching one of your buddies meet her death wouldn`t be nice.

Also the chickens will not lay in the stall that they are assigned to (guess they didn`t get the memo). They are insisting on laying their eggs in with the pigs, which is fine since the pigs leave them be but then they eat the eggs! So unless I am right there or confine the chickens the pigs are going to be well fed but our breakfast situation won`t be getting any better.

Here is one of the girls laying her egg, weirdly enough I actually caught her in the act and watched her lay it! Look about 10 minutes - a 10 minute labour - that would be nice!

The pigs seem to be doing fine, although, embarrassingly enough I can`t figure out which one is the girl out of the 4 large blacks. Now I know this seems ridiculous but it`s really not all that obvious since all the males are castrated. My only hint seems to be that the female Berkshire is nicer to one of them. Maybe it will get more obvious later haha.

Tomorrow I want to try and get the electric fence up for the pigs. I can`t wait until this snow melts, I`m so sick of trying to get things done in the snow and cold. Plus I think the pigs are going to start to get bored in the stalls. Although I did go to h & h goode feed store and pick up a 50lb bag of carrots for 7$ (awesome!) and I`ve been breaking them up into pieces and hiding it amongst the straw so when they are rooting around they can find some treats to amuse themselves.

The PIG Day!

I am happy to say that we got our pigs today! But like usual in farm life, not everything went as expected. Everything started out wonderful, they backed the trailer up to the barn door and I was concerned about them having to go through that shop and hay room to get into the stall as there is a mess of trouble they could get into on the way. To my surprise that went amazing, they walked right through and into the stall like it was all rehearsed.

So the one with the white face is the Berkshire and she is around a year and a half , the rest are Large Blacks and they are about 6 months old. When I got everybody into the stall I got their food ready and placed all the feed bins around a chair. I sat in the chair while they ate to get them use to me, in doing so I noticed one of the younger large black boys seemed a bit off and when he got close to me I could see he had cuts on him. So I called the man that I got the pigs from and he explained to me that the Berkshire and large black girl had been in a pen together and as soon as they added the 3 large black boys today the berkshire female was being very aggressive towards one of the boys. They tried to calm her down but when they got into the trailer she was really beating up on him. Anyways I said ok and started checking him over, most of the wounds seem very superficial but they I found a huge gash on his stomach, I ran into town to get tape and bandages and some sterilize spray. A friend came over and we held the large black down and cleaned the wound out as best we could, none of the tape would stick. I send a vet the pictures and she thinks he will be okay without any stitches, I will post pictures at the end of this post (quite gross so don`t look if you don`t like that!).

All in all I am so excited to have pigs, they are already letting me go up and pet them. In no time I think they will be very tame. Hopefully I can eventually have them all in one pen! As for right now, I have seperated the injured male and another male that seemed to be sticking quite close to him into another stall and the berkshire girl, large black girl and the other large black male are in a stall together.

Chicken Coop Fight

I have been looking for a chicken coop online ever since we moved in. Our chickens are doing fine in the barn but they really have taken over as there is no way to keep them in the stall unless I was to put a netting all the way around. Also I like that they can get into the rafters because then I know they are safe during the night - especially after our quail incident`.

Over a month ago I emailed this guy that had his coop online, I asked him if he was willing to negotiate and his email back was if you think you`re going to haggle in price you should do it in person` well, needless to say I didn`t email him back. So I saw that he had reposted his add so I emailed him again, and this time he was willing to negotiate. So I called him and we set on a price so Steve and I headed over there on family day Monday to pick it up.

Well well well, it did not go well. We started a full out family feud. The uncle lives in with his brother and his nephew. The nephew was who I had been dealing with and apparently he had put the coop on kijiji without his uncles knowledge. His uncle came out of the house screaming and yelling about how he built the coop and they had no right in selling it. Well, when he found out our bargain of $400 he was even worse (apparently he had put 1000$ into it the nephew had promised to pay back)! I did feel bad for him and the situation BUT I had just driven from Beaverton so I was leaving with that coop. Never once did the nephew who I had been dealing with ever come out of the house, I dealt with his father the whole time.

After about 15 minutes of screaming and yelling we got the coop loaded and got outta there! There was suppose to be a run that went with the coop but I wasn`t about to get pushy. As you can see they even have a little enclosed porch.

All of our friends can get ready to help move this thing! The adrenaline must have been pumping when we were just trying to get that coop out of there, its now in our driveway and I can`t even budge the thing. The uncle that built this did do an amazing job, it even has plugs inside so you can plug in heaters or heat lamps. Chicken coop with electrical work - score! I will have to extend the hen boxes as they are built for pigeons. I`ll have to see how many chickens are comfortable in there - I am hoping around 10.

Stay tune - we get our pigs on Thursday!!!

McMurray Hatchery

Steve and I have decided to get a couple FUN chickens to add to our little flock. We have a friend that is ordering from Mc Murray Hatchery in the States, you usually need a minimum of 25 chicks which we are not prepared to do so we are going in with him so that we don't have to order as many.

Here is a little sneak peak at a couple of the wild chickens we are considering:

A Sunday of death, moral dilemmas, work and an egg.

Today has been a heart wrenching day to say the least.

I woke up to go and feed the chickens and the quail. As you've all seen in a few of my other posts I built the quail a cage which is in my shop area, that I thought was secure from all predators. Sigh....I was wrong - and this is what I walk into.

Four quail - gone, ripped through the chicken wire. Then as Steve (my fiancee) and I are looking around to find out where the animal got in he happens to look above the quail cage anddddd here is the raccoon sleeping in the wall right above the quail cage

Now this is where my moral dilemmas come in. I hate that as a human race our first instinct is to kill anything that causes us trouble. Personally I would have liked to try and trap it and take it away. I called around and everybody has expressed that that wouldn't work and it would just come back and the best thing to do is to exterminate it. I would like some other opinions on this because I don't feel good about the decision that was made today and in the future I'd like to have another alternative.
In the end - we raise these animals and do have the duty to protect them.

On a happier note we did get our first egg out of our Gold Lace Wyandottes that we got from http://bedrockandbrambles.blogspot.ca/  This may not seem extremely exciting but when you've been going out every day since November it is VERY exciting!

We also chopped some more wood today as we are getting very low, it's amazing how much I took the comforts of living for granted before moving into this place.

Braving The Storm

So I had to walk down the street a few places down to let my snow plower know to PLEASE plow my driveway. I did at some point have his number but who knows where it has ended up. I talked to his wife and she said we are getting 4cms an hour! Seriously! I am actually snowed in, the Honda Civic isn't exactly built for 2 foot snow storms. Here's our walk to the neighbours!

Gardening Calendar

LEGEND 

P.I – Plant Inside              T.O – Transplant outside       S.O/T.O
S.O – Seed outside          H.O – Start Hardening Off

FEBRUARY

MONDAY	TUESDAY	WEDNESDAY	THURSDAY	FRIDAY	SATURDAY	SUNDAY
				1 P.I - Onions	2	3
4	5	6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15 P.I- Onions	16	17
18	19	20	21	22	23	24
25	26	27	28

MARCH

MONDAY	TUESDAY	WEDNESDAY	THURSDAY	FRIDAY	SATURDAY	SUNDAY
				1 P.I – Broccoli P.I - Strawberries	2	3
4	5	6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15 P.I – Lettuce P.I- Green Onion P.I – Tomatoes P.I - Peppers	16	17
18	19	20	21	22	23	24
25	26	27	28	29	30	31

APRIL

MONDAY	TUESDAY	WEDNESDAY	THURSDAY	FRIDAY	SATURDAY	SUNDAY
1	2	3	4	5	6	7
8	9	10	11	12	13	14
15 S.O – Peas S.O - Lettuce T.O - Lettuce	16	17	18	19 S.O - Lettuce	20	21
22 S.O – Green Onion	23	24 S.O Lettuce	25	26	27	28
29 H.O – Tomatoes H.O – Strawberries S.O Lettuce	30

MAY

MONDAY	TUESDAY	WEDNESDAY	THURSDAY	FRIDAY	SATURDAY	SUNDAY
		1 S.O – Lettuce S.O – Carrots S.O – Beets P.I – Watermelon P.I - Pumpkin	2	3	4 S.O Lettuce	5
6	7	8	9 S.O - Lettuce	10	11	12
13 T.O – Tomatoes T.O - Strawberries	14 S.O Lettuce	15	16	17	18 S.O Lettuce	19
20 S.O – Green Onion H.O - Peppers	21	22	23 S.O Lettuce	24	25	26
27	28 S.O Lettuce	29	30	31

JUNE

MONDAY	TUESDAY	WEDNESDAY	THURSDAY	FRIDAY	SATURDAY	SUNDAY
						1
2 S.O – Squash S.O – Cucumber S.O - Lettuce S.O/T.O – Watermelon S.O/T.O – Pumpkin T.O - Peppers	3	4	5	6	7 S.O Lettuce	8
9	10	11	12 S.O Lettuce	13	14	15
16	17 S.O Lettuce	18	19	20	21	22 S.O Lettuce
23 S.O – Green Onion	24	25	26	27 S.O Lettuce	28	29
30

I will be adding to this as I get more seeds next week. Anything that it is saying to seed more than once it is just so that you will have a constant supply throughout the summer and fall.

I better start on the Onions!!!!

Since my house is so cold during the day when we aren't home to have the fire running it actually might be a good idea for me to bring my heat lamp in from the barn to keep a constant heat on the seeds. 

For anybody that has a regular heat in their house you won't have to worry about this at all just put your seeds in a spot where they get lots of outside light (morning sun would be best if you can).