The Weekly Digs #168

New farm additions

We got our pigs today! Cam drove about 3 hours to go and pick them up from a farm and we purchased six. They aren’t all for us, we intend on selling most of it. The guy we get them from raises his pigs on pasture, which is a must for us! They learn when they are young to root and dig around for food. In addition to that, if the sow and boar are on pasture, they give those traits to their offspring. 

I’ve seen this phenomenon first hand with our chickens. Our 4 week old Delaware chicks are voracious eaters of greens. This is our first year we have hatched chicks and I have never seen another chick eat grasses and chick weed the way they do! Our chicks from the hatchery were not like that, but in one generation they have already moved toward more greens, more scratching for bugs, and less grains.

New Pig Fencing

Some homesteading projects you fail at, and have to start over. Cam didn’t like the way his pig fence turned out last year and so he ripped the whole thing out. He put in a low welded wire fence as a permanent perimeter backup fence. 

First he trenched, then put in Tposts, then stretched the fence. Being that we are often behind, he completed the fence only last night. 

The problem is that the outer fence was never intended to be the only fence, Cam also wanted to string smaller electric paddocks all throughout this area so the pigs could rotate pasture. Unfortunately, he didn’t have time to do those before he left at 5am this morning. 

On his way back he came up with the idea to use the chickens electric fence from Premier1. After bringing the pigs in the permanent fencing, he set up the poultry fencing (basically like electric netting) and set it up. We let the pigs out.

The electric fence wouldn’t shock hard enough and the pigs ran right through it, with a few getting tangled in it along the way. It was a big fail. Thankfully the outer fence held up while we figured things out. 

Cam decided to pound in more T-posts in 100ºF, heat index of 110ºF weather I might add, and set up an electric barrier with two aluminum wire strands like we did last year. Just past that, he also put up hog panels to ensure they didn’t get out. 

So now they are secured in a smaller area and so far they are staying put! 

In the morning while Cam was gone, I recorded a garden tour. It was wishful thinking to get it edited and published today, with the pig fiasco there wasn’t enough time but hopefully by early next week i’ll have it finished.

In the Garden

• Spent many hours weeding everyday, it was hard because of the heat. But we are powering through it as best we can. 
• Worked on harvesting the garlic and set it in front of fans to dry in the garage.
• Harvested cucumbers (most coming from the kids gardens), cabbages, dill, and lettuce.
• Spent many hours watering. It’s so dry here and I have one sprinkler for a quarter acre garden and all my fruits. It’s time consuming to drag it around and hand water inside my tunnel. Cam is helping me get a more permanent irrigation set up going with drip irrigation. It’s another to-do that we intended to finish last month but we’ve had a mountain of homesteading tasks that took precedence. I want to get that done as soon as possible, in the next week or two is the hope.

Preserving

• Cam and the kids picked blueberries at our local u-pick and froze them. It was about four gallon size bags.
• We blanched and froze about 5lbs of snap peas. The peas are done for the year, but I still have a few more pounds in my refrigerator that need to be frozen.