With the nice weather, we thought we’d bring back our Friday Field Trip on the Farm series. Who doesn’t like pictures, after all?

Last week we had a 10 yard load of gravel delivered for the lane beside the hard pens. Once we managed to get the gravel truck unstuck from the side yard, we used it to construct the beginnings of a gravel drive.

Those of you that have visited us in the spring and early summer (and most anytime after a hard rain) know how we’ve struggled with the drainage issues in that area. A natural wet spot, plus a hill, plus clay soil, plus heavy traffic equals a slip-sliding mess that more often than not has resulted in pulled muscles at chore time. So far the gravel — which we spread to about six inches thick — has worked like a charm. It drains well and is packing down nicely. One more load to extend it past the chicken coop and the lane should be in pretty good shape.

This spring’s piglets are growing like weeds. Soon — as in as soon as we have a spare minute — we’ll be training them to electric fencing and turning them out on pasture for the summer. Come fall they’ll make bacon and pork chops and sausage and spare ribs and… well, you get the point. We’ve got just a couple hog shares left for this year, so if you’re interested in putting some local, pastured pork in your freezer call or email soon.

Unfortunately, the weeds are also growing like weeds. We spent last weekend finishing up the final prep work in the garden and Operation Get Everything in the Ground is officially underway. We’re trying out some new hot peppers this year and an interesting variety of long beans, but all the old standbys have their spots reserved too.

Other things that are growing like weeds, include Amelia…

…we can hardly believe she’s the same little pig we introduced to you last fall. And Tripp, who was captured in a rare (mostly) still pose here.

His portraits usually look more like this.

As when he’s awake, he’s moving.

When Mother Nature offers us a gift, we’re not inclined to squander it. This year, that gift has been almost two months of extra growing time. The result? Well, pictures are worth a thousand words…

French Breakfast and White Icicle radishes.

Lettuce.

Onions. We plant our white varieties — this year, it’s Sterling — close and harvest half for green onions in the spring. Those that remain are allowed to mature along with the yellow and red onions for harvest later in the year.

Kennebec Potatoes.

Garden Peas.

And last, but certainly not least? Even this year’s new strawberry plants are putting in their best effort.

If you’ve been around for a while you may have noticed that things are changing. Certain pages have disappeared, others are getting a makeover, and I’m almost three weeks late sending out our spring newsletter. Late last year we refined the CSA, this spring, we’ve been busy behind the scenes refining just about everything else. The new farm hand you see here, adorable as he might be, is part of that.

As the pork side of the farm has grown and we’ve become increasingly fond of the pigs themselves, it has become evident that we needed to streamline. As it turns out, one family, with off-farm jobs and extra-curriculars and some semblance of a social life, can only do so much. So, for more than a year we’ve been tossing around the idea of — and need for — a little help around the farm. Especially when it comes to the management of the hogs, which have naturally taken the lead in operations and become a fixture in their own right. In other words, we may have gotten our start in poultry, but four years in to pork and the pigs are demanding the bulk of our attention.

We’d considered hired human help, but don’t feel we’re at that point yet. Perhaps in another year or two. Right now there are too many things we’ve learned from our first few years of hands on pork production that must first be put into action. And then we ran across Border Collies. It was by accident really, ever since we raised that bottle lamb for our own freezer we’d become a bit smitten with the whole idea of herding and human-canine work teams. A seed was planted when I ran across a YouTube video of a Border Collie moving a handful of shoats and, as they say, that was all she wrote.

Luckily, I knew exactly where to find good working Border Collies well within a reasonable distance from home. After a few discussions with the breeder, a walk through her dog barn, and much of the trepidation that always seems to accompany a big change, we made arrangements to bring a herding dog home. That dog is Tripp, pictured here in all his puppy glory. It’ll be almost a year before we can even think about starting him on stock, but he comes from impressive working lines and we’re confident he’ll live up to his heritage. Plus, he’s happy to work for kibble and the occasional table scrap. We doubt we’d have been able to convince any of the local teens to do such a thing.

Of course, taking on yet another project wasn’t really a choice, given the entire point of the “hired” help was to lighten the load so a few things had to give in order to make this transition. We’ll be talking more about that in the coming weeks, but in a nutshell: we’ve eliminated almost everything but pork production.

Recently, a commenter on this post asked why we raise Guinea Hogs. James wrote:

We are interested in raising pigs one day and I’ve been wondering why you’ve chosen American Guinea Hogs as your preferred breed.

Now, first, I have to be perfectly honest; Guineas are not our preferred breed. In fact, as the farm hierarchy goes they’re not even particularly near to the top of the list. In swine they’re trumped by our Tamworths and quickly being outpaced by Amelia, who has been recently brought aboard to represent Gloucestershire Old Spots. This isn’t to say we don’t like the Guinea Hogs; we absolutely do. But it is to say that, depending on his or her ultimate goals, I may or may not recommend them to another farmer or homesteader.

We started with Guinea Hogs and they’ll forever hold a special position as our first hogs, the gateway drug that plunged us deep into swine addiction, but even some of the reasons for which we originally purchased them no longer make the ‘pro’ list when we’re weighing their good against their bad for our situation and goals, that final part being an important distinction to make. Any given breed of pig may or may not suit a particular farm’s goals. With this in mind I’ve listed many of the possible positives of American Guinea Hogs in the graphic above. Some were reasons we originally picked Guineas and some are things we’ve discovered as we have gone along. Some of them remain a reason we keep guineas to this day, others we’ve come to view in a bit of a different light.

The most important of those things is their small size and slow growth rate. When we decided to buy guinea hogs we liked the idea that they were smaller and slower growing. Having children ourselves as well as frequent visitors to the farm we thought their size would make them less intimidating and less dangerous. And both of those things is true; the Guineas are less intimidating to children and people who are not accustomed to pigs, and they’re less dangerous if for no other reason than their size makes them less of a force to contend with than pigs twice and three times their size. Unfortunately, their size and slow growth also presents some barriers to production. While they require smaller facilities and less space than bigger pigs, they have to be kept considerably longer to reach butcher size which means they’re taking up those facilities over a prolonged period. And, because we raise both bigger pigs and Guineas we still have to design all of our facilities to accommodate both. Besides the long grow out period, they also never really reach market size. At ten to twelve months old Guineas average a live weight of just one-hundred pounds, less than half that of a 6-9 month old bigger pig breed. Because some portions of processing costs are flat fees this results in considerably more expensive meat.

That said, while more expensive, it’s also — hands down — some of the best pork we’ve ever eaten. And our clients agree. We routinely get rave reviews proclaiming it better than anything they’ve tasted before. In fact, this is one of the primary reasons we continue to keep Guineas despite their slow growth and smaller size. Their lard production — which far outpaces any other hog breed we’ve tried — is another. Though it doesn’t get much press today, lard is a healthy fat and one that makes tremendous baked goods and sauteed vegetables.

And the final reason we continue to raise Guineas is because of their rare genetics. As the livestock industry becomes increasingly standardized we believe it’s important to the future of our food supply to preserve quickly dwindling livestock genetics. Keeping Guineas, promoting them and working to build a strong market for their meat products is one way we do that.

We also, of course, appreciate their foraging ability, strong maternal instinct, hardiness in outdoor production and resistance to sun burn (a must in a pasture management system) but also realize these things are not unique to Guineas alone.

It’s that time of year again; the part where we’re still embroiled in winter but have to begin actively looking towards the growing season. Last week we started some of our seeds — peppers, eggplants, cabbages and tomatoes — for the CSA garden and as I worked I realized we’d never shared our seed starting process here.

Now, there are plenty of tutorials out there on making your own seed starting pots out of toilet paper rolls, newspaper, egg shells, egg cartons and just about anything else you can think of recycling, I’m not going to try to write you another one. We’ve used those methods, and they’ve worked — each to some extent or another — but because of the volume of seeds we start each year and my need to keep some semblance of order in my home (yes, we start all the seeds right in our kitchen) we moved to a bit more organized, and standardized method a few years ago.

Still, regardless of the medium, the process is mostly the same and that chart up top is spot on. So, with that in mind, let’s get to it:

These days we use jiffy pellets…

…and 1020 trays.

One reason for this is that we’re able to fit a lot of seed starting activity into a small space — each 1020 tray holds 72 pellets, each one a future seedling — at least at the beginning. Another reason is organization; neat rows, easily contained and even easier to label. And yet another is storage, because the jiffy pellets are dehydrated they’re easy to store year to year. I’m nothing if not all about easy storage.

Once we fill up the trays with the pellets, they have to be hydrated. It takes three quarts of water to rehydrate each tray full of pellets and the water needs to be added slowly. Just a half quart at a time is about right. The first few additions will be soaked up most slowly, but once the pellets begin to hydrate and expand the process goes more quickly.

After the pellets are hydrated, we peel back the biodegradable netting on each pellet to expose the top. And get the seeds ready to plant. I just dump them on a plate for easy access.

I then wet the tip of my index finger and use it to transfer one or two seeds at a time to each pellet. I don’t bother to bury any until I’ve put seeds on each pellet. This helps me remember which ones I’ve planted so I don’t waste seeds and streamlines the process.

After each pellet in a tray has seeds I go back through and press them into the “dirt”. This part varies depending on what we’re planting. Some seeds like to be buried deeper than others and planting at the wrong depth can have a significant effect on germination. Read your seed packets and make sure you’re planting at the right depth.

Once they’re planted, I place the handy dandy covers on the 1020 trays…

… and wait. The tops aren’t water tight, but they do help hold in the moisture and that’s very important in germinating seeds. Some growers use heat mats at this point, but we haven’t found a real need for them so forgo the extra electricity usage and try to remain patient.

Once the seeds sprout it’s time to remove the tops, while high humidity is good for seeds it fosters fatal mold growth on seedlings, but we’ll talk more about that in a couple of weeks when ours are up and growing.

Onions hold a special place in my heart and not just because our family tends to eat our weight in them each year, because we absolutely do. I like onions for a few other reasons and the fact that they can be planted extra early in the season is not the least of them. Here, onion plants can be set out in the garden as early as mid-March and in a locale where we’re looking at a mid-May last frost date that’s always a welcome reprieve from the winter; even in years like this where winter never really showed up to begin with.

This year we’re planting three varieties; Copra, Sterling and Red Zeppelin. Yellow, white and red varieties, respectively. And with mid-March quickly approaching we’re planning on setting them out in just over a month. My how time flies. The early plant date isn’t just a function of their ability to withstand cold and wet better than most early crops, though. It also has to do with allowing them enough time to establish ample plant matter before they begin making onions.

The leaves of the onion plant feed it as much as the roots, bigger leaves and more of them, result in bigger onions and unlike most garden vegetables and fruits, when those onions start forming — or “bulbing” as it’s officially called — isn’t determined by the number of days they’ve been in the ground. Onions begin bulbing according to the number of daylight hours they’re exposed to. Some varieties begin to bulb around twelve hours of day light, others fourteen and still others sixteen.

Up here in our northern climate we have long days during the growing season so we choose long-day onion varieties to match our conditions. In the south they have shorter days during the spring and summer and choose short-day onions instead. One advantage to living in somewhere that gets a lot of daylight during the growing season is that long-day onions tend to keep better in storage than short-day varieties; which is another reason I’m so fond of onions. As much as I love canning it’s refreshing to be able to just toss them into a basket or braid and hang them in the pantry for year-round storage. It’s certainly a lot less work than much of the other produce we preserve.

*Picture via Clay Irving on Flickr used under Creative Commons.

Last week I seized the opportunity of a dreary, rainy Wednesday morning to get some errands done. We’ve got an outside to-do list a mile long right now so I try to take advantage of those times when being outside is miserable to do those things that need to be done indoors — like shopping.

At one of the stores I visited the cashier and I started talking about the unseasonable weather we’re having and as we bantered about which is better snow or rain I mentioned that I operate a hog farm and the rain can be a source of a whole lot of extra work and hassle (though so can the snow, just for different reasons). Upon hearing this the cashier said what most people say when it’s muddy and they know you own swine: “I bet the pigs are loving it though! This is their kind of weather!”

But here’s the thing; it’s really not. Pigs don’t like mud, just because it’s mud. They like mud under certain circumstances because it helps them be more comfortable. When it’s not quite forty degrees and drizzly, cold mud isn’t more comfortable.

Pigs wallow in mud when it’s warm outside. Ours begin to seek out water and mud when the daytime temps reach about seventy-five and the sun is shining.

One of the reasons for this is swine don’t sweat. Pigs don’t perspire the way humans do so they must get themselves wet in order to benefit from evaporative cooling. The water in mud wets the skin and then cools as it evaporates off, much in the same way we’re cooled off on hot days by lounging in the pool or lake. In fact, our hogs are known to be quite appreciative of a freshly filled kiddie pool in their paddocks on extra hot days. Some summers when it has reached well into the hundreds we’ve frozen jugs full of water and then dropped them into the pools for the pigs to lay against and play with. For them getting wet is all about keeping cool.

The other reason for wallowing in mud is also loosely tied to the temperature by way of bugs. If you were to watch pigs wallowing in mud you’d probably notice that they toss and turn in the mud, coating most of their bodies in it. This is a hog’s natural bug repellent. As the mud dries it creates a protective coating over the skin that prevents biting bugs from making a meal out of the hog’s hide. When it’s cold outside biting bugs aren’t active so the protective coat isn’t needed.

If you were to come and observe our pigs on a wet day when the temperature is cool — like most of the days we experience in the spring and late fall — you’d actually see them avoiding getting muddy. In the cool season they choose to bed down on dry spots and in their straw filled huts. Cold and wet actually affects them much the same way it does us; making them uncomfortable. That’s why — like we showed you back in March — sacrifice areas are constantly being rebedded with fresh straw during the wet seasons.

We call this time, between one season and the next, our down time. And it is less busy than the beginning of spring, or the middle of summer, or the harried weeks of final fall harvesting, but ‘down’ isn’t exactly accurate. There is still, to put it lightly, much to be done and we thought you might like a sneak peek at how we’ll be spending the long, cold months ahead.

Planning – There is so much to be done during the growing season that we couldn’t possibly accomplish all of it without some extensive planning to back it up. Seed catalogs and reminders from suppliers started rolling in through the Mailbox and our email before Thanksgiving. Even though planting won’t begin in earnest until spring now is when we have to decide what we’ll be growing and how much of it we’ll need. Since the weather plays such a tremendous roll in the success of any given variety of vegetable this can make for an interesting guessing game. If we plan too much for the warm season and have another spring like last year — long, cold and wet — we could end up with a lot of crop failures. On the other hand, if we plan for a heavy cool-weather crop and the spring shoots quickly into summery temperatures as it sometimes does we could have failures there, too.

We also have to start looking ahead at demand for turkeys and geese — both as meat animals and as breeding stock for other farms — and get our rough hatching schedules down on paper. These are another interesting game of guessing and balancing as both geese and turkeys are seasonal breeders. We have to plan for what will work best for our farm’s demand and then hope that the birds breed at an optimum time for our schedule. And some years they just don’t cooperate.

Prepping – Once the planning is complete we start getting things ready for the busy months ahead. Seed starting supplies are gathered from storage, washed and readied; we’re on the hunt for more efficient CSA transport bags or baskets; we’ll start printing tags for next seasons batches of jams; nesting areas are prepped for the geese and hog breeding schedules are double checked to make sure we don’t have any sows farrowing in the coldest part of the year if we can help it; we cross reference our supplies with our projected needs for the year and fill any gaps.

Networking & Education – Community has long been an integral part of the success of agriculture and we think that’s more the case today than ever before. When we have a little extra time during the cold months we like to spend it catching up with fellow farmers, discovering interesting new ag initiatives and reading up on the latest developments for the industry.

Sustaining – Unfortunately, though the winter months tend to be quieter here, chores take longer to complete when they’re compounded by thigh deep snow, ice and below freezing temperatures. More bedding is required for the hogs to be comfortable and warm, water buckets must be de-iced and refilled regularly to keep all of the animals hydrated and eggs have to be collected several times a day to keep them from freezing and cracking right in the nest boxes. It almost takes more time just to sustain the farm in the winter months than it does to grow it in the spring, summer and fall.

Every year, about this time, I pull out the year’s receipts, print off the spreadsheets I’ve maintained since January, consolidate notes I’ve taken, and gather my planning supplies. I grab a drink, a pen, a notebook, my trusty laptop, a pad of post-it notes and my favorite highlighters — and I get comfortable. Because, inevitably, I’m going to be there for a while.

I crunch numbers, note what worked and devise new plans for dealing with what didn’t. I dream big dreams about where we’re going and then cut them down to size as I project the coming year’s expenses and decide what additions we can feasibly make and which will have to wait.

I like to call this an exercise in determining The State of The Farm and — this year, just like last — I’d like to share the results of it with you.

Where We’re At

Wow! I conduct a similar examination of the state of affairs in my personal life this time of year and as I recently did so I came to the conclusion that whirlwind is the best description of life in 2011. But as I sat down and began to think about the year as it relates to the farm I think it fits even better.

As spring dawned we were nervous about our first year with a CSA program, but as the summer wore on we came to a great rhythm with our members and really enjoyed the entire experience; even despite one of the most difficult growing seasons we’ve ever encountered in which the spring was slow to kick off and the summer came with a vengeance. The expansion of the market garden was a huge success, we added two new breeds to our heritage hog herd — Tamworths and Gloucestershire Old Spots — refined our American Buff Goose breeding gaggle and even added a beef steer to the farm family this fall.

Failures happened and lessons were learned in the fall when almost an entire batch of dual-purpose meat chickens came up missing when the farm was unattended one day — and our hearts were broken as we had to consider theft a real possibility in our quiet rural area — but the successes and relationships we were able to foster this year with new and returning clients far outweighed that heartbreak and certainly shaped where we’re headed.

Where We’re Going

• Streamlining – If whirlwind describes 2011 it’s our hope that streamlined will describe 2012. Our aim in streamlining is to increase our ability to provide affordable, local meat and produce to new and existing clients for years to come. We’ll be refining everything from the way we feed to the way we answer emails looking for places where we can be more efficient without sacrificing quality. Every item on this list is either part of that effort or, in the case of Education at the bottom, part of the reason for it.
• Newsletter Scheduling – In the past we’ve sent out our News From the Farm monthly, in 2012 we’re going to reduce the publishing schedule to quarterly instead. We regret that this will put us in less frequent email contact, but look forward to breaking more news and elaborating on more activities from around the farm on the blog in-between issues.
• Livestock Re-Focusing – Our roots go back to just 25 chickens in our backyard, an attempt at feeding our own children a better meat product and we will never forget where we started, but as we move forward the heritage hog, goose and turkey flocks will be getting more of our attention. Chickens will no longer be available outside of CSA shares and chicken-containing CSA shares will be available only in very limited numbers. We know this will come as a disappointment to many who have grown accustomed to our chickens and are sad to report that we do not know of any other farms who are raising the types of chickens we raised in the way that we raised them, but we will keep you posted should we locate one. We also hope that you’ll consider trying some turkey, pork, goose and beef (that’s right, don’t forget we have a couple small beef shares available each year!) instead. We’re also working to smooth out regulatory requirements to possibly include these things in our omnivorous CSA in the future so that we can offer more shares of that particular type of CSA.
• Growing Plans + Increased Sustainability – We’ll certainly be trying out a few new varieties for human consumption in the market garden this year — blue potatoes and bright-red yard-long beans, anyone? — but we’re also excited to announce an expansion of the garden to include a livestock specific growing area. As we strive for efficiency in order to provide affordable local foods growing at least a portion of the concentrated feeds we give our livestock only makes increasing sense. Amaranth and mangel beets will be amongst the crops we put in for fall and winter consumption by the stock.
• Education – Reclaiming small-scale farming as a viable occupation and helping other farmers do the same has always been a passion of ours. This fall we had the wonderful opportunity to feed that passion as we gave a presentation on farm-direct pricing at the ALBC annual conference. In the spring we’ve been invited to speak at the MidWest Poultry Federation and we’ve begun cultivating other opportunities that will help us both share our knowledge and experience with other farmers and bring their experiences back to Michigan. We’re really looking forward to a year filled with these opportunities in 2012.

And, I think, that’ll just about do it for this year. We’ve got an exciting twelve months ahead of us and we couldn’t ask for better company as we move forward. Thank you for your continued support and patronage; we can’t wait to see you on the farm again soon!

Wishing you and yours a safe and happy Thanksgiving Day, from all of us here at Olive Hill.