A Piggy Post.

Pigs in the bush in the back. See the two strands of hot wire that keep them in? 

The two gilts we are breeding this spring. The red one with the black mark on her face we think we will call Daisy and the all black one is Blackie. This was before we separated them out and brought the boar home. 

A better picture of Blackie. You can also see our pond and a few more pigs. 

Lots of pigs lined up by the hot wires. They are super friendly and I'm too big of a chicken to go in there and give scratches so I talk to them over the fence and the follow me that way. This is a better picture of our pond area in the back. Lots of work to be done back there yet. Pretty low on the list at the moment. 

Some of you might remember Big Girls one surviving piglet. Here she is on the left in the above picture. She's still a bit smaller then everyone else but she has lots of character! These two pigs are less then two weeks different in age. She's the runt for sure! 

Big girl sleeping in a nest by the lagoon. She managed to hurt her front foot, yet again, and wasn't moving around as much as the others. She's much better now but this may be her last year. It's her last chance to raise a litter, of her own, as she has so many problems with her feet and lost all but one piglet last year. If you remember she raised Gillys piglets last summer with her one survivor when Gilly didn't have any milk. Gilly is gone now and hopefully that will change our farrowing out to the better and everyone will be able to raise their own piglets this year. 

Oh and these pictures are a few weeks old. Daisy, Blackie, Big Girl and Little Girl are all in a new pen up front now with the boar, Big Red Tamworth. We should have piglets mid/late August. Daisy's piglets will be 3/4 Tamworth, 1/4 Berkshire. Blackies will be half Tamworth, 1/4 old English black and 1/4 Berkshire. Big Girls and Little Girls with all be half Berkshire and half Tamworth, like last year. We are very happy with their piglets from last year! 

Weaning piglets

Well we finally weaned the piglets this morning, or I guess we actaully just separated the sows and piglets. The weaning takes a couple days. All but one of them will be 10 weeks old on Friday so it's about time. What a rodeo! The piglets stayed in but every other pig on the place got out at one time or another! At one point we had at least 15 pigs out! These are big pigs! 200lbs to 400lbs! Actually I think both Big Girl and Gilly are over 400lbs easy. 

We finally got them all back in and the fence hot and they are all staying in now :) Mahahahahaha. That fence HURTS. I got nailed this morning and OUCH!! 

And no I didn't get any pictures! I was way to busy trying to keep the pigs in sight! 

But I will say something I say every year about this time...those butcher pigs are getting NICE and BIG and, don't you know it, it's 'about time to put some of them in the freezer!' 

But it's really not. We are way way way to busy to be butchering right now. The pigs will have to wait until at least November. 

Speaking of which I'd better go help Papa outside. I'm sitting in with the littles so they will nap and they are all asleep so it's time to go do some wall building :) 

A Pig Picture.

These are the 16 wiener pigs, Berkshire/Old English Black, we kept last year to butcher and have sold for this fall. We have 9 sold, and the rest will go into our freezers :)  They will be ready to go in to the freezers around November or December when everything else slows down around here :) I love their intense look, they were pretty sure I should feed them when I was done standing there. That brown mixed up chunk of ground in front of their pen is where we fed the cows their hay last winter. This spring the pigs tilled it for us but it needs to compost a bit before we can seed it to grass. :) 

Oh and for those of you who are wondering this is the centre of our property. The spot the pigs are on is where they put the line in to the lagoon. That line, which we are building up, was pure clay and nothing would grow there. That hump of dirt at the far end is the lagoon. The pigs fence goes to, and then around, the lagoon, thru our pond area, and then they have about 8 acres in our lease behind the property. The lease is all small poplars and pigs do a great job cleaning it up and making it walk thru able. 

Random Update Sept 1st

Well it's September. Where did the summer go? It was so dry it didn't feel much like our normal green haven here on the homestead. It was yellow grass season for quite a while and it's sure is nice to see green again! 

Now that a few of the farm projects are done, or mostly done, I feel like I've got some breathing space! 

The last few weeks have been filled with moving meat birds, feeding meat birds, watching for piglets, feeding pigs so we can move meat birds, getting ready for butchering, getting ready for school, butchering meat birds, cleaning up after butchering meat birds, getting ready for house stuff, watching for piglets, moving meat birds, getting ready for butchering, and on and on and on. I finally got R's school extras, a stress point as we have a new teacher and I was unsure as to the work load, and sighed a HUGE sigh of relief when most of the package was books! Yay! Before that I snapped a little and talked to the older 3 kids teacher about ways to stream line their extras so I don't have to do 3 programs in everything. She give me some great information I didn't have and made my life a lot simpler! Thank you Michelle! We are really finding it hard to fit all the school timelines into our un timelined building and farm! That all being said we are actually starting school on the 3rd. Papa has the 2nd off. We aren't jumping in full time as we only have 9 Papa working days to school in this month. We are going to work on extras and math and see how many things we can get crossed off the list in a couple hours a day. 

The kids have had a great summer, the weather was so nice there have been lots of water fights, pool (ok so it's a big watering trough!) days and tons of out door days. It only started raining in the last little bit and while it's a relief to have some cooler temps the kids are not outside as much which makes the trailer seem even smaller. We've been to the beach, several parks, out for ice cream and slushies, to the fall fair and the airshow. We even went camping for a weekend! We kept up with school on Wednesdays and they all finished 1/12th of their math for the year. Actually R has finished 2/12ths :) They've all grown like crazy! E had to get new pants, R needs to move into E's old size, S needs a new box of clothes out and G is close! J3 is peddling up and down the driveway like someone's after him on 4 wheels (training wheels) but I think the only reason he still has them is because he just hasn't considered that he might not need them. S loves the trampoline and spends hours playing and walking around yelling happily at laying hens, dogs, kids or whatever walks by. J and L spend hours 'making things' or roll playing games of survival with E and R. Sometimes J3 and G play too and they all happily hunt dinosaurs or sabors together. 

Meat birds are in the freezer, their 'stuff' cleaned up and fences down. If you didn't notice some lingering signs and the full freezers you may have thought they never happened. It's nice to have them done and most stuff cleaned up. The plucker is still here and the tables are set up but all in good time. 

The piglets are all born now, 23 in all survived. Big Girl had 7 but only 3 lived. We have no idea why. They were alive the night they were born, I saw them, and the next morning they were dead and she wasn't on them so we aren't sure what happened. It works out well though as we had orders for 7 piglets already and that is the max we would sell with only 23 so we don't have to worry about selling anymore. That leaves 16 for us to raise, I already have one sold as a butcher pig for 2015! We ended up with 16 from last year and I beleive I have 8 or 9 sold as butcher pigs which leaves us with 7 or 8 for ourselves. Last year we butchered 6, I think, for ourselves and we've had to ration it so 7 or 8, especially since we won't have a beef this year!, should give us a bit more wiggle room. I think we should sausage Big Girl as this is our second problem year with her but Papa is unsure. The piglets are starting to run races in their pen and today's job is to surround them with the electric netting so they stay in their pen and off the road! 

The cows are unhappy with the lack of grass but have had to make due with a bale of hay now and then. They are both still milking and all the extra milk that was going to the meat birds will now go to the butcher pigs until the piglets are ready for creep feeding and then the piglets will get it. The calves are still grazing in the lease and coming up for water everyday and looking mighty fine. Even Patch, the scrawny Holstein calf we bought from the dairy is filling out a little. Ugly as he is he might just make some beef yet! 

After the great laying hen weed out we are still getting as many, sometimes more, eggs then we did before the great laying hen weed out which means we did a great job at keeping the layers and getting rid of the slackers. We do have more untouched cow patties then ever before though which is the downside to getting rid of hens. Laying hens, while roaming loose, do a great work of spreading cow patties as they look for bugs. The cow patty can then soak into the ground and fertilize much faster. We rarely had old cow patties until this year. Might have to get some more hens next spring. 

September is going to be busy too. Two weeks of day shift for Papa and then 2 weeks off. School and finishing up some small house projects the first two weeks and serious building plans for the second. Hay, firewood and gravel should all arrive soon. Winter is coming and it's good to be prepared :) Have a great day all. 

Piglet 2014 Pictures

Little Girl and Gilly brought their piglets out into the sunshine by the road this morning. After a truck did an abrupt stop in front of our house I knew something was up and went out to see this.

They are surrounded by piglets though they are hard to see because of their color. Little girl got up after a minute and I got some more pictures. She was almost showing them off for me. 

This sow is Gilly, half Hampton/York half Berkshire bred to a Tamworth. 

The lighter piglets with a lot of white on them are hers. Little Girls, purebred Berkshire bred to a Tamworth, piglets are the top picture.

A pile of piglets :) 

And last but not least, she is the BIGGEST sow after all, is Big Girl who is still waiting for her piglets. She's in a cranky stage so hopefully it will be soon. 

Population Jump!! Piglets

Gilly's eleven!

Little Girls eleven :) 

100% Grassfed Holsteins

Papa and I have the only 100% grassfed dairy cows in our area, that we know of. Probably the only one in the northern half of our Province.  There was one about 6 hours from us several years ago but we aren't sure if it's still running. Most people don't believe that Holsteins can survive our winters without lots of grain and a barn (and we have neither!) and you'd be amazed at their reactions when they see our 'fat' holsteins. BTW we think Maggie is FAT, MOST farmers who see Isabel think she is the fattest Holstein they've ever seen... until they see Maggie :) In fact Maggie is so fat we think it might be hindering the AI attempts. I took these pictures this morning. 

Isabel, above,  is 6 months into her lactation. Her calf Ivan was born a few days before Christmas. She's giving about 12 gallons of milk a day average. Some days it's more. The pigs and chicks are loving the extra milk :) Until we got the chicks I made cheese almost every day for several weeks. The milk production went up with the arrival of green grass and we scrambled for a bit to find something to do with it, besides feed it to the 17 littler pigs who love it. (I say Littler because they are really not that little anymore! Most of them are around 175lbs with several of them 200lbs.) 

Maggie's calf Milton was a year in March so she's been milking for 15 months. She's still giving about 4, 4.5 gallons a day. We'll probably dry her up after chick butchering, IF the last AI attempt worked, until then her milk is going into the meat birds. 

Pigs Spring Pictures.

Soaking up the sun. 

Exploring a new patch of ground. 

Big Momma, Gilly and the boar, Big Red. 

A bunch of little pigs all snuggled up in the barn...

The next picture! I guess they heard me ;) 

General Update. Nov. 2013

I went on the computer to the blog tonight to make sure I don't forget how to blog. It's been a bit crazy around here you see and I'm still trying to get my feet back under me and remember that there are other things to do besides school, butchering, and housework and parenting.. well when the kids are asleep anyway. SO here you go... general update of our life.. crazy as it is :)

We've had two birthdays, which reminds me I need to change my about me again. E turned 7, and I already blogged about that here. And G turned two and we had her party last week. I'll hopefully post that soon. Other than that fun we've pretty much been busy putting up the animal harvest of the year.

Meatball the 3 year old steer we brought home, hung for two weeks and cut and wrapped and frozen. One simple sentence but a heck of a lot of meat and work since we did the entire thing ourselves. We sure are enjoying having beef again though :) OH and we bought a new meat grinder.. it's amazing!! Gobbles up the meat quick as a wink! Super quiet too.. Papa and I can chat while we work with this grinder.

6 pigs have hit the freezers, some for us, some for others. We have 4 more to do. There is a tote of sausage on the back porch waiting for Papa to smoke from our last butchering marathon. About 130 lbs of it. Pork pepperoni, summer and Mennonite sausage. Tastes great, we tried it all :) At one point we had a production line going. Papa cutting pork chops with the electric meat saw, J bringing them to the butcher table, L, E and R using canning rings to scrape the bone chips off and passing them to me to have the fat trimmed and do the final bagging. 10 chops to a bag. 12.5 bags. 3 pigs worth of chops. I don't see the point in packaging it in small packages.. I'm rarely going to get out just one bag. Normally I do two. Then we have leftovers :) I know.. we like to eat. We like to eat MEAT!!! lol. Papa's got bacon making in the back room and more frozen waiting to be sliced. Slicer is likely next on our to buy list as the place in town were we've always gotten it done can no longer slice it for us. Slicing bacon by hand is HARD WORK!! I don't mind work but 20 sides of bacon is a bit much to hand slice.

As we are butchering there is a lot of hides and innards and things in the lagoon.. which means we are seeing Eagles again. The kids have been taking pictures of them. So far there are only two but we are hoping we get the 8 or so we had last year later on in the season.

Term one of home schooling requirements 'to do' list was saved by a patch of cold weather.. kids couldn't spend much time outside so we actually almost finished the work for Term 1 before the deadline.. I don't feel to bad that we didn't. We only missed one assignment which is awesome work as we got 12 weeks of science and Social Studies work a mere month before the end of term. Some crazy changes to the curriculum in the school we go through. This term we are, hopefully, done with the changes and it will go smoother.

 R is reading and doing so wonderfully. She loves it and has been pecking away at her term 2 work for awhile now as she flew through her reading program. I'm really enjoying J's set up this year and he is too.. his system is a bit different now with his grade 4 teacher and we both like it.

S is doing really well. He's got cheeks :) Loves his jolly jumper. Tried banana's and HATED them. Sleeps long stretches at night, often is only up once around 5 or 6 am. And is in general a very happy smiley giggly little boy. He loves to laugh. If you laugh near him he bursts into giggles. Today I put him on his belly on the floor and he scooted.. later on I did it again and noticed he is bringing his knees up in order to move forward. Crawling is not far off. He has great hand eye coordination and rarely misses when he grabs things or shoves things in his mouth. I was going to wait until 6 months for solids but Papa's work has a Christmas Party that I want to attend so I will try him on cream of wheat soon. Just so I can go to the Party and Grandma will have something to feed him if she needs too. With the other boys I normally started solids at 4 months but S just isn't as hungry as L and J were. He's no where close to the constantly hungry J3 was at this age.. mind you he's only about 14 lbs and J3 was something like 20lbs at this age. S really is a Griggs :) J3 takes a bit more after my side of the family. I tried banana's just to see if he was really interested at all and he really was not. I'll likely wait another week now and try again. If nothing else I'll send it along and Grandma will have it if she needs it. The party will likely only last about 3 hours and we'll be near Grandma's house so I can go nurse him if I need too. And no I won't be leaving him a bottle.. I've not bottle fed the 1st six and I don't plan on starting with the 7th ;)

I realize I'm skipping around from family to farm but this next thing is both :) We got a couple more piglets to raise up on bottles. My uncle's pig had too many again and he brought two little female, gilts, piglets over Monday afternoon. We named them Sausage and Chops. The smaller one is Chops.. she's got attitude! They weighed in at 1.5 lbs and 3 lbs Monday when we got them. We are going to weigh them each week for a while and see how they grow. They are super cute. Sausage does seem to have a problem with her legs but it seems to be getting better as she gains strength. They were a week old when we got them, but very small. I put a glass square pan of milk in their tote tonight and I can hear them drinking it!! The pan is heavy enough they cannot get their little pig noses under it and tip it out!

Umm.. house.. nothing to report.. still there, nothings happening on it.. too BUSY BUSY BUSY putting in the meat harvest :)

Kittens.. seems like Daisy's kittens didn't make it. Never did see them but she's not skinny like she was last time, actually she's in superb shape, which makes me think they didn't survive. She must have abandoned them. Which is sad but there is nothing we can do about it so I'm not letting it get to me. Fluffs kittens are older and fine.. each one has been door trained. Some took longer than others. The little brown female got past J a couple of times but we did eventually teach her not to rush inside the minute a door opens. I won't have them in the house.. there are enough of us in here as it is :) 7 kids, 2 adults and 2 little pigs. Not bad for a two bedroom trailer with a addition!! Anyway now with her 3 kittens we have Daisy, Midnight, Fluff and the kittens are Caramel, Mischief and the so far unnamed orange male. Our last orange male has disappeared and we've not seen him in months. A good reason to keep a breeding female around.. cats don't seem to last long up in the north woods with the coyotes and wolves and eagles.

Papa is back to evening shifts. Noon to midnight, Wednesday thru Saturday. Which means I get less sleep then I would if he was on a normal shift but that's ok :) I like to see him at the end of the day and S often isn't in bed for the night until 11 anyway. I am taking my vitamins :) Dr. Nicole :)

Anyway. As always we are busy busy busy with family, farm, work and harvest. Some things get put off for later while we deal with more seasonal things.. for example I normally potty train right after their second birthday.. which G had almost 2 weeks ago now.. and no I'm not potty training her... I'm not going to either until later when butchering is done. It's not fair for any of us to do it now so we won't. It won't hurt her or me none to wait.

So things to look forward to on the farm is the end of pig butchering which should be not this weekend but next weekend. Isabel's calf which is due around the 23rd of December.. She's been AI'd to a Brown Swiss so we are hoping for a heifer. She sure is cranky these days and chasing Milton and Patch around a lot. Patch is still a scrawny little runt of a steer and both Papa and I have wondered if we did ourselves any favors when we got him from the dairy. We actually had him tied under a roof the 1st time it snowed as he was not looking good at all. He recovered well and is in with the cows now. He does have a nose for trouble and got out several times before we realized he could open our man gate by the milking area. Now the gate is bungied shut and he tries and tries but can't wiggle through anymore.

Oh right, the woodshed.. Pretty much done.. we got 6 inches of snow when Papa had two more piece of tin, one on each side, and the ridge cap to put on so neither of those are done but the snows pretty much off the roof now so he might get to that soon. We are loving the extra space and the wood dry and right by the house!!!

Our phone had a problem with our electric fence one morning when we had a dump of fresh snow so it's no longer working and we are phone less. We are looking into a cell phone to replace the home phone and hope to get that all figured out this weekend, but in the mean time are communicating mainly through Imessage and FB.


I have to say though that I LOVE MY LIFE. I'm not complaining as I write this. I'm explaining. I'm not whining. I'm winning my battles that are near to my heart. I'm taking a stand for what I believe to be right and doing it. If I wanted to whine I could tell you that I've been out of my yard 3 times, besides church, in the last 6 weeks and I miss the contact, however small, with the outside world. Another good reason to take my vitamins :) But I don't want to whine. That is not why I blog.

 I blog for my kids. Like a scrapbook. Which reminds me G has been saying some pretty funny stuff lately! I want to remember how Papa and I make pancakes the morning of the first snow, we kick the kids outside and make them pancakes while they play in the snow and then when breakfast is ready they come in and we eat hot pancakes and drink hot chocolate and talk about the wonderful world God made for us. (And yes I know that's a long long crazy sentence but that's me :) Say it really fast and a bit breathless :) )  I also blog for you.. the reader who actually made it to the end of this book. The Aunt Linda's. The family far away and nearby. The Momys Ladies.The random person who found our crazy life by accident and enjoys reading these rambling posts. The old friend. The large family curious person who wonders how we make it work. The odd person we have that random chance encounter with at the store. So thanks for reading and HEY I know your out there so leave me a comment or two and prove it :)  


Well I feel like I've written a book after my recent silence. I hope you enjoyed it. I will try very hard to sit down at the computer more often and keep you lovely people updated.. and post pictures.

Good Night and GOD BLESS!!!!

Pig Update

The piglets are doing really well and gaining weight. There was one that we were watching as we think he got stepped on last week in the excitement of a piglet getting stuck in the electric netting. Papa turned the fence off and the piglet got out on its own but this little guy of Big Mommas got caught in the mix and was limping badly. He could still get around but he's slow and competing for food. We were going to take him out and bottle feed him. Big momma was stressed enough to try and take a snap at Papa. Totally unlike her and Papa smacked her for it and she looked repentive but we are more careful now. He disappeared a few days later and we are assuming he is dead. It's really too bad but its reality. 

Ham and Bacon are doing really well and are out of the 'cute' stage. Ham is probably 75lbs.  Papa wants to butcher them before winter as we cannot house them with the other pigs in the barn this winter. So we are feeding them hotter then we normally do. They are getting lots of milk and 2.5 gallons of soaked feed a day and growing like crazy! Pigs you see are not color blind and are racist. The white pigs being smaller would not fair well with the big black pigs and the black piglets. It would be too much stress for everyone so we must keep them apart. UPDATE: we may have one sold! 

The butcher pigs for this year, the 8 we kept from our sows last year, are doing really good. Papa spread corn in the cows winter feeding area from last winter and let it sprout and then put these 8 pigs in there. They love it! Papa went out and taped a couple (using a tape made to weigh pigs, you just get two measurements and it tells you about how much the animal weighs. They have them for calves too) and the biggest one is 280lbs! Great news as I took a look in our pork freezer and its pretty empty in there! 

A Little Video Of The Piglets.

They are busy little things hey?? They are an hour or two old in this movie! 

Gilts Piglets!

Gilt made this big nest before she had her babies. The nest was about 12 feet in diameter.

 She had 12, lost one the second day and is doing very well with the other 11. 

About an hour or two old.

They are 10 days old now and she brings them out to see us several times a day!

 Super cute!! 

Ham And Bacon.. A Movie!

E helped me get this little movie of Ham and Bacon this morning... Actually there is a story behind my walkabout with the camera this morning. I better start there.

J is laid up on the couch, post coming, so I was a bit surprised when E came running inside from doing chores to ask him to come out and help them. When asked, she admitted that one of the piglets had jumped out of the barn and they needed his help to get it back in. I think my eyes bugged just a little. Oh my!! I'm not super agile normally and really not right now and I knew J should NOT be out chasing piglets so I handed S off to J, got some socks on and prepared to head out and see what we, L, E and I, could do. Before I even got my second sock on though E came back and told us that L had caught him, it was Bacon thank goodness and Ham is HUGE!, and got him back in the barn!! Thank you Lord!! WAY TO GO L!!! Anyway since I had my socks on anyway I headed out to see how the piglets were doing as I've not seen them in several weeks. They are doing awesome!! Bacon, the one in the front in the movie chewing on E's shoe,is still smaller then Ham as you can see but they are both a pretty nice size for 2 months old!! I just checked and their birthday was May 10th! They are getting at least 2 gallons of milk a day, one in the morning and one at night and today we are going to soak some broiler feed in milk and feed them that tonight.

Soon they will go out in some electric fencing but we need to do a little pig surgery first :) 

Here are a few more pictures of my little walkabout :) 

Isabel in the rye. Papa has been giving them a little at a time for several days. They LOVE it. 

Little girl looking a bit pregnant :) She should have babies in about a month. 

The herd of pigs.

The tethered calves behind the house. That's our last hay bale on the trailer there.. free choice with the rye. The calves are in the cow pen but thankfully the cows act like they aren't even there. We had worries of the cows trying to adopt them and let them suck. 

Some kind of melon plant that is coming up in the cow pen.. Last year there was one plant and this year over ten! I'm curious to know if any fruit will grow. 

BIG PIGS!

Taking a break from the heat of the day. 

Just for reference... that pig laying on the right? She's probably around 250 lbs. 

That pig with her butt to us?? That's Little Girl.. she's OH about 500 lbs.

And that last pig? That's BIG Momma.. and she's oh about 600++ lbs... 

Big Momma and Little girl are our breeding stock.. purebred Berkshires. They'll be having piglets mid August along with a new breeder; known so far as 'the gilt' who is only half Berkshire. 

Ham & Bacon. A Continuing Piglet Story.

Well these two little guys got moved out of my house a couple of weeks ago now and are happily living in the chick barn. Ham is still bigger and dumber then Bacon :) He was downing 2 six oz bottles of milk 3 times a day instead of drinking out of the feed bucket like Bacon until we skipped a couple of feeds and he had to learn to fend for himself!! Bacon figure out that feed bucket super fast :) 

I just realized I should have had a kid in there for size comparison, but I didn't so you'll have to believe me when I tell you they are doing really well and getting quite a nice size for being 6 weeks old. Bacon is still very much the runt but he'll catch up eventually. I believe the plan is to give them a few more weeks in the barn and then move them out on to grass in electric netting. They are still very tame and love to suck on the kids clothes/shoes and anything else they can reach. 

A Piglet Feeding :)

Ham likes to sit to eat and Bacon prefers to stand :) 

Thank you L for taking these great pictures!!! 

Ham and Bacon Update. A Piglet Story II

24 hours old.

Two weeks old.

Amazing what 2 weeks and all the milk they can drink can do!! 

And No they do not live in that tote :) They are living in the big tote in this post minus the heat lamp but added a 1 by 4 fence around the top :) as Bacon got out one day!! 

They just visit this tote when we clean out the big tote :) 

Ah... Hot Dog Roast :)

First some stick clean up. We had 8 six month old pigs in this pen for about a month and they did a fantastic job tilling in the leftover hay, flattening it out and pulling out sticks!! Papa spread some seed in there about a week before we moved them which is a super easy way to get some nice seeding done!! A little bit of raking around the edges and we have a nice flat seeded area! 

Tucker had a stick too.. but he really didn't think we should BURN it.. he'd rather chew on it :) 

Sitting back relaxing next to the house waiting for the fire to die down a bit so we could roast hotdogs. 

Ahh what a fun way to spend a Saturday afternoon!! 

Ham & Bacon & The 4 boys.

Home sweet home :)

The ladder holds up the heat lamp and makes a good place to store piggy bottles :)  

Getting bigger! They are both doing very well. Ham is still a lot bigger then Bacon but they are both growing. They love to dig around in the shavings and make nests to sleep in. I've mostly got them off the heat lamp for the daytime now. They will be a week old tonight. We are still bottle feeding them every hour or two during the day and they see us walk by and they get all excited :) Neither of them like to be held which is just fine with me. Papa and I want to put them in the chick barn when the chicks go out on grass and they'll be able to clean up the feed mess in there and stay warm and in one place :) Being so little without a mom to keep them in they could be a real problem to fence in so the barn is a good safe place for them until they get a bit bigger. But that's at least 2 weeks away and I have a feeling they will be in this tote until then! 

Our entrance is a busy place these days.. 

These 4 little male cats are Fluffs litter and will be 5 weeks old on Saturday! One fell off the wall where she had them Wednesday night and Papa got the rest off when he got home. They are very tame considering they've not really seen humans before and only hiss a little if you startle them. The kids pick them up and cuddle them and play with them and they are wonderful with them. Papa told me this morning he had at least one of them purring so that's a good start! 

Ham and Bacon; A Piglet Story.

Saturday morning Papa and I were having a nice relaxing coffee in bed before a busy day and the phone rang. It was my uncle and he had a interesting quandary. Would we help him out?? I told him we'd talk about it and get back to him. Soon.. So we chatted about it for a minute and Papa gave me the go ahead.. I was a bit surprised I will tell you. I honestly didn't think he would say yes.

Turns out my uncles sow had a batch of piglets the night before and he was pretty sure she was not going to be able to keep up with them all. She had 15!! 14 lived and he wanted to give us the two runts to raise! I had a chiropractor appointment that morning so I got to go to town, have a wonderful lunch (you may have seen pictures on the fb page) all by myself and then visit with my folks a bit before heading out to pick them up. I had a great visit with my Aunt and Uncle and totally enjoyed seeing all their pigs before heading back to town with these two little piglets sleeping in a tote in the back of the car. They slept all the way to town and only woke up when I found the M family and dragged them, 2 parents/6 kids, to the car to see them :) Then I almost couldn't get out of the parking lot! People I haven't seen in years saw the piglet and I was swarmed :) The kids LOVED them!! Cousins K and RJ were out shopping with their grandma and got to see the piglet too!

It was a bit crazy in here when I brought them home later that day, but I did manage to get some pictures. L has Bacon and E has Ham. Bacon is quite small but makes up for it in attitude!! 

It's amazing how fast they grow! We got them on Saturday and they were less then 24 hours old. They slept most of Saturday, ate a LOT in the evening, slept all night, ate like crazy (4 times in about 3 hours!) on Sunday morning (we took them to church :) ), slept most of the afternoon, ate like crazy again Sunday night, slept all night and woke up starving this morning. All we really have to do to feed them is stick the bottle in the tote.. they fight over the bottles until they are both sucking and then they eat, switch, fight over the bottle again, and eat some more.. The whole feed takes less then 10 minutes and if you can keep them from fighting over the bottle too much or if they are really hungry you can feed them in about 5 minutes. 

The girls really love them and I often see E crooning over them. I named them Ham, the bigger one, and Bacon as a constant reminder that these pigs are just like our other pigs (except white) and will be food just like the others, no matter how much fun they are now! 

Today they will get a bigger tote and a bit of milk in a short container. Uncle Joe told me that, as early as next week, they could be eating out of a trough and not needing the bottle so much! That is fast!! I'll, hopefully :), keep you updated :)