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.
