Snapshots on the Farm

A warm, dry day in May is perfect for planting season. Our family is getting into the fields this week to start planting corn and soybeans.

Sign of the Farmpocalypse

Every issue of Sports Illustrated has a brief quote titled Sign of the Apocalypse, a humorous but true sports news item that makes you wonder--have we gone too far? In that spirit, I present another installment of Sign of the Farmpocalypse, because I just can't make this stuff up.

A newspaper in Australia was forced to issue a correction about a story on pigs that were endangered during a flood. They originally reported 30,000 pigs as being lost, when actually the farmer said, "30 sows and pigs." [Note: I realize this clips is from 2011.]

Snapshots on the Farm - Auction Edition

Morgan and her cousin were big helpers at our pig auction this weekend.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow is our annual pig auction and the kids (and Husband) are all quite excited. In fact, it's 10 p.m. on a Friday night and I am the only one still up. Tomorrow is going to be a HUGE day.

Preparations for tomorrow started last September when Husband had to plan out which sows would be mated with which boars, so we could have little pigs the right age in April.

Husband has been working hard the past two weeks to sort out the pigs he wants to sell (the pigs are being auctioned to 4-H kids and families who want to take a pig to the fair). Each pig has a new ear tag for easy identification during the auction and has had a haircut by world-renowned pig groomer, Claude'.

Tomorrow, we will load up the pigs on multiple hog trailers, gather up all the 4-H volunteers and family members we can find and head out to the local fairgrounds, where we'll wash each pig (and by "we," I mean the kids) and put them in pens for families to review prior to the auction.

From our youngest helpers to the camera-shy Claude' (see him in the background of this photo!), to even me and the other women in the family as sale clerks, this is truly a farm family event. Tomorrow we will work hard, sell a LOT of pigs (we hope) and then march our stinky selves into the local Big Boy minutes from closing and order a ton of food.

Tomorrow at this time, I'll probably just be turning off our ancient sale computer. 

So tonight I better get some sleep.

Farm Dog Heaven

How many children are told that their missing pet went to live on a farm, where it will have plenty of room to run and other animals to play with?

Yesterday we buried our farm dog, May. She was approximately 13, having come to live on our farm, like many farm dogs do, after being abandoned by her original owners.

May the Dog was a chaser of cats and catcher of ground moles. She "farmed" every day with Husband. Although we suspect she was part pit bull, she was kind to children, pigs and cows but tough when faced with raccoons and even foxes.

While her roadkill breath was not welcome in our house, she found shelter in soft piles of straw in the barn and sunny spots in the barnyard.

Having already enjoyed wide open spaces, stealing water from the cows' deep, cool tank, snacking on pigs (that died of natural causes) and rodents (that didn't), doing daily "work," barking vigorously at every possible feed truck, sampling every type of poop, I have to wonder how farm dog heaven could be any better than farm life.

May the Farm Dog
May 2000-March 2013

Fair Weather Farmer

Only days ago, we practically had a blizzard. Now it's sunny and in the 60s! Fair weather farmer that I am, I (finally) ventured out with the kids to visit some of the newest members of the farm.

Here is a Landrace sow and her cute little piglets. Landrace pigs are known for their floppy ears and I have decided that there is almost nothing cuter than a floppy-eared pig.

They will live in this private house with their momma and heat lamp until they are old enough to be weaned. They can crawl under the board to visit their mother and get milk but they can crawl back under the board to sleep and stay warm. It's good for little pigs to have a place away from their mother--hey, if you had nine babies and weighed 400 pounds, you might lay down and squish one too.

These little pigs are three days old in this picture today. But just in case you want to take one home to snuggle, note that they will weigh 250 pounds or so in six months. 

When Farm Kids Make a Snowman

Earlier this week, a band of snow stopped over our farm and dumped at least seven inches. While Husband trudged outside to dig out the pigs, Ryan, Morgan and I packed up our snowman (and woman) supplies and headed outside.

 

The yellow eyes were my idea--but not really. When I was gathering supplies, I thought it would be good to use the two halves of plastic eggs to make the eyes, so I ducked into the kids' playroom and grabbed green and blue eggs. What was I thinking?

 

Ryan and Justin use plastic eggs year-round as their pretend pigs on their pretend farms. They actually have a whole pretend farm economy that even includes hog shows and marketing. The blue and green eggs were their best ones, OF COURSE, according to Ryan, so he threw some new ones in the bag we were taking outside. So, yellow eyes.

 

We also used a bucket from the barn packed with snow to make their bodies. So that's not eczema on the snow woman's face, it's feed.

I tried to tell Husband about the yellow eyes and how ONLY our son would make me put back the blue egg and how ONLY our kids would get feed on their snowman, but translating things to him from farm experience to average person reality is nearly IMPOSSIBLE. And I ended up looking like the snow woman above. (And since Husband had been shoveling all day, he looked like the snowman by the end of our conversation.)

At least the soulless yellow eyes were gone.