Porcine Preperations

I'm not going to bother with a big history of our farm, I think most anyone who ends up at this site will have followed our story at my blog and Steph's.

Instead, I propose to give the people what they want: an update on what's going on at our farm these days and, more so, lots of pictures.

+   +   +

The chickens are doing well. We've sadly learned that the old adage 'good fences make good neighbors' is profoundly true. Or, perhaps, bad fences make bad neighbors--at least when the neighbors have dogs.

In any event, we're working on a major fence to keep the chickens totally safe. We spent last weekend getting posts in the ground for our permanent fence around the chickens' front yard.

3 of the 5 posts

Putting that picture up made me realize how shoddy the south side of the coop looks. We'll have to work on that this summer...

In any event, the hens have kicked their egg-laying into high gear as of late. Steph collected something like 30+ eggs in the last two days. We're hoping to sell around 10 dozen or so this weekend when we head into the Twin Cities for a birthday party.

Nota Bene -- In addition to our desire to grow and raise our own food, we hope to supplement our income by selling the surplus goods.

Anywho, here are a few pictures of the birds.

The hen in the foreground is 'Henny Penny', the poor hen whom we operated on in the basement a few months ago. The rooster pictured is the dominant leader of our flock, 'The Bard'.

Steph took a short video of the chicks grazing in their front yard. If you crank your volume up you can hear there contented chatter over the din of the frogs in our pond, both pleasant sounds indeed.

This afternoon, after I finished my 10th and final article of the week (phew!) and after Steph had more or less finished our taxes, we headed out to work on getting the pig pen and building ready for our little piglets. Last fall, we'd cut down all the scrubby brush that had grown up over the years, so that made our work much easier. 

Our stock building: Pigs door is on the right, workshop on the left

The ground slopes away from the pig's building rather steeply, so an aesthetically pleasing fence was sadly out of the question. Instead, we stair-stepped each section down to the low point, which is pictured on your left. We bought green treated planks of 2x8'' lumber last weekend at Menards, so all we had to do was ready the posts by removing all the old screws and nails, cut the pieces to length and nail them in. 

Yours truly prepping the old posts

One complication was attaching the last section to the building, the bottom of which is just concrete. To accommodate the lowest fence planks we attached a few scraps of green treat to the building, and then fastened the fencing onto that.

When we were done with the fencing, apart from adding the wire mesh, we unloaded the pig feed we'd picked up this afternoon and spread a bale and half of straw in the pig's building. We sure hope they'll be happy in their cozy abode.

I'll be sure to take more pictures of our renovations soon!

Other news from this week: on Monday evening we visited Love Tree Farm to pick out our guardian dog.  We haven't decided on a name for the pup yet, but one frontrunner is Hildegard -- after St. Hildegard of Bingen and a clever pun on her guardian duties. By the way, the fence that we're building around the chicken's front yard will also serve to keep our pup safe until she gets big enough to ward off assailants and will also promote her bonding with the chicken flock.