Just another Day on the Farm

Well, Figured I had better give a Miss Piggy update.. So we are still waiting and at this point, she is just getting bigger in both size and teat development, as we don’t know when we was breed, we are really in the dark to a point on just how far along she is going and I have given up trying to read her body, I swear that she has had contactions and yet she is so calm about it that clearly its fake or hicks or something.

The important thing is that she is eating well, drinking well, comfortable and being very clean, she has picked a bathroom corner in her nice large pen, which makes cleanup very swift, and thankfully at least for now, she has no issues at all with us getting into the pen to do her required cleaning, the fact that she keeps her main bedding clean is just so helpful, now if I could just teach Girl to not poo in or by her bedding area..

Angelo took a bit to get used to being a lone boy, he was raised in a good size herd, the pigs can still hear each other and if in just the right spot, see each other a bit, but he has come into his own in terms of really liking having his feed etc all to himself, and he is learning to like fall windfall apples.

As for my little Miss Rooten Tooten, well yesterday I went over to help catch my little one and I was truly impressed at how sweet tempered the mother is, she is a good girl, both motherly but also trusting that we were not really hurting her little ones, we caught the one I was sure was a female, wrong, turns out it was a male.. so looked at the other two and both males as well, none of which have been altered, and I really want a female.. so that left the two that were out in the bigger pasture and they where not about to even consider coming in for the feed in the smaller pen (which was still good size)and slowly getting pushed into a corner to get sexed, so for now I have left empty handed, the litter just became available as they just turned eight weeks, four out of five are already spoken for, they swear that there is a female in there so she must be one of the other two, which makes her a little wilder..

I am not to worried about it, I can move her into a pen nice and close to the house for evening or night time extra training, with her out in the garden pen for the day, if she is really wild, I might just move her into a pen in the house for a week or so to gentle her right down and start her clicker training, I need a very relaxed and basic trained pig if I want her to work as my garden plow, and she had handling as a young baby pig for the first week or two of her life by the kids but since has been allowed to be a little pasture/woods baby.

Horsey smell,
Breath of hay,
Soothing squeak of leather…

Perhaps she’s done a double-dip
Of mallow fluff ‘n licorice?
(LOVE those socks and feathers; )

Whicker, whicker; snuffle snort
Velvet soot, butterscotch blaze,
A little someone’s finger trips
A tiny trail across her nose…

Birdie’s dandy
Fine glass of Brandy
Lovely eyes, liquid soft
Went’n stole FarmGal’s heart.

She is a seven year old mixed draft mare.. the logical side of me can list you her pro’s and con’s and I will most likely do a post on her, in fact as the next week or two will be a trial period, I imagine that I will be doing a fair number of posts on her.

However for today, I am just going with my gut and heart.. which both want me to take this chance and Go! for it.

Well, here she is.. still mulling and thinking but its a maybe, the perk of being set up for when Miss Piggy was smaller is that we are set up and good to go.. and we have lots of ground to be rooted up, so she would not be bored that’s for sure..

Well, with Miss Piggy heading into motherhood and getting as big as she is, I am really giving thought to adding in a little female potbelly pig to use as a) a miss piggy friend, pigs are very much herd animals and I don’t plan on keeping back any of her offspring and b) as my piggy garden plow, its a little female I am looking at, and will never outgrow my moveable garden box with shelter set up for my garden plow pig, if I get her, I am going to call her Miss Rooten Tooten.. Aka Tooties for short and for training.

Her mother is a full size pot belly pig, and her father is a mini pot belly pig, so this means I don’t have quite as much information on her adult size as I would like, she could take after her mom, she could take after her dad or she could meet anywhere in the middle, but I still have a good idea of both end sizes. She comes from a  natural born litter of five wee ones, all are doing well, she is just over two months in age, and she is used to be a outdoor and pasture piglet, but is friendly and interested in that smart piggy way.

She is the plainest of all the piglets but as I got to look them over, she has the best conformation of them all, maybe not the right conformation for a pot belly pig itself, because I don’t know what to look for it that regards. Some of her siblings have white feet, white spots  and or blazes.. so they were perhaps more pretty..

But she has the best legs, feet, nice straighter back, good neck and shoulder set , the less etreme face, good under jaw, very natural in her looks and movements, she had the best coat of all of them.. I like her .. and I liked the look in her eyes that spoke of just how “there” she is..

We are in the cool off, sleep on it, wait 24 hours stage and think on it..

A horse update:

Well, she is beautiful and she is in reasonable good shape, nothing that I could not fix up quickly with some good hay (her pasture is as sad as most locally), some care and she needs a good worming, she is the make and model I want, the age is right, the temperment is right, but the owner is a wee bit of a “fibber” if you ask me..  She may have been well broke at one time but its been awhile..

Now, I honestly don’t know how much time or ground work would need to be put into her but I expect not that much, she comes to be caught, she is beautiful on the halter/lead, she tacks up with no issues, she is good with different folks getting on and off.. but the riding part.. not so sure of herself, as in she needs work there in a big way..

She went from being the ideal horse (per what i was told) to a project horse that has alot of basic’s solid and needs both ground work and saddle work.. and trust me that means she no longer fits that very long list I have for the perfect horse, throw in that I really wanted a gelding so that I didn’t have to deal with heats or any possable wee ones, as Farmer T has a stud in her herd across the way.. and I am doing the iffy thing at the moment.

I think If I am being honest that if she was what I had been told, shown etc, I would have most likely brought her home and worked with her, now I really don’t know.. she might end up at Farmer T’s anyway, in which case, I might “borrow her” for a while and do some ground work daily with her for a bit and see what she is like and go from there..

I will keep you posted and share photo’s one way or the other..

Ok, I am thinking about getting a horse, for no other real reason then

A) I like horses

b) I like to ride

c) I’m being selfish

Its possable that I have found a horse that fits my whole list of “must haves” and I wrote that list so that it would be next to impossable to find a horse that had it all.

Its a amazing price, and she just kind of fell into my lap so to speak..

I am finding myself at a crossroads of, should I only expend the time and effort on the farm for something that gives me back a result in terms of meat, eggs, fiber, and milk.

Should I make room in my barnyard for a critter that while can be used as a draft (honestly can’t do anything that my draft cow can’t do!) just because I want to be able to ride?

I have the barn space, I have the pasture space, I already have the feed and if I cut down a bit on the sheep flock, I can keep everything within budget and the same as it is now.. I have tons of riding trails locally, I don’t need or plan to do any hauling and if I need to do so, I can ask Farmer T or my reguar critter hauler Roger if I want to pay for it, I can piggy back health checks and feet getting done by walking her down the road for when the vet and farrier comes to do Farmer T’s herd.

Now I was raised with parents that truly dislike crows and ravens, and when I say dislike, I am being kind in how I state that.. to this very day, they are both very much anti-crow, my mother always says how much it bothers her that they will pick on the little song birds, and will steal eggs and kill and eat little ones.

I on the other hand have always felt drawn to ravens and to an extend their cousins the crows, we have a mated pair of crows that claim our farm as their own, and they have been the same pair now for close to five years, they in some ways feel like old friends, while their offspring come and go, some staying for an extra year or sometimes seeming to come back for a visit..  If you watch them, they will tell me how things are on the farm, they are in many ways a better alarm then the hounds.

The funniest story I have on my farm crows is that I think my purrpots seem to know who belongs and who does not, last winter I watched my regular pair plus one of their young but adult offspring comes into the yard to help themselves to some bits of seeds that had been spilled on the ground, and they came with a new mated pair of older ravens, and seemed almost to be hosting them, I was watching from the living room window as they appeared to show them where to land, where to go for the feed and appeared to be leading by example that all was well, and it was until the moment that the new pair came down to land and quick as you can say -Ack!, one of my farm purrpots who had not moved a muscle and who I had not even seen in hiding when the regular pair came in, did a flying leap after one of the new ones, and it appeared to be a either a slight hit or a very near miss, while they took of screaming, the regular pair appeared to scold the cat.. I wish I could have a critter translator to have seen the thoughts everyone involved had..

But my real love is ravens, I adore older smart ravens, and I do miss them something fierce now that we live in crow country, while I enjoyed the ravens in NWT, it was in Iqaluit that I formed a special bond with a wild old boy, I called Kurplunk, he was huge!, and he loved the sound of rock falling and then hitting water, and clearly had played that game till he could so the sounds perfectly.

I heard the sound before I figured out which raven did it, and then I figured out who and rewarded him with a treat for giving me sure a giggle, and that started our “friendship” he learned and did “tricks” and got treats back for it, he was outside and as wild as can be but he got to the point that he would come to the second floor bedroom window and knock to get my attention.

I rarely feed him or his mates (of which he had two in the time I was up there) during spring/summer or fall but he knew that come winter, and for sure when the storms or the worst of the winds came that he could find a high value feed to be had from me, either dog food or cat food with a bit of fresh table scraps, perhaps some black sunflower seeds or peanut butter balls with bird seed in them..

I certainly didn’t want him used to only eating from me, but on the other hand, I did like to know that when the tough got going, he could get a little extra into his tummy, he always shared with his mate and any offspring he had with him but he was a top bird in the area.. truly I have no idea his age but he was without a doubt one of the biggest ravens I have ever seen to date.

Do which side of the fence do you fall on, like or dislike? Cringe that they are in fact a member of the higher food chain or admire them for being as clever and smart as they can be.. consider them dirty or consider them to invaluable part of the ecosystem?

Lets not forget the windfall apples for the piggys and the cow treats.. and lets not forget the wonderful time spent outside with DH on a long weekend holiday!