This Little Piggy

So when we purchased our homestead we discussed what we would be raising and when. We had a timeline. In order of importance we had: egg chickens, garden, bees, goats, rabbits, and meat birds. Notice what is NOT on there. Yep. Pigs. I didn't want to raise pigs our first year...well really at all because I thought I would become attached, I thought it would be expensive, I thought they would smell...Well, only one of those is true. They smell.

Our friends from TNT Ranch, Tab and Ty, (Leigh works with Tab) bred their pig and ended up with 18 piglets. Somehow...I'm still not sure how...I agreed that we could raise not one, but two. Then Aunt Chrissy said she wanted one. So now we are raising three. And as much as I hate to admit it, its fun!

The first thing we had to do was build a pen that would be strong enough to keep three 270 lb pigs confined, and judging by my chicken coop, I was not the person for the job. Luckily Ty had the know-how and the equipment. Under his direction and with the help of his auger we sunk railroad ties and attached hog panels to them. The ground we have here is UNBELIEVABLE! So easy to see why you can build houses out of adobe. It was seriously like concrete!

We had to soak the ground and that made a horrible muddy mess-that the kids thought was FABULOUS!

People pay good money for mud baths. Noah got one for free!

We are an equal opportunity family!

Once the pen was constructed it was time for pigs! Leigh named them Red, White, and Blue. We got them over 4th of July weekend but one is red:

One is white, and the one with the black ears had 1 blue eye.

From left to right: White, Red, Blue:

They have lots of room for the time being. Come this fall we will have lots of very yummy pork. I am not that attached to them. Red bites and White and Blue avoid me like the plague, though Leigh can get them all to let him touch them.

Leigh had to take Blue to Chrissy to have him castrated (we are not ready to start having piglets...and they are siblings). Apparently he helped. Blue was pretty mad at us for a few days after. I got the chance to vaccinate Red and White, and we have to do all of them again in about a week and a half. Pig wrangling is kind of fun...when they don't bite you.

But alas, we do not have a single dairy goat or bees, but we do have 3 little piggies. I guess it's a fair trade off. I love bacon and sausage and I am happy to be able to give these pigs a happy and safe life until it is time for them to provide safe nourishment for my kids. But I don't think I'll ever be a full fledged pig farmer. 3 non-breeders are good for me!

A preview of bees

The ultimate goal...and there are a lot here on Mediocre Acres...is to have 2 operational bee hives. There are a few reasons for this. Hold on to your hats were about to have a lesson in bees:

In the past six or so years, bee keepers have reported the disappearance of entire colonies of bees seemingly overnight. They have dubbed this phenomenon Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). There are several theories as to why this has been happening, but there is no conclusion as of yet. Some of the theories (and as I see it they are all contributing factors) are: GM crops, malnutrition (monoculture deprives bees of a diverse diet), pesticides, and climate change. Without the honey bee it would be impossible for us to produce food.

There are several documentaries on Nexflix explaining more in depth about CCD such as "Vanishing of the Bees" and "Colony".  In an attempt to do what little we can to help this issue, we decided that raising honeybees would be great because we would be helping the bee population and be getting home grown honey too! We are planning a few areas on the property to be designated flower gardens with plants especially favored by the bees like poppies, lavender and rosemary.

We got to the point of purchasing the bees (hives and equipment are already purchased) and had to "reallocate" some funds (to stuff like food and electricity) so bees will not happen until next Spring. But that's okay. Beekeeper Leigh is ready for next year!

And so is Jr. Beekeeper Elliot!

While it is not possible for everyone to keep bees, help how you can by planting bee friendly plants in your garden, avoiding GM food when possible, and not using pesticides. There are lots of non-chemical pest deterrents you can use. Just use the Google-machine and you can find lots! One of the best ones we have found is letting children into the garden to pick bugs off the plants and letting them feed them to the chickens! Fun had by all...well, except for the bugs. So stay tuned till next Spring for when we get the bees!

Chicken Coop Stage 3: Chickens

So now that we had the coop, it was time for the most exciting part. We were able to trade our friends Tab and Ty a bag of chicken feed for 8 hens. We got 5 Bard Rocks and 3 Orpingtons (I believe). I have not seen Leigh so excited in a long time!

"The Ladies", as we call them, seemsed to like their new digs!

And the kids LOVE to sit outside and watch them. (And as you can see, Elliot has earned a new nickname: Baby Buttcrack. There is always a moon on Mediocre Acres!

Once we had the hens for a while we decided we needed more. Our coop can house up to 15 chickens so why not have 15 right? Leigh contacted a woman on Craigslist who had some unsexed Copper Marans. Becuase they were unsexed we knew they were young and not yet layers...we just didn't realize HOW young...

We got 7 of them and the kids were super excited that they were babies.

Elliot is going to be a farmer...

It took a few days for The Ladies to get comfortable in their new sorrounding, but before long we had an egg!!! I decided since Elliot was the one who found it, he could eat it. (Before finding the egg, he found my cherry chapstick.)

Even though he had had breakfast only an hour before, Elliot wanted toast with his hard boiled egg.

YUM!

We got our first egg on June 5th. As of today our total egg count is 93 eggs. We have given away 12 and only broken 1. Dang...we eat a lot of eggs! I have become a huge proponent of backyard chickens. In the evenings the family will sit around the coop and watch the chicken shenanigans. Not a bad way to spend an evening. 

Chicken Coop Stage 2: PAINT!!!

So now it was time for the fun part! We were thinking about painting it yellow to match the house and the shed, but then, while wandering around Lowe's for the one millionth time since we started this project, I got an idea. Why not make grass, flowers, lady bugs and bees? But first we needed a base coat.

I think Noah got more on himself than on the coop. He was banned from painting after this.

Julia did a pretty awsome job getting the paint on the coop.

And our painting foreman: HEATHER!!!!

She kept morale up :)

Once Noah was relieved of his painting duty he decided to find something else to do. He decided that the sun was a little to intense. He needed sunscreen...and LOTS of it!!!

Our little baby sunshine was just happy to be here...like always.

When I explained to Heather about the idea of flowers and grass she thought it was a great idea, but then she put an even better twist in it. Why not make the flowers out of handprints? BRILLIANT!!! Daycare provider for the win!

We asked Liam what kind of flower he made. He said, "Big Poppy" so that's what we called him for the rest of the day.

Even Quinn got some representation on the coop.

Thumb prints for the lady bugs and bees...

There! All done! Pretty stinkin' cute if I do say so myself!

 But wait...Are we missing something? Oh RIGHT! Chickens...stay tuned...

The Chicken Coop--Stage 1

The first thing we had planned for the new house was to build a chicken coop. Our family goes through a lot of eggs and I get WAY over excited when whole chickens go on sale. (There are so many things that can be done with whole birds!) We also have a growing phobia about what goes into commercial meats. I did a lot of research on what kind of coop we wanted, how many birds we wanted to house and what conditions the birds would need for optimum laying. BackyardChicken.com was a great help.

This was the design I wanted to mimic:

So we had the spot...

...and the wood...

GO GO GADGET CHICKEN COOP! Well, that didn't work so we had to get to work.

We have hard, and I mean HARD pack red clay in our backyard. Our first step was to sink 4 4x4's into the clay for our foundation. With a pick ax and 2 people it took almost 6 hours to dig 50 feet of 4 inch deep trench.

 I even tried to teach Noah, though he was just using the claw end of the hammer. He gave it his best shot.

Elliot was more interested in helping haul away the dirt...

Soon we began to realize there was something askew. That something askew was our wood. I have never constructed anything that required 1) me to be the foreman 2) something that needed to be "framed" 3) something that would need to support weight that did not set one the ground and 4) something that would house something living. So that being said I was unaware you needed to lay out every piece of wood you were to buy to make sure it did not curve, twist, or bow. (Silly me I figured quality control was done prior to hitting the retailer). So in the end we had to make right angles and flush joints with wood that looked like this:

So a lot of out joints looked like this:

We ended up dedicating this coop to my dad "who taught me everything I know about exterior lumination"

Despite the crappy wood (our team mantra soon because "discount wood is not a discount") things started to progress.

I mastered the miter saw (which is quite fun).

 The coop and run began to take shape.

Though after a while I was beginning to think "What the heck did I get into!!"



Project clean up feel by the wayside

 And even Phoebe began to laugh at us.

Despite the setbacks we were able to get the coop completed (though this picture is what we took before we put the final wall on it.) And we miscalculated the vinyl flooring and ran out so we had to put in leftover laminate that we have in our house. We found some in the shed. So our chickens have a dance floor!

When I took my shoes off I looked like I had the worst tan ever! But alas, it was just dirt...but now I'm not sure if that's better or worse!

Though I'm not the only one with the nasty feet! Heather was sporting the questionable "tan line" too!

But while we're on the subject of feet, I had to take a picture of my "foot carnage" It seems that I cannot visit with my sister without some sort of horrific foot injury. I have sliced my foot with glass and stubbed the end off my toe, but this time a 3x8 piece of ply wood was dropped on my foot while I was wearing sandals. (No I was not working I had just returned from a trip to the store and I was assisting "for a sec" when the foot carnage occurred.) This picture does not do it justice. I was pretty confident it was broken for the first few days, and the next day the whole top of my foot was black.



We were so exhausted after the 3...or was it 4...days of building that toward the end we were just trying to get the darn thing done...and thus our homestead was named: Mediocre Acres: Where Good Enough is Good Enough for Us! (Though I'm thinking we will not be marketing our meat under that name)

With phase one of building completed it was time to paint!!! Stay tuned for part 2 of the chicken coop!