Baby piglets

I cannot believe I haven't Blogged about baby piglets yet. Well, it was probably better to wait anyhow.  When they were born, there was a lot of drama and emotion and things that just didn't go right. We were sad to lose half of mama pigs litter, but its all learning. We will do things much differently next time. Also, she had her piglets on the coldest night of the year, in the middle of a blizzard and a couple piglets died because of that. Others died because mama squished them. There was also a ton of straw in there and when we went out to check on them, mama was rooting around the straw, burying the piglets, they were suffocating under the deep layers of straw. It was our first time and her first time, in horrible cold stormy conditions. Ugh. But we have 5 sweet little guys and they have been such a joy for us!

Pig slaughter

So we had our feeder pig slaughtered a couple weeks ago. It was very cool seeing the process. Bernadino is the guy in town that comes out to do the service. And he is just a down home country dude that's been doing this all his life. He was very respectful and clean about what he was doing. He was super friendly and he even threw Hank a pig hoof! Haha. Also, the neighbor kids were over watching the whole thing. It was so stinkin country, I loved it.

Snow day

Last week we had a great snow day. It was so fun watching the storm roll in the night before. After quite a mild winter, it was great for the boys to finally be able to play in the snow!

Indio Fair

Last week we had a great time at the Indio fair. Colt's only requests were to get cotton candy and to ride the ferris wheel... Well we got to work right away! Here are some highlights of the day.


Cotton candy... CHECK!




This was funny because we left our real horse on the farm, to pay to ride on plastic horses. Hahaha.










The boys rode lots of rides!



Watched a Creepy puppet show. Ooo, I hate creepy puppets! Bleeeehhh!



Colt was so brave climbing the rock wall!



This was the first year we didn't bring a stroller, so by the end the boys got shoulder rides. I know, they are spoiled.



We certainly didn't spend much time looking at farm animals, for obvious reasons.
But! I could NOT BELIEVE HOW CUTE THESE BABY PIGGIES WERE! And, our mama pig is pregnant right now so I cannot wait to see her cute little babies! I cannot believe how cute and little and pink and fresh these piglets were. And our grown pigs are so fat and stinky and dirty. Hahaha



Ostrich races were classic!




Ok. Do you see anything wrong with this sign!?! Ugh! I'm pretty sure they had paramedics standing by that booth!




And this was the drive home... By the way, we did ride the ferris wheel too! Just didn't get a pic. Great day at the fair!

Pigs

We have thoroughly enjoyed pigs. They definately live up to their name! They will eat and eat and eat and eat. And they eat anything. In the farm world, pigs are very sufficient gardeners. We had them in one area for a few months, then we moved them over to a completely different area. The new area was pure tumbleweeds, and big rooted brush, about three feet tall dense dry weeds. Within two days, the pigs had the new area completely plowed, and fertilized with not a weed in sight. Amazing. Very efficient gardeners, just like all the books say.
It's been very cool learning how to rotate crops and animals to most effectively use up the land and space. Here are some pics of the pigs:


This is what they look like when they eat. All three butts just porkin away. The one on the right is the one we castrated ourselves (see last summers post) and he is also one that we are raising for pork. The correct term for that is "our feeder". The others are mom and dad (sow and boar) who we are keeping for breeding.




Daddy pig



Pepper pots. That's momma. And she is going to have babies in march. If all goes well, she will have about 8-10 babies and we will sell them for about 60$ each. We'll see how that goes. Fun fact: sows are pregnant for 3months, 3 weeks, and 3 days. :-)
And hello, look at the nuts on daddy pig. Look at those nuts! I had to feel them and just holding one of them is like holding a mango in your hand.



Colt hangin out with daddy while doing some farm chores with me.

Enjoying our beef

This is our cow given back to us in pretty little packages. This was only half too! Really, our meat is very lean because we didn't take the time to "finish him out" the proper way. You are supposed to corral them into a confined area, then feed them grain for a period of time. You can do it for a month or up to 4 or 5 months. Well we built his area and started on the grain, very slowly at first. He was doing good so we up'd his grain. After a couple weeks we noticed we was getting lethargic and he had diarrhea. This can potentially kill a cow. So we got nervous and put him back out to pasture. We also called and scheduled Bernadino to come out right then because we were afraid that the cow wouldn't get any better. But by the time Bernadino came, our cow was back to normal, so we could've waited to butcher. We were eager though and we are new at all of this. We just wanted our meat I guess, so we got back very lean meat as a result. When you spend the time at the end to finish them off on the grain, it not only fattens them up, but it makes their meat very sweet.
So anyway, we've enjoyed lots of roasts, made beef jerky, and Nathan has his steak and eggs. It's been nice to have " unlimited" ground beef for burgers or to have in easy casseroles as well.
So now Molly is our lonley heiffer. We wondered about maybe getting a companion for her, but she's doing great without a man in her life. We are actually looking for a calf to raise up with her. We figure our freezer full of beef will last about a year, and by then, our calf will be ready to finish off. So we'll see what we do. We just kind of keep our eyes peeled for a good seller, now that we know what we are looking for and what we can handle.








This pic is of Molly socializing with the neighbors horses. I'm serious, she loves them and sometimes I see her totally talking to and flirting with one of them.

Marinating beef jerky

Cowies

We love our Cowies. We originally bought 2 steer and a heifer. We bought the steer to raise for beef. Grass fed natural hormone/antibiotic/steroid free beef. Then the guy we bought them from told us that he had a heifer for sale. They were all at lower prices than what were on the market at the time, And we were anxious to just get our "farm" going. So we had 3 cows and you know we kind of just did what we read to do. Animals basically need 3 things; food water and shelter. Once you get that in your head and you get away from the"right" way to do things, it makes it just fun and easy.



We bought them all young, around 6 months old. Generally, people slaughter their steer at around 2yrs old. Well we got them in march, and just before thanksgiving we realized our steer were bulls. Yep, they had a couple of meatballs up under there. This does happen sometimes. They are castrated at just a couple months old, from a process called banding. They put a rubber band (not an actual rubber band) around the young bulls balls, and after a few days the whole thing just fall off. Well in this case, the testicles slipped back up into the stomach during the castration process. So one of our bulls had just one testie and the other had a full set. Anyway.



So we put them up for sale on Craigslist. We figured we could sell one and use that money to butcher the other. So that's exactly what happened. BUT of course there was an adventure to it! This Arab guy from San Diego calls Nathan and in a distinct Muslim accent says, " I want to buy your bull. But I butcher on your property. And I no use gun. I slit his throat" HAHAHA ok weirdo. So Nathan tells him that we don't have any supplies or the equipment to butcher. He assures Nathan that he has done it before and he will bring what he needs. So Nathan tells him he can come over and check it out as long as he pays for the for the bull before he does anything to it. Lol. So yes, the guy ends up coming over. He is totally Muslim, wearing a robe and yamica. He has a big bushy beard and pulls up in a mini van. Yeah. So he does it. And it actually turned out to be pretty neat. He had definately done it before, so he knew what he was doing. He ropes the bulls feet together so it fell to the ground. Then the guy slit its throat, it was quick. He then hangs the bull onto the pulley system and starts working on him. He gutted him, skinned him, it was a very clean process. And through it all, he was saying prayers to Allah. Yes, when he killed him he said a prayer to Allah, and all through the process, praying. It was a sacred thing. So he bagged up all the bad parts, and came away with 4 quarters of the cow in the back of his mini van. He put his robe and yamica back on, said another prayer and drive off into the sunset.





Soon after that, we fattened up the one bull left for us, then called Bernadino out to butcher him. Bernadino is the guy here in Anza that everyone calls to "take away" their animals. He was professional, super fast and easy. Bernadino takes the gutted, skinned cow to Cathy (she's the lady that processes the meat into nice little packages of steaks, roasts and ground beef) and we are now waiting for our freezer full of beef:-)
Calling Bernadino out to kill, gut, skin, and take away the cow is $100. Then Cathy charges based on the "hanging weight" that is the weight of the cow when it is hanging upside-down all gutted and skinned, head off and feet off. So the hanging weight of our cow was 360 lbs. Just on a side note, the hoof weight of our bull was about 650 lbs. Hoof weight is the weight of the bull while he is alive. Then Cathy processes the meat from there. From buying the cows, raising them on our natural grassy land, paying Bernadino and Cathy, our meat all comes out to about $4.50 / lb.