The sun was so bright today. One of those classic blue sky, puffy white cloud days. Like you remember from summers as a kid. All the kids were out “helping” today. That means while cutting grass on my little Forest Gump lawn tractor, Daniel was sailing on the bow, Jude was in my lap steering, and Bella was on the side fender laughing in my ear. It must have been ridiculous to see, but it was a lot of fun. Days like this are for cutting your silage while you can, slipping in a few conversations with lambs, piglet belly scratches, catching kittens, and yelling “get those scissors away from your sister’s face, put that machete back where you got it”! Most of the piglets have joined the herd and are hanging with the big girls. It makes me a little nervous, but for the most part the giants are gentle with the babies. The grass is getting real thick, between knee and waist high. Cut and compressed the animals eat about a cubic yard of it per day. Monday or Tuesday the pigs go into a new pasture so I won’t need to bring it to them anymore. I think we are getting pretty close to being able to farrow on pasture anyway so mowing will be a thing of the past (I keep telling myself). I hope to catch some time lapse of them switching pastures so you can see them at work.

Don’t cast your pearls before swine...

Or your eyeglasses for the same reason…

With all the litters we have now, the initial morning feed has gotten complex. There is a lot of prepping and bringing food to the farrowing pens. Patata was not pleased that she was not first in line and decided to jump over the wall to meet me half way. Her piglets were as shocked as I was. I could see squealing little snouts popping up and down just over the crest of the wall, as if they had found a little trampoline. Fortunately she only went into the cache pen I built next to her. I placed the feed in with her piglets, and quickly she hopped back over the wall. She knows her piglets take after her and would finish the dish before asking if she wanted some. You would not expect this girl to be so nimble, but she is a slave to her passions, and little stays in her way. Ok, pigs are now in their proper places, how shall we keep them put? Nail a board up higher of course. I go on a barnyard scavenger hunt gathering all the things: old 2x6, nails, hammer etc… I start nailing the board and off go the glasses - plummeting into the pig pen of no return, where 52 hooves quickly smash and turn to nice compost anything that meets their acquaintance . Think fast! Yes I caught them just in time, that was close. Putting them back on I realize I popped out a lens. The world suddenly looked like a 3D movie without the special glasses. After some left eye- right eye experimentation I narrowed down what eye was functioning. I looked out of the last good eye to spy that my precious lens landed softly in a nice fresh pile of doo. While considering whether I will lay down under those 52 hooves to retrieve my precious vision, or send Kid Pig to seeing eye dog school, I thought of a third choice. I will reach in with the shovel and fetch it! I fumble around half blind, which for some reason is worse than had I just took the glasses off - due to some weird fuzzy depth perception thing going on. But no time for smart moves and wise choices, I am busy trying to do something fast. I find the shovel and walk across the fuzzy-blurry barnyard to retrieve the precious gem. I jump into the cache pen and stretch in with my hardware. Delicate…gentle…don’t bury it! There may be nothing more curious than a piglet. To a piglet, shovel in the pen means party. Everyone comes over to see what this amazing thing is. At least three of them are biting it, and at least one is sitting on it. Somehow me and the piglets managed to get the lens on the shovel and back in my hand. I quickly wiped it on, yes my shirt (at this point it’s about survival) and returned it to its proper and very functional place. When I got home and told the kids the story, Jude replied "did you wash your glasses yet"? Anyhoo, the pigs have been hogging all the attention and it is time to start sharing some with the next enterprise, hops. This picture is the remainder of last years Cascades giving a black barleywine a fruity undertone, with a healthy layer of Hallertau's on the top (fresh hopping). I stole a couple samples this week, but I think it needs a little more time before it is finished, hopefully in oak. This one actually is brewed with a wild yeast, since I never got a chance to pitch the yeast (too busy chasing pigs) - but it decided it wanted to live and fermented itself. A lager surprisingly. Well this batch is the last of our hop supply so it is time to step up production. By end of May we will have in the ground: Cascade, Centennial, Chinook, Cluster, Crystal, Fuggle, Galena, Glacier, Hallertau, Liberty, Mt Hood, Newport, Nugget, Perle, Saaz, Santiam, Sterling, Tettnanger,Vangaurd, Willamette - and a very very special variety that I will talk about at a later time. Tomorrow Joel Salatin is speaking in Seattle so I need to get things wrapped up at the farm quickly.

This little guy is our first hazelnut, imported wild from my sister's yard over on Fox Island. It is step one of our long term plan of transitioning to a savanna like polyculture for greater diversity grazing year round. Hops are going in the ground by end of may, and on that note I have been reading Ezra Meeker's "Hop Culture in the United States". It is a phenomenal read from a local historical perspective if not only because I am the uber hop nerd. Love the pioneer spirit.

This will only take me two days, seriously...

Seriously. I have been trying to get the perimeter fence finished for almost a month. Every time someone will ask "hows it coming", I reply "two more days". Those words have become a famous habitual lie at Crying Rock. Today I really was on my last second day of the last two days of fencing, when Gerbil started shooting babies out her back end. Soooo, it may take a couple more days after all. This birth was different than the previous ones. Patata and Silly had no issue with me picking up their little ones and shuffling them around. Gerbil is the dominant sow in the bunch, and for good reason. She looks like a bull with a flat nose, and today she was a momma bear. Every time I came near she puttered loudly like a Harley Davidson, and had a crazy wide eyed stare. Not the same girl as when her nest was empty. So I conceded and built a pen around where she laid with the piglets as opposed to trying to move her to a different location - while she eats me for Easter brunch a day early. This birth however was much cleaner. She had them all washed up before I came in. With Silly's litter I ended up walking around Wallymart in the late hours, half asleep, looking for a heat lamp with a piglet in my shirt - umbilical chord hanging out, and placenta covering my hand (long story - ask me later). I am probably in a picture somewhere on a Internet site because of that ordeal. Anyhoo that's the cost of living the dream. I'll write a little more in two days, I'll have time because I'll be finished with the fence.

Spring has sprung...

and today it sprung a leak. It was monsoon season here today. I am used to seeing rain in the context of on my windshield, or draining down my umbrella walking to work. It is a completely different experience watching it blow and billow across the large pasture, while listening to it all fall on the barn's metal roof. It was a beautiful orchestration. For those of you who get the blues when this weather happens, I have found the cure for it! All you have to do is develop a dependency for it, and you will relax when it comes. Build a rain catchment for your garden or hot tub, or put a metal roof over your deck for coffee outside. You will extend your fresh air season immensely, and welcome the rain like I do. That being said the sun we had last week was friggin awesome. Burn on my back to prove it. I can’t believe how long it has been since I have posted a blog entry. It has been very busy here at Crying Rock. Patata’s litter is 4 weeks old and they are huge! Silly’s litter is two weeks old and growing steady. We have had another litter since them and two on the way in a week or so. After that we shouldn’t see any new ones for about 2.5- 3 months when the Mulefoot\Chinese are born. We added 3 more Chinese landrace to the fray by the way. The last one we added -Annabel, so enamored Kid Pig that he immediately decided to get fresh without even taking time to introduce himself (it’s kind of his MO). This royally freaked Annabel out and she decided to break out and run off into the sunset. Hours later, me with a rope and a bucket of feed, neighbor Ken with his zippy golf cart and wascally hounds could do nothing to out sprint this chubby little ball of speed. Finally I called cousin Donny with his livestock wrangling dogs and he had her caught within a few minutes. Annabel is small until you have to carry her, I was sore for a week. I gave her a couple weeks to acclimate across the fence from Kid Pig, and this time it went a little smoother integrating them. She has taught me well. In the next couple days we will be moving all the sows who are not nursing litters into the new pasture, and planting behind them in the old paddock the first seasonal forage pasture. This time around it will be yellow peas, sugar beets, clover, canola, and oats. And a little bit of whatever they didn’t eat before they moved. I have had allot of crazy ideas about raising pigs and now that our feet are getting wet, we see working out (and others not so much). Many of you are familiar with the industrial model and understand that it is expected when a piglet is born it will have its tail cut off, needle teeth broken out, castrated, ears clipped or tagged, iron injected, and who knows what else…
Well I am happy to report that despite not stealing their tails – they have not in turn had them bitten off by a tail hungry sibling. Castration, well the jury is out and we will hear back in 5 months, but some research is on my side (and so are all the male piglets). Despite failing to remove their teeth, mom and piglets are in great shape and growing fast. Despite not cutting strange triangle identifiers out of their ears, each piglet is born incredibly unique and we just identify it by its natural markings. Despite not injecting Iron, our piglets figured out how to eat grass and dirt on their second day of life and therefore are not iron deficient. They are just happy pigs, nursing and rooting, biting my gloves and squealing at their mom. If you firmly believe that some of these special mutilations imparts a special benefit or flavor, well that pork is available at Safeway for 2$ a lb. I am not in that business, this is a different product entirely. Before I get too proud, some of the things that didn’t work out: Farrowing on pasture - I just have too many predators and can’t pull it off at this time. Farrowing as a group – I just can’t do this until I live onsite and can monitor closer. That is all for now if I am going to get up in the morning. Be sure to check out the recent issue of PCC's Sound Consumer http://www.pccnaturalmarkets.com/sc/1004/sc1004-farmlandtrust.html

Wedding Bells!

We finally introduced Sassy, Peanut (our new Chinese landrace pigs) and Kid Pig to each other. It went very smoothly (for once!). I think the combined qualities of these two breeds will make the ultimate homestead pig for our region. They seem very happy together at the moment.

Flatulence fence, rocket pigs, and three ways to eat sod.

Since the last episode I have been trying to get a larger boar on site as sort of a peace offering to the sows… “occasionally I will slide a male under the fence, and you will not hurt me or the other villagers”. I have come very close a couple of times to achieving this, but every time some wily mishap seems to occur here at Crying Rock. I have decided to call it meant to be for now. I resolved not to rush the big boar, rather focusing on containment and survival. For step one we set up a hot wire across the pen where the girls keep busting through to Kid Pig. I reassured them while hanging the fence that my bright smile was not out of delight in revenge, rather in appreciation of everyone’s new found security. Now I figured they would learn right away, but the manner in which they did was quite surprising and brought out my inner 7th grader. I am boiling with curiosity as Hamster goes to test the wall…I hear a ”pop” as Hamster jumps and does a 180, lets out a…weeee, then farts. Never touches the wall again. Here comes Gerbil, ahh she has broken this wall more times than a Mongol in China, no problem for her. Here she goes…”pop” jumps and does a 180, lets out a…weeee, then farts. After moving away a good distance she turned around and just stared at it in disbelief. One time for Gerbil. Here comes Tiger Pig, no exception… pop” jumps and does a 180, lets out a…weeee, then farts. Tiger Pig like me has little faith and has to learn the hard way multiple times, well just two times for Tiger. Patata, once and so on and so on, all the girls are fence trained. Well looks like Farmer Joel will be farming from a hammock with this new found technology, until…a giant dual prop helicopter thunders over head. The pigs must of thought it was Y2K or WW3 because they went ludicrous. Patata stood up on my 2x4 reinforced steel post field fence placing all her weight forward. Now I have seen this before because she did it yesterday to get to the feed before everyone else. She did manage to push the fence down, but this time I managed to push her back (barely) and get the board nailed back in, before she got all the way out. To continue on the theme of me learning the hard way multiple times, I resolved that was just enough times for me to learn. I exclaimed to all pigs present “that’s it - your getting a wire across the top!”, as if I was super nanny and they understood English. Well, the wire across the top of the fence does not have me farming from a hammock, but it does make feeding time much more civilized. Everyone recognized that little orange wire and stood very clear. With all this building up and breaking down, I finally came up with a good system. I build panels out of Plywood, or livestock panel, frame them with 2x4, and put chains on all four corners. This allows me to quickly put up walls and move them around almost as quickly as they can be bowled down. To make them a little more lasting I put a hot wire alongside it. Works like a dream. In all of this whoop-de-doo I had a realization. As eager as those girls were to get at Kid Pig, he really wanted to hang out with them too. I believe if he had a pair of stilts the day everyone escaped may have turned out different. So not only do I need to get a big boar, I need to get a little sow. I swear when I jumped into this I thought I would be dealing simply with the simpler things of life, but to honor the continuing theme - I do tend to learn the hard way. So I did some research and found a small Chinese breed. I did some looking and found two of them only three hours away. Quick Kid Pig, put on your best sweater and wash your face, I’ll be back in 7 hours! I loaded up Teresa and the kids into the green beast and drove to the edge of the Earth. You may not know this but the edge of the Earth is exactly two tanks away. At the end of it there is no drop off into infinity, rather a ridiculously steep gravel road the width of one car. I had to switch into low 1 just to climb it, Teresa was literally covering her eyes. We could not believe there could possibly be people and pigs at the top of this hill, so twice on the way up we called to be sure we were in the right middle of nowhere. Sure enough there were people and pigs, so we tossed our coke bottle over the edge, loaded the pigs, and headed home. The kids decided to name the bigger of the little sows “Sassy”, in honor of the Mulefoot we lost on the way back from Bellingham. The little one acquired the name “Peanut”, I can’t remember how she got it, but she sure does look like one. These girls couldn’t come a moment too soon. Kid Pig is so social and sometimes it is hard to get work done cause he wants to hang out all the time. This morning when I pulled up, he shot out of his den like a bottle rocket emitting a trail of hay. When I came in his pen he just laid down on his side (meaning stop what you are doing and rub my belly). Who have I become farmer Joel introspectively asks himself as he starts the morning scratching pig bellies. Short story long – Sassy and Peanut are penned up eating organic mash, DE, Kelp, and pieces of Crying Rock sod. It is interesting to see that they eat a clump of sod the same way the other girls do having genes from across the globe and having been raised in relative confinement. They pick some grass. Then they flip it over and eat some soil. Then they tear it apart and snack on some roots. Tomorrow they will be released into Kid Pig's old bachelor pad. Kid Pig will be in the new bachelor pad one fence away. The idea is that I will keep them separated for one more week. Knowing that kid pig has been shown by the best how to decimate one of my best fences, it may be more like a day. In that case we will let nature take its accelerated course. I don’t know if I nor my measly pitch fork can stand yet again between two pigs with stars in their eyes. Besides they are the same size which in pig law is legally married. One last thing before I pass out. Today was a major milestone. The girls are in their first pasture (not counting the one they escaped into for a day). Our intention was always to be a pasture operation, and it has taken from when we started in December until now to make that happen, I almost died 1000 times. It was beautiful to see them rushing around with clumps of grass in their mouth, eating blackberry brush, and rooting under the sod. Hamster had some grass straws stuck on her nose like a kung foo master's mustache. I now have until they till that down to get their next paddock built, I am guessing two weeks – but we will see. As soon as they till it up I will plant yellow peas behind them for the next time they come through this paddock. These will grow with the existing pasture polyculture of sod grasses, clumping grasses, clover, blackberries, dandelions, plantain and who knows what.