Oh, wow, I am so far behind. Keeping up with the blogging on top of everything else is not as easy as I had hoped. There is always so much to do and sitting down at the computer during daylight seems like goofing off. But trying to stay up and get it done at night is getting more difficult as the days are getting longer. Someday I will be more organized and productive, someday.....

Annie's babies are just over a week old now. They were born on Friday, April 24th. She had been walking slow and "funny" when I went out to feed her in the morning and so when we got back home in the afternoon I rushed out to check on her. She had already given birth to two girls and one very large boy. Bryan and the kids came out and we stayed with her until she got to number 7, by then it was getting late and we still had to get down the hill and clean the church so we started getting ready to go. Before we left she was at 8 and seemed to be finished. When we went to check on her before we went to bed she finally had finished with 13 babies! Poor Annie, to give birth that many times and then have all those squirming babies fighting to nurse. Annie is an excellent mother and much more patient than I would ever be!
Unfortunately Saturday brought much colder temperatures. We went from 80 degree temps on Friday down to the 40s and 50s on Saturday. On Sunday morning when we went out to feed we found two of the babies dead. We lost another one Sunday afternoon and another Monday morning. These losses were, of course, heartbreaking and we have been trying to figure out what went wrong and how to avoid this in the future. Piglet mortality is not unheard of and is considered a normal part of the process. Records are normally kept of how many live births with another entry for how many weaned. As new "farmers" this is difficult for us, but it is common enough to warrant lots of studies. One article that I found http://mark.asci.ncsu.edu/NCPorkConf/2002/lay.htm gives several reasons for such losses and among those are the fact that piglets are unable to regulate their body temperature. The article states that small pigs are more susceptible to cold and the babies that we lost were the four smallest. Maybe they were just not strong enough to compete for a "place at the table", they may have gotten too cold, or Annie may not have been able to feed that many babies. From all that I have read mortality increases with larger litters and their chances may have done better if we would have provided a heat lamp. That is a lesson learned the hard way and we will know to watch for that next time. They are in an enclosed shelter with lots of grass hay for burrowing into, we assumed this would provide adequate shelter from the cold. The surviving 9 babies, 5 males and 4 females are doing great. They are putting on lots of weight and are very active. And they are exceptionally cute!

We also added more goats to the farm. They are not quite as cute as the pigs. We bought La Manchas since they do not have as much "personality" as the Nubians. They are much more compliant and easier to work with. But they don't seem to have any ears! They are productive though. We are getting more than a gallon of milk a day from one of the girls and the other is producing enough for her baby and a little for us as well. We are giving the milk to the pigs as part of our attempt to move away from a grain heavy diet. The downside is the additional demands on my time required for milking twice a day. Fortunately milking is a quiet and relaxing exercise and the baby boy does his part to keep it entertaining.

Other news: We are finally getting the garden going. Some of the plants are starting to come up and we are still planting other seeds. We are getting a later start than we had hoped, but our weather here is so unpredictable and last year we had a hard frost in May. Hopefully I will have better luck keeping up with the weeds this year. We still have so much to learn about gardening!

I am also trying to get caught up on my soap making. There has been quite a bit of interest in soap and my supplies have just about dwindled. I will be attending the Handcrafted Soap Maker's Guild conference in Palm Springs in a few weeks and I am looking forward to learning all kinds of new techniques and getting all sorts of ideas.

The pigs from our last litter of Berkshires are now in the freezers of our customers and so far the comments have been pretty positive. If you are interested in reserving one from our current litter please contact us. We have had several inquiries and we expect them to sell quickly. The piglets will be available July 25 for those looking to raise their own, they will sell for $120.00. If you would like us to custom raise one for you they are $2.50/lb. hanging weight. This price does not include the processing costs. We will have chicken available in July, we are also taking reservations for these. The chickens are the Colored Range Broilers and are free-range and fed organic grain. We are selling the chicken for $4.00/lb.