Porky Is A Barrow Now

Our pigs are continuing to grow. They are no longer shoats (newly weaned piglets). Nellie and Sally are becoming nice looking gilts (female pigs before their first litter), Rufus is growing into a good boar (an uncastrated male pig), and Porky is now a barrow! (castrated male pig)

I had observed our ag teachers doing the castration procedure on the pigs the FFA has at our school, so I knew what to expect. Mr. K was going to come to our home to help me castrate our first pig, but then he decided he would rather us bring Porky to school so another of his classes could observe.

Yesterday was the day of Porky's appointment, but first we had to figure out how to comfortably transport Porky to my school. So far we had only transported pigs in a feed sack, but I did not want to do that now. So we decided to build a hog cage that could go in the back of our truck.

Over the Thanksgiving weekend, Matthew and I went to work on it. We loaded up “slabs” for free from a local saw mill, got them home, and split them into rails with our table saw. We then nailed them all together. Porky is still small, but we decided to build something big enough that we could use to move grown hogs or other larger animals in the future. We made it 4 feet high and 6 feet long, and the slabs made it very strong. (and heavy)

Here it is in the back of the truck:




Not bad for a free cage. This is a shot at the back of it:




Matthew and Erica had to get it ready for Porky without me since I was at school already. We used an old pallet for the sliding gate:



Porky seemed comfortable in it:






Matthew, the man of the family in my absence, made the final checks. (It is hard to believe he is only 13!)




Lisa and Matthew brought Porky to school at the appointed time and we let Erica stay home to watch after Christina and Simon.

(The next two pictures on down will be of the actual castration procedure. They are not graphic at all, but I thought I should warn you in case you are reading this with children and do not want to explain why the piggie is being held upside down.)







I was going to attempt the procedure myself with Mr. K guiding me, but since there was such an interest in it among the crowd, I decided it would be best for Mr. K to do it with me observing again. It was difficult to get good pictures of it, but I guess we don't really want any gory shots of it anyway. These two pictures give you an idea of what happened:

Mr. K castrated Porky in the same manner I described the other castrations I observed earlier, except this time it was in the shop instead of all the way out at the farm. This location allowed several more people from other classes to observe who had never seen this done before. They watched Mr K make the cuts with the scalpel, rinse the area with the betadine solution, and give the 2 cc injection of the antibiotic.

Porky is recovering nicely now, and was glad to get back home. We are feeding him Purina Grower because it is medicated and Mr. K says it will help him heal quicker. We really want to keep everything as organic as possible, and by the time he is ready for butchering the antibiotic and this medicated food will long be out of his system. When the 50 pound bag is gone we will go back to feeding him regular hog chow.

All seemed to go well with our first castration. I know some people would say this was cruel, but we have discovered it is a very common practice when raising pork. Life on a farm is not always as picturesque and glamorous as we think sometimes and most people do not realize what goes into raising the food we all eat!(us included)

This was another good learning experience for us at Pure Water Hollow!

“Backed” Into A Corner This Thanksgiving: Erica To the Rescue!

My wife, Lisa, woke up to excruciating pain in her lower back Thanksgiving Day. It had felt a little strange on Wednesday, but nothing of major concern. She was planning on our normal excellent Thanksgiving meal, but as the day progressed and her back did not improve, we decided to postpone our dinner until Friday. Since it was just going to be our immediate family, it did not matter much if we had the “big” dinner on Thursday or Friday.

Friday came and Lisa was still nearly paralyzed with pain. She could barely move, much less prepare a Thanksgiving dinner! I was more concerned about Lisa, of course, but she was worried about the dinner.

Our daughter, Erica, had just turned 15 this month, and had no experience with preparing a whole turkey. I don't know what is exactly involved, either, to make such a wonderful meal. (I am pretty helpless when it comes to cooking.) Lisa talked Erica through the entire procedure on Friday and she did a marvelous job! She did the turkey from start to finish, as well as the stuffing and potatoes and carrots and rolls and corn and green beans and everything else. Matthew pitched in and helped, also, but this was mainly Erica's show, and she rose to the occasion!

It means a lot to me to see my children's attitudes of selflessness and helpfulness. It is wonderful to know that we can count on them! I think this was a good experience for Erica, as well. Now she knows that she is capable of preparing a large Thanksgiving dinner for six people! (Actually we probably had enough for 10 or 12). Erica is becoming a very good home-maker in her own right!

We had a great Thanksgiving meal and found many, many things to be thankful to God for.

Lisa's back is feeling much better today, but still not normal. At least she can walk around now and sit down and get up by herself. It was a very mysterious thing, and we are thankful it seems to be getting over with! Pray for us that the back pain will not return and Lisa will be able to work like she enjoys doing.



1 comment
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Renee on November 28, 2006 at 2:42 pm
Hello!

I am so glad you had a wonderful Thanksgiving. I am not to surprised about Erica fixing the meal. She is growing up to be a wonderful young lady. Tell Lisa we are praying that she makes a quick recovery. She has probably been working too hard and needed a little rest:) Blessings to all of You!

Renee

Erica's Pictures of the Pure Water Hollow Fall Colors

The following pictures were taken by Erica one month ago, on October 21st, when the fall colors here in Kentucky were at their peak. I wasn't able to post them back at that time, but they were so pretty I didn't want to let them go to waste.

I was going to wait until we were having some bleak and gloomy days to post them in order to perhaps cheer us up some, but I decided that I had some time today. (Having pictures to post for me is like some people when they have money in their pocket. It is a hard thing to hang on to and save for another time!)

Of course, the trees were prettier in real life, but I thought Erica did a nice job with this photography. They were all taken on our property in Pure Water Hollow.

















Maybe soon we will have some beautiful pictures of Pure Water Hollow covered with a blanket of snow? Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

I hope everyone has a blessed and happy Thanksgiving!


2 comments
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Kitty on November 21, 2006 at 6:50 pm
That was wonderful to see. Being from LA everything goes from green to brown. Nothing in between with such glorious colors. Always so blaaahhhh here.

Have a great holiday. and thanks for sharing the pics.

Kitty
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Jessica on November 24, 2006 at 8:23 pm
Hello Uncle Eric and Family! I like Erica's pictures; they are so beautiful! I also read your recent post about your new boy pigs! I think they are really cute! I like the names too! I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving, and I can't wait to see you during Christmas! God Bless!

~Jessica

The Boy Pigs

I have not said much about our two new pigs, even though they have been with us for an entire week now! We bought them last Tuesday, November 14th. They would have been born around October 1st. It took Nellie and Sally a couple of days to adjust to the boys being around, but they have stopped biting and fighting with them. I guess they had to make sure they were the bosses!

Rufus is mostly a Hampshire boar. He has the white band at the shoulders of a Hamp, but his red color maybe comes from a Duroc, according to my ag. teacher friend.



Rufus is the one we are going to keep for breeding.


Our other little boy is a Chester White. We are calling him Porky, because he will be providing us some pork in the future.




Here is a good one of the two together, taken the day we got them:



They really are smaller than Sally and Nellie, since they are a month younger, but the pictures don't really let you see much of a difference. Here's one of Porky with Nellie and Sally:




They all four eat like little pigs!





I am going to end this post with a picture from last month that I missed somehow of Simon with Nellie and Sally. I should have put it with the post of more cute pictures of pigs from a couple of weeks ago. All the children are still enjoying the pigs of Pure Water Hollow!




1 comment
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Trixi on November 21, 2006 at 9:18 am
They are sooo cute. You are making me want pigs now.

Blessings,

Trixi

The Old Coop

If you have read my previous posts about the Pure Water Hollow chickens, you know that we are still novice chicken farmers. We currently have a flock of 23 hens and a couple of roosters, with a potential 6 to 10 more pullets to add to the flock soon. The chickens are mixed from game stock and maybe a Plymouth Rock or Dominique mix?

During some email correspondance I recently told someone that I would give some details about our chicken coop here as a post. It is not a very fancy coop, but it is working well for us. It was an old 8 X 12 out building that we were just storing junk in before we converted it to a chicken coop. It is built up on piers, which works out well for the lot because the chickens can go under the building for shade and protection from the weather. We put up chicken wire for the lot about 6 feet high. The lot itself is about 10 feet by 12 feet at the coop end but is just about 9 feet wide at the point end, due to our space confines. When you add the part under the building, the chickens have about 18 feet by 12 feet to walk around in the dirt. I cut a chicken door at the back of the coop, leading out to their lot. We usually keep them in the lot for the first half of the day and let them out to free range at the end of the day.

Here they are in the lot:



On the front and side of the coop, we built some small holding lots to put pullets in for a couple of weeks before they get introduced to the complete flock. We also use them for spare roosters waiting for the freezer, or for any chicken we need to separate from the rest of the flock. You can see the front one from this angle:




And you can sort of see the side one in this picture:




Those four squares with buttons are where we have the chicken's nests on the inside of the coop. Since the building is elevated, it makes for an easy task to get the eggs from the outside at a good height for humans. The nests are on the floor in the coop, but the chickens do not seem to mind. They like to sit in the nests even when they are not laying.







Each door opens into two nests, so we have 8 nests there all together.




Here are the nest boxes from the inside. I should have cleaned them up a bit for the picture, but this is how it really looks. We need to put a diagonal board above the nests so they won't roost there and make such messes. The cement blocks are there to hold the row of nests down because I did not nail them in place. I wanted to be able to remove the entire 8 foot row of nests when we wanted to clean them out and put in fresh straw.




I couldn't get a good picture of the roosts, but we have staggered the roosts 2 feet apart from each other at 2 feet high, 3 feet high, 4 feet hight, and 5 feet high. They go the 8 foot width of the coop, so if you do the math, that is 32 feet of roosting space.




So, as you can see, it is not a very fancy coop. We are thankful that we already had a building that worked out for us.

I also made a sliding door that closes off the chicken door to the lot which we can close from outside the coop. I didn't get a picture of it, but we do close up the coop each night after the chickens have gone in to roost, for their protection.

By the way, at least one of our chickens is laying now. We are averaging one egg every other day. I'm looking forward to being overloaded with eggs again, which should start happening after the days begin to lengthen again in January.

If you want to check out someone elses chicken lot, I have enjoyed some of pcsmom's posts from last year. There is one when they enlarged their lot, too, and a good one with details of their coop.

The Old Barn

Many of you enjoy seeing old barns, and I decided to take a few pictures of our barn, before we do any major rennovations on it. We are not sure how old it is, but we think it has been here a very long time. I am glad we are finally using it for something, because we had let it get into a pretty sad, run-down condition. I think we are getting to it just in the knick of time!

It is a small, 5 stall barn with a loft and most of the wood in it is still very solid. The roof has had a major problem ever since a tree got knocked down on one side of it and tore some holes in the tin about 5 years ago. I was foolish not to repair it, so now one side of the loft has boards that are rotting and need to be replaced. The roof still needs to be replaced as well. Unfortunately, I am not very handy with projects like that, but I am learning. Hopefully we will be able to replace that side of the roof before too long.

The side where we have the pigs is still dry and solid. We are using the stalls on that side of the barn for their beds. (By the way, we got the two male pigs last night! They are adorable right now and after we take pictures of them you will be able to see how much Nellie and Sally have grown the past month in comparison to these new, 6 1/2 week old pigs.)

Here are some pictures of our old barn:

This is the front of the barn. The pig lot is in the left of the picture:






Let's go on into the barn and look at the doors of the pig’s stalls.  And then we will turn around and look in from the back side of the breezeway:










And this is one last picture looking at the pig lot side of the barn. That is a tree’s shadow toward the back of the barn and not a board missing:

I know it is not much of a barn, but I think it has potential and I feel blessed to have it on our property in Pure Water Hollow!



4 comments
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Trixi on November 15, 2006 at 9:17 am
The barn is great. I just love old barns and would love to have that one.

Blessings,

Trixi
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HSB Front Porch on November 15, 2006 at 10:59 am
Old barns just have so much character to them! Our horse stable looks very similar to yours except our boards aren't diagonal on the outside!

I like how you all hung the lanterns up there. I hadn't even thought of that. We always just take flashlights. I think I'll see if I can find some lanterns now though! Great idea!!!

Thanks,

~Nancy
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MrsBurns on November 20, 2006 at 1:03 pm
I just found your blog…..must have been asleep at the wheel when you set it up. My husband and I are researching raising pigs and we will be watching your adventure closely. I have listed you as a "friend" to my blog so we can track the progress. Spare no details!! Thanks, Denise Burns
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BuzyMumof3sons on November 20, 2006 at 8:26 am
Thanks for posting the pictures of your barn. My boys and I have enjoyed looking at your pictures. They really like your pigs!

Pictures Peppered Throughout Previous Posts

Well, I have been having fun with the pictures from Erica's camera and being able to make them into a format that I could add to the blog. I have gone back and added pictures to several different posts if you would like to go back and see any of them. Some of you have already seen some of these, depending on when you read the particular entries. Since none of them had pictures at first, though, I decided it might be nice to link to the posts that now have pictures, just to make things easier.

There are pictures of our little pigs when we first got them as well as the post I put up earlier today. There are also now pictures of the pig lot we finished for them 11 days after they came to Pure Water Hollow.

There are also now some pictures of our chickens if you did not find them earlier. (I have taken more pictures of the coop, since some of you expressed interest in it before, but I haven't yet put them in a post.)

We don't have any goats yet, but I added a couple of pictures of the one that visited us to that post. We have thought about her several times since the owner came and got her. I hope she is being treated well.

I also put a couple of pictures of the snakes that we killed up at the clearing. (My wife does not think anybody would want to see those, but since this is a blog from a guy, I put them in anyway.)

Since I am listing all the pictures, I'll mention the Visit to Pure Water Hollow again that had pictures in it from the beginning. It was my first try at adding pictures and I like how it turned out.

I think that is all of the entries that now have pictures included in them. With every picture I am reminded how much God has blessed us. It truly amazes me!

I have some beautiful pictures of the fall colors of Pure Water Hollow that Erica took back in October that I want to share with you some time, and there are also those chicken coop pictures that I will put up. I have also taken several different views of our old barn where the pigs are living that are interesting, and might make for a nice post.

Here is a beautiful one of the fall colors just to whet your appetite:



Posting pictures does take some time, but it has been much fun, and I think it has made the Pure Water Hollow Homestead blog much nicer!


2 comments
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Out in the Garden on November 15, 2006 at 8:29 am
Way to go Eric! The pictures look great. I like your new avatar too. Your blog is really nice – good pictures and great writing! Keep up the good work!
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Purewater on November 15, 2006 at 8:58 am
This blog is looking nicer thanks in a large part to you, naturehouse! Thanks again for the computer and the help with photobucket! Also it was your great blog here at homesteadblogger last spring that helped me decide to do one myself. It has been fun.

Nice hearing from you, and God bless!

More Cute Pictures of Our Little Pigs

I showed some picturews of our piglets when we first bought Nellie and Sally last month, but I decided I had too many cute pictures not to share.

These were all taken that first week we had them when they were still about 7 weeks old. We can't believe how quick they are growing after just a month! I will try to get more pictures soon so you can see how much they have grown, too.

In the following pictures Erica was feeding Nellie, Matthew was getting to know Sally and then Erica picked up Sally:

Nellie has her eye on you!

                                                           


As you can tell, we have really enjoyed these little pigs. This has been our first experience with raising pigs and it has been fun so far!

I'll try to keep you updated on our pig adventures as we progress into unknown territory!



2 comments
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Henry on November 13, 2006 at 8:08 am
Eric, great pictures of the pigs. It brought back memories when I was a kid. My uncle Gene had a hog farm. He would give us a runt that we would bottle feed and keep them warm in the house until they were ready to live outside. They were pets to us boys until … well you know. I still remember one hog running through my mom's legs and taking her for a ride. Have fun with them!
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sheryl on November 13, 2006 at 3:57 pm
Little cuties! We hope our pig will have her piglets in Jan. We have never raised pigs before and we cant wait. What kind our they.? Our boar is yorkshire and the girl is hampshire.

A Sunday Morning Devotional from Psalm 95

I thought I would share a devotional about worship this morning. Actually it is from a sermon that I preached last night. We have church one Saturday night every month on the second weekend with the monthly church business meeting following after the worship service. It was a blessed service and the church came forward to meet God at the altar after the message. Since I am not going to go into great detail with the following post, I'll call it a devotional instead of a sermon. I pray you will be lifted up and encouraged reading it.

What is worship really all about? There are many possible answers to this question, but let's examine Psalm 95 verses 1-8 to answer the question. We will see that worship is:

I. Rejoicing in God's Salvation

II. Recognizing God's Sovereignty

III. Revering God's Supremacy

IV. Responding to God's Spirit

Here are the verses:

1. O come, let us sing unto the LORD: let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation.
2. Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving, and make a joyful noise unto him with psalms.
3. For the LORD is a great God, and a great King above all gods.
4. In his hand are the deep places of the earth: the strength of the hills is his also.
5. The sea is his, and he made it: and his hands formed the dry land.
6. O come, let us worship and bow down: let us kneel before the LORD our maker.
7. For he is our God: and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. To day if ye will hear his voice,
8 Harden not your heart, as in the provocation, and as in the day of temptation in the wilderness:

I. Worship is Rejoicing in God's Salvation. (Verses 1&2)
These first two verses remind us that worship includes singing, thanksgiving, and joy, but not just for the sake of having a good time. Verse one says that we are coming to “the rock of our salvation.” We rejoice with singing, thanksgiving, and joy because of the salvation that He has provided for us through His son Jesus Christ. If you do not have a personal salvation through His blood, then you can not truly worship the Lord, because worship is rejoicing in God's salvation!

II. Worship is Recognizing God's Sovereignty. (Verses 3-5)When we worship the Lord, we need to recognize that He is in control of everything. The Psalmist reminds us in verse 3 that “the LORD is a great God, and a great King above all gods.” Our God is greater than any king, president, or ruler of the most powerful empires that have ever existed! There is nothing that He cannot do, as verses 4 and 5 point out. We have the example of creation to examine and be amazed by. God created the seas and the lands and everything is in His control! The deep places of the earth are in His hands and the strength of the hills! In Jeremiah 32:17 we read, “Behold, thou hast made the heaven and the earth by thy great power and stretched out arm, and there is nothing too hard for thee.” God is great and powerful and in control of everything in the universe. But if you have not given Him control of your own life, then you cannot really worship Him. Worship is recognizing God's sovereignty.

III. Worship is Revering God's Supremacy (Verse 6)In verse 6 the Psalmist slows down some and brings us to a point of awe. We have rejoiced in the rock of our Salvation with thanksgiving and singing and joyful noise and we have felt the all consuming greatness of the creator of the universe as we recognized His sovereignty. And now we reflect on just what the previous 5 verses were about and all we can do is to fall on our faces before God in reverence and fear. We are so small and insignificant and we feel the sin and shame of our unworthy lives. We repent of our pride and hypocrisy and realize that our own righteousness is as filthy rags to Him. We are in the presence of the all-powerful creator of the universe who loved us so much that He sent His Son to die so we may be forgiven and saved from an eternal Hell! Wow! "Let us worship and bow down: let us kneel before the LORD our maker." Worship is revering God's supremacy.

IV. Worship is Responding to God's Spirit (Verses7&8)
Verse 7 starts out with a logical follow up to verse 6 by remembering that we are God's people; His sheep. The great and glorious God that we worship and bow down before has a job for us to do as His people. He wants to speak to us and He wants us to listen and obey. We worship Him and He speaks to us and we must respond. Worship is an active happening event in the life of the believer. Worship cannot be just a spectator sport. The end of verse 7 and the beginning of verse 8 is so important: “To day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your heart” God's Spirit speaks to us as we worship, but too often we just tune Him out! Part of our worship should always include a desire to go the next step that God wants to lead us in, what ever that may be. What does God want you to do? Worship is responding to God's Spirit.

There are many other verses and angles that we can approach the topic of worship. These are just a few ideas. One thing is for sure: worship is a serious thing to God. Many people do not treat it as such and many more are not even saved. Jesus says in Matthew 15:8, quoting the prophet Esaias, “THIS PEOPLE DRAWETH NIGH UNTO ME WITH THEIR MOUTH, AND HONOURETH ME WITH THEIR LIPS; BUT THEIR HEART IS FAR FROM ME. BUT IN VAIN THEY DO WORSHIP ME,”Let us not be counted among those people! Let us worship Him in spirit and in truth. We should remember that worship is rejoicing in God's salvation, recognizing God's sovereignty, revering God's supremacy, and responding to God's Spirit!

Some Pork Barrel Spending

It has been two weeks and a day since last I recorded our expenses. I got paid again today and I was also paid two weeks ago. God has tremendously blessed us to be able to stay within our budget of only having $422 to spend for the past two weeks, even though we have been spending money regularly.

I’m not sure how much we were ahead when I got paid 2 weeks ago but we had a good cushion. We have bought our regular gas and groceries and also had the expense of starting up our pig operation. After everything we have bought these past two weeks, I still had $20 left and my wife has $15 left.

We spent $80 buying our first two piglets, $13.20 for their first 100 lb bag of chow, $10 for their first two bales of straw, and $20 for 50 feet of fence for the pig lot. The rest of the materials for the pig lot was home made and used with materials lying around. So we have less than $125 in our pigs so far.

There have not been any other expenses out of the ordinary. In one sense, though, we have gone over our budget because we have used our Wal-Mart gift card. When I last bought a pack of new tee shirts the receipt said we only have $34 left, which means we have spent $116 of it over the past three weeks. We are thankful for that, but if we had not had it, I think we would have still stayed within our cash we had and just not bought as much.

On today’s check there was a nice addition. I have been working extra hours on Mondays and Wednesdays and it showed up on this check as an additional $190. I could be upset that I only got $190 out of the additional $240 that was stated on the check, but I choose to be grateful for the $190. Uncle Sam got his share, but I am still $190 richer than I would have been without the extra assignment. So instead of $422, we have $612 cash we can spend for this two weeks. We will hopefully be able to put much of the extra into our Visa card bank account for Christmas buying. That is one reason I took the additional assignment.

I already spent $10 of it today to buy another cell phone card. We have to buy one every 60 days to keep the minutes alive. Since I don’t use it very much we have something like 150 minutes racked up.

The financial picture of Our Life is pretty solid right now. I’m looking forward to paying the credit cards again and seeing how much the debt has gone down. That won’t happen until after half way through the month. Also in the middle of the month we are planning to buy two more pigs, so we need to save back $80 for that.

We are thankful to our creator and Lord for providing for all our needs and even some of our wants as well. I will probably post again around Thanksgiving. Perhaps we will have one of our own wild turkeys for Thanksgiving dinner? That would be a nice way to save a little money!

Still Celebrating Daniel Boones Birthday

Last night we worked on the pig lot too late in the evening for Lisa to prepare the supper she planned. She wanted to have a supper that Great-Great-Great-Great Uncle Daniel Boone would appreciate, in honor of his birthday. Daniel Boone was known as a great hunter, a provider of food for many hungry people, and someone who could live off the land of Kentucky. His birthday was yesterday.

Our supper was excellent tonight and all the children helped prepare it! Daniel would have been proud. We had scrumptious squirrel and dumplings, delicious deer nuggets, marvelous mashed turnips, creamy corn, magnificent mixed greens, and heavenly homemade doughnuts for dessert. Most often we drink water with our meals so tonight's quince juice was a treat. (Can you think of an adjective better than "queenly" that begins with a "Q"? I couldn't and "queenly quince juice" just didn't work for me.) It tastes sort of like lemonade and is made from the quince fruit off of our own quince bushes. The squirrel was from our land in Pure Water Hollow, as well. The deer might have been a part time Pure Water Hollow deer also, but a neighbor killed it over the hill on another ridge and shared with us.

Speaking of deer, a recent local magazine article surprised me with this statement:

"Kentucky's deer herd numbers around 900,000 this year; far more than when Daniel Boone first entered the state more than 200 years ago."

My first thought was, "Wow! That is some statement to make! That can't be true!" After all, there were no white men in Kentucky except Boone and 5 other men. Many Indian tribes hunted in Kentucky, but they were few and far between compared to the land area. It seemed to me that the deer population would had to have been larger in a virgin Kentucky wilderness forest without roads and cities and man to contend with!

But then I thought some more and remembered that Daniel Boone saw and hunted much large game that are no longer in Kentucky in great numbers. He hunted elk, cougar, bobcat, panther, black bear, buffalo herds, and probably others that I am missing. With predators like bears and cougars to feed on white tail deer and with elk and bison competing with them for the food, I guess there may have been fewer deer in Kentucky 230 years ago! (How in the world could they know how many deer were around back then anyway?)

I am glad there are deer in Pure Water Hollow, except when they were in our garden last summer. They are a beautiful, graceful creature to watch, and also a good source of food! I hope I don't offend any hunters out there, but I just cannot see hunting and killing such a wonderful creature just to get a trophy. I do not agree with hunting as a sport if the purpose is not to feed hungry people! For some reason I cannot picture Daniel Boone hanging a deer head on his cabin wall and leaving the meat out there to rot. I wonder what Daniel would think about today's sport of hunting in Kentucky if he were still here?



I'm glad he isn't seeing it. Happy Birthday, Daniel!


3 comments
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sheryl on November 9, 2006 at 4:54 pm
Hi!

I am new on the blog and just found your page today. I live in Northeastern KY. I am also related to Daniel Boone. It is through the Webb Family. Sheryl
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lambechops on November 10, 2006 at 1:17 pm
Hi! I am new to this site and am finding my way round, reading blogs with similar family situations etc. We too have 4 children, 2 boys and 2 girls! We live in Northern Ireland, and are committed Christians. We belong to the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Ireland. I hope to read more of your blogs, and I have really enjoyed reading it so far.

Karen.
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Chris on November 12, 2006 at 1:35 pm
How about quintessential quince juice? Your feast sounds grand, but not the kind of fare I am used to here in New England. Are you really related to Daniel Boone? I'll have to read more of your blogs, maybe the story is buried there somewhere? Hope your Mac is treating you right this weekend. -Chris

Pig Lot Finished Today on Daniel Boone's Birthday

We celebrated Daniel Boone's birthday today by letting our pigs get out into the open and giving them some "elbow room" in their new pig lot. They were cooped up in a stall in the barn for the past 11 days, and they surely did enjoy the fresh dirt outside! I bet they felt better than even Daniel Boone did when he looked into the open spaces of Kentucky for the first time!

Today really was Daniel Boone's birthday! I don't understand why the mail ran and the banks were still open? Boone played a major role in the settling of Kentucky as well as opening up the entire west, and was one of America's first folk heroes. By the way, my wife's family has traced their ancestry back to Boone's sister, Elizabeth, so my children are likely one of the many, many branches of the Boone family tree!

Back to the pig lot:

We all put a lot of work into it and I'm not sure how many man-hours were clocked getting it done. Matthew and I did much of the work together but Matthew also put in several hours by himself while I was at work.

We dug the holes about two feet deep for the posts, cut the trees to the right sizes for the posts, and then Matthew set the posts by himself while I was at work. We cut trees to the right sizes for the top rails and then nailed them to the posts. We dug a two feet deep and two feet wide trench around the outside perimeter of about 40 feet in length. This took much time and effort, and Matthew again worked on this for several hours on his own, as well. We then nailed old roofing tin in the trench to the posts to act as a barrier in case the pigs root down too low, nailed on the wire fence to the posts, and cut and nailed more limbs for a bottom rail. We then filled in the trench with the displaced dirt that had by that time gotten packed back down some.

All of the children helped work in various ways. I found some pictures of our work one evening. By the date on the pictures you can tell how we spent the evening of October 31st. We were more productive and had more fun than many people on that evening. We have never participated in Halloween and we didn't celebrate Reformation Day this year, but we did enjoy working on the pig lot!














Here's Matthew and Simon filling in the trench:

And Christina smoothed things out for us:



The piglot crew paused for a picture. Erica was helping work, too, but she was the one taking the pictures:



We still needed a way to allow the pigs to access the lot so we had to reconfigure some of the existing boards of the barn's wall to change a large open window into a hog entrance at the bottom of the wall. Today, while I was at work, Lisa and the children engineered and built the hog lot door out of old recycled lumber, so now we can close the whole thing up.

Here is a picture of the heavy door they built:



And I thought I would show you a few pictures of the completed lot. It doesn't look like much, I know, but it was a big project for us, and it proved to us that we can do anything we put our mind and effort in. The pig lot is attatched to the side of our barn and the pigs sleep inside the barn:

We still need to put up more rails to make the lot sturdier in order to keep in hogs which will weigh 300 pounds and more in the months to come, but for now it should be plenty strong enough for our little pigs. We will also need to figure out a good way to keep fresh water for them and a good feed trough. Right now we are just using bowls; changing the water regularly and refilling the food bowls regularly. I say "we", but I should say "Matthew". He has taken it upon himself to drive up to the barn every morning to take care of the pigs.

The lot is finished just in time, too. We will have to go out of town Sunday and Monday for a funeral, and it would have been a shame if Nellie and Sally had to stay confined until next week! One of my former students from my school is going to come over to feed and water our cats, dog, chickens, and pigs, while we are gone, so the animals should be fine.

We gave Nellie and Sally extra straw for tonight, as it is supposed to be our first hard freeze; down to 22 degrees! They were enjoying the dirt so much, I hope that they come back in the barn and take advantage of it. I stayed up at the barn well after dark tonight to watch them and make sure they came back into their sleeping area. I lit a lantern in their stall so they would realize where their straw was. They finally came in, ate some of their hog chow, sniffed the straw, and let me pet them some. When I blew out the lantern in the barn, they went back out into their new lot and began rooting around again by moonlight! (The moon is almost completely full and very bright tonight. No clouds, so I bet it will be a cold one!)

Goodnight, Sally! Goodnight, Nellie! Happy Birthday, Daniel!


1 comment
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Renee on November 14, 2006 at 9:31 am
You all have been working hard! The pig lot looks great! I am sure your pigs will enjoy their new home dry inside and nice sunshine outside. You all should be proud of yourself…God has blessed you all with so very much.

Love to all of you,

Renee