The year 2012 has absolutely flown by, it seems! On this final day of 2012 I find myself reflecting about many things in my life concerning the past year. However, for this post, I'm going to try to stick to mainly my thoughts concerning our "homesteading" aspects during 2012. It is with some difficulty that I attempt this, as the entire year of 2012 seems like a blur to me. I notice that I only blogged sporadically and missed writing about many daily homestead happenings throughout the year.
We were very successful raising 3 hogs from feeder pig to butcher hog during 2012. Our new lot worked well, they grew fast and large, and did not present much trouble at all! Simon took care of the feeding and watering chores most of the time. These pigs reminded us that raising home-grown pork could still be done very efficiently and also be a rewarding experience. We had two of them butchered in the summer and then processed the final one ourselves in November. I regret that I did not find a boar to go with that 3rd hog as my original hope was. I think she would have thrown excellent piglets as her genetics seemed to be of a fast growing large hog!
We also had some bad experiences trying to raise some pigs from an outfit that sells "show pigs". These were supposed to be superior genetic hogs, but ours did not want to grow and actually had trouble surviving! We first bought three girls and they all got sick. When the first one died the fellow gave us the boar I was wanting for free. I wonder now if he was worth the price, because he has also had trouble growing! A bit later another of the girls died. It looks like the other girl along with the boar have at least survived as they are now 9 months and 7 months old, respectively. We think they have bred so I have decided to keep them around to see if they will have piglets and then see if those piglets will grow better than their parents did. I am afraid it will all turn out to be a disaster and we will have to start over again with new stock. But, let's try to be optimistic and enjoy the adventure!
Our garden did well in several areas, although it seemed difficult for us to focus on it the way we should have. Our artesian well did the job keeping everything watered during the drought. Thanks to the drought, there was not much weeding that needed to be done early in the season. This turned out to be bad for a family that was having trouble focusing on the garden anyway because sometime in there the drought was over and the weeds were ready to make up for lost time! Since we never got in a good habit of working the garden earlier, it seemed like in no time those weeds completely took over! We learned that tomato plants and pepper plants are very forgiving as they still provided abundantly for us, even when they could not be seen! We had a modest harvest of most of the crops that Lisa planned, although the watermelons and pumpkins did not do anything.
Our honey bees did a fine job keeping everything pollinated. 2012 was the year of the swarm as they swarmed much more than we wanted! Perhaps it was the mild winter, but whatever the reason, they swarmed and swarmed and swarmed! Sometimes we had two and three swarms hanging in our trees at the same time! We were able to capture 3 swarms and start new colonies, but one of them was a partial swarm and did not make it. We did get 10 quarts of honey from the strongest hive, but since the other one swarmed so much they didn't produce as much honey and we decided that they would need what they had to survive the winter. As we end 2012 we think we have four good stands of bees. We just need to get into them and take out the queen cells so they won't swarm themselves to death in 2013. If all goes well, they should make plenty of honey for us this next season!
We also attempted to re-stock our chicken flock in 2012. Twenty-five white-rock chicks arrived on July 13th at our post office in town. Due to the fact that we free range our chickens amongst a predator laden environment, we were expecting to lose some of them. I thought we may even lose a third of them by the time they reach maturity. I expected, however, to still have at least 17 or 18 at this time of the year. I am sad to report that we only have 11 white-rock pullets as we close out the year! We lost them gradually. Some were taken off by hawks (I even witnessed it once), some were hit in the road, and some just disappeared. But the 11 we have right now are all beautiful, big hens and should start laying eggs any time now.
The worst chicken news of 2012 happened one of the nights that I did not close up the cage where those chicks slept with their surrogate mother, One Feather. One Feather was the beloved game hen we had had for 8 years who had raised clutches of chicks every year, sometimes 2 and even 3 times during some seasons! She could always be counted on to go broody and she was always an excellent mother to any chicks we gave her. She was one of the hens helping to raise some of the new white-rock chicks. They would free range during the day but One Feather always took them back to the safety of her cage at night which I would then close up for the night. I had been lulled into a false sense of security as there had been no night-time evidence of any predators for quite a while.
That night had not been the first night I neglected my duty, but it turned out to be the night that I severely let our beloved mama hen down. We heard the squawking from the house after we had gone to bed, and got out there as quickly as we could. She obviously fought the predator off as evidenced by the 50 foot trail of scattered feathers leading away from the cage down to the creek to where her body was left. At least the predator did not have the satisfaction of having One Feather as a meal and, as best we could tell, all of the chicks under her care were also accounted for. We found them scattered all over the yard, hiding in different places, but not harmed. One Feather gave her life to save these chicks! She will be greatly missed and I doubt that we will ever have another hen quite like One Feather.
So as we end 2012, our laying flock consists of 3 mature Buff Orpington mixed hens, 11 almost mature White-Rock hens and I think 4 black pullets from eggs we hatched that a friend gave us later in the summer. By next summer we should have 14 to 18 hens laying for us, so we will be getting plenty of eggs! We have already been getting one or two eggs a day these last few weeks of December which we have been happy with. Our butchering flock currently consists of one Red-Star hen (who developed a habit of eating eggs and plucking feathers), as well as 6 black cockerels hatched from those eggs from a friend.
The summer of 2012 was also the summer of the horse as Christina and Simon took lessons with Gracie as we had her trained. Gracie did very well and is now a good saddle horse. The children had fun and I think it was a great experience for them. After we finally got Gracie moved to Pure Water Pastures, the children did ride her some on their own, and I expect they will more as the weather gets better this spring. I think we have a potentially nice place to make a horse trail along the river up there, but some fallen trees will need to be cleared.
Fall found us fulfilling a dream of having a family milk cow. Violet, the 4 year old Jersey cow, was already in milk and had two bull calves with her. Dandelion, the 2 year old Jersey cow, was expected to calve in December. So our plan was that we could milk Violet now and dry her up around March or April in order to help her have a healthy calving in June. About the time Violet was being dried up, we would be milking Dandelion pretty heavily. A note about Dandelion calving: today was the last day of December and she has still not calved! She has been put up by herself in the barn since December 10th, and it has been driving me crazy wondering where her calf is. She still seems healthy, and as far as I know, she is ready to calve any time (just like she was on the 10th.) It looks like the New Year will find us learning much more about raising dairy cattle!
It was a great accomplishment to get a large section of our pasture fenced for Gracie and the cattle. I was amazed at how quickly the field got eaten down, though. It has really demonstrated the need to get some more areas fenced as soon as possible so we can rotate pastures in the spring. It was also wonderful to see the shelter being erected for the cattle that Matthew, Christina, and Simon have been working on. There are many, many other projects that still need to be done, however, both there at our pastures as well as here on the home front!
After re-reading the above paragraphs and thinking over the past year, I can't help but notice that our homestead in 2012 was only marginally successful. At every turn there were challenges, setbacks, and unfulfilled plans. I think the word I used about the garden sums up our entire year: a lack of focus. There were some serious distractions that we were dealing with throughout the year (which I have not written about), and I believe that they affected our overall family and homestead more than can be measured. It is difficult to stay focused on anything while dealing with serious emotional disharmony and stress.
These issues are still not completely resolved, but, for the sake of my family, we need to regain our focus in this coming year! As we enter 2013, I want my life, my family, and Pure Water Hollow Homestead, to glorify God in every aspect of what we do! We cannot do that without living purposefully and staying focused on the tasks at hand while also staying focused on God and His will! To Him be the glory and we give Him thanks for all he allowed us to do in 2012 and for the lessons He taught us along the way!
