Homestead Happenings

I thought I would share a bit of what has been going on since my last post a couple weeks ago.  This will be a hodgepodge overview of a post.  On one hand it feels like nothing much has been happening around here, but after I think about it I can come up with quite a few small things.  A few small things tend to add up to a rather large post!

Spring and Winter have been battling it out as we've had some freezing nights and snow as well as some sunny days in the 60s. 

Based on these Daffodils, I think that Spring is going to win!

Christina has been enjoying working with her rabbits. 

 Here is some of the angora wool she has gotten.

It is softer than kitty cats!

We were told that the tan rabbit and white one in the same cage were both girls, but it turns out that the dark one is a boy!  We were planning on saving any breeding activity for a later time, but since they have already been together we wonder if the female could be pregnant?  If she is it will take only about 21 days for kits to be born! 

Earlier today the rabbits were again enjoying some time in the sun!  Christina has been putting them in our garden spot that has a fence around it.  Pretty soon I will need to till it up, but for now it is a nice safe rabbit run!

This tan one has recently discovered his masculinity! 
Christina has named him Wilely.

Here is Snowflake, the female. 

Her twin brother is named Big Guy, but we did not get a picture of him today.

I think Wiley is the cutest, even though he is a boy!

Augusta was keeping her eyes on them through the fence! 

Speaking of our canine friends, the original owner of that little beagle dog came by and claimed her.  We miss her, but not as much as Gusta misses her.  They were such pals!  Little Dog wandered up back in December with no tags and we had been taking care of her ever since, but her owner acted like he thought we were wrong for keeping her!  He was not nice at all.  Some people are just naturally rude!

Lisa and Christina have started some tomato, egg plant, and jelly melon seeds over the past couple of weeks.  We already have plants coming up!

Matthew has also found a few more days to work on the house at Lawrence County.  There is much that needs to be done with that project and I am amazed at how proficient Matthew's carpentry skills are becoming.  So far he has done everything with only Simon, Christina and Timothy's help.

Timothy liked helping with the flooring removal.

Here is what it looked like soon after Matthew had removed the wall separating the kitchen from the "long room".  It really opened the area up!

Matthew is also going to re-do the ceiling.

Here is a piece of the ceiling removed showing the higher rafters. 

We're toying with the idea of taking out the whole plywood false ceiling and working with the rafters to make sort of a cathedral ceiling effect.  We would loose some attic space with that plan, but it would really look and feel nice!

On another day, Matthew made some advancement on raising the floor in the long room to match the kitchen floor.  He's using 2 x 4s covered with rough cut lumber.  He's going to put smooth ply-wood over the rough lumber sub-floor.

The fireplace could not be moved, but I think that I like the way Matt fixed it.

Since the floor is being raised, the outside doors also need to be raised. Tonight Matthew was working on raising the door going out to the carport.  You can also see the 2x4s for the subfloor.  Before too long, those windows next to the door are going to be replaced with a wall and a regular window.

Meanwhile, we were enjoying the beautiful day.  It was sunny and 65 degrees!

Lisa and Christina were working on cleaning out some of the flower beds around the yard.

The Hyacinaths are pretty.



We're not sure what type of flower these are, but we were happy to see them coming up in the flower bed!

I like the way Christina got the blue sky behind the daffodils in this picture.

The only other things I can think of to note is the other stock:  chickens, pigs, a horse, and cows. 

The chicken flock is doing good even though that little beagle dog probably killed one of my hens when she was playing with it.  Currently we have 16 hens and have been getting between 3 and 8 eggs a day.  When all the young hens start laying regularly we should get plenty of eggs every day! 

Our two hogs have really grown and we think they may have bred.  If so, we really don't know when exactly it happened, so we could be having piglets within the next month. 

Gracie is doing fine, but no one has ridden her in a while.  Maybe the children will get back to riding her some as the weather continues to improve.

The Jersey bull calves are getting bigger and bigger and Violet is doing well.  We still hope she will calve this summer.

And then there is our expectant 2 year old Jersey milk cow, Dandelion.  It's been two weeks now that she has had milk!  We used to think milk was a sure sign of an impending calving at any moment, but now we've read that they can have full milk for up to a month before they calve!  She has been put up in the barn for the past 2 weeks now.  Tonight her udder was so full that her teats were protruding at angles instead of hanging loosly down!  I really think it will be any time now.  Instead of a December calf, we should have a March calf!

Well, that's a glimpse into some of the happenings around Purewater Hollow Homestead as we finished up February and started into March.  We're looking forward to the Spring and Summer that's soon coming up and all the adventures they will bring!

Pure Water Hollow Pigs of 2012

The beginning of 2012 saw us getting back into raising our own pork here at Pure Water Hollow.  And yesterday, we took the next step in the path to getting back into the pig production business.  But before I introduce you to the boar that will hopefully be daddy to hundreds of piglets during the next few years, I want to back up and show you the Pike County pigs we got back in January.

I decided to secure our garden fence with some electric and keep them in our garden spot for a few months to end out the winter season.  I was hoping it would help the pigs as well as help our garden by stirring up the dirt with their rooting as well as adding some fresh fertilizer to the soil.  They had already grown some by the time I took any pictures of them.  Here they are in February at 3 months of age:

The milk crate gives an idea of their size just a few months ago.

By the beginning of June they had grown considerably:

Simon has done a great job raising this group of pigs.  He has been the main one responsible for making sure they have food and water and are safe and healthy.  

But he has had some helpers from time to time:

Christina ended up staying at the barn to take care of Gracie, which left a crew of boys to take care of the hogs on this day.  Since Simon is often on solo duty, I think he was pleased to have the whole gang pitch in:

Timothy checked them out.  They are looking good:

Nearly every day Simon fills up buckets of water down at the house and carries them with a 4-wheeler up the holler for the pigs.  Here he is delivering some much appreciated water for the hogs:

                                     

                                       

      

       

        

Timothy helps feed them sometimes:

                                        

     

                                        

With hog chores being completed, the boys took some time that day for a little fun, as well.  Matthew likes hanging around the hog lot:

 

Here is Simon relaxing in that same tree:

And of course, Timothy wanted to try, also:

Yesterday I took some more pictures of them.  I think they have gotten noticebly bigger in just the past 3 weeks!

When we bought them we were told that theses three pigs were born on November 11th, 2011. (I wonder if they came at 11:00?) That makes them 7 1/2 months old now.  According to the formula using their heart girth and length measurements, each of the barrows are over 300 pounds now.  They are definitely ready to be processed into prime cuts of pork!  The female was a runt and is still smaller, but she has gained with no problem and really looks great now!  I think she could be a very good mama sow some day.  If we keep her, I think I will name her "Kimper" after the place she came from in Pike County.  (We don't generally name our pigs unless they will be part of our family for more than 6 months.)

Which brings me to the original reason of this post:  To introduce you to our new boar, Blackie.  He is from K and T Showpigs and was born around May 7 which makes him about 6 weeks old now.  Here he is meeting the two girls we got April 22 from the same operation in Mason County:

The girls were farrowed March 18th at K and T Showpigs.  Their mama won the Reserve York Jr. Show and Champ York Open Show at the 2011 Kentucky State Fair, so they come from a good pedigree!  The girls are 3 months old already, but you can tell that they are not too much bigger than Blackie:

The girls really seemed to like him!  I was worried that there may be some squabbles at first, but there were no problems at all.  I am tentatively naming one of the girl pigs "K" and the other one "T", but we'll have to wait and see if those names stick!

Here is a picture of the daddy boar of all three of these piglets from K and T.  His name is Maker's Mark:

I find it interesting that K and T sells doses of Maker's Mark semen for $150/dose because of his genetics!  Hopfully this means that making two trips to Mason County for pigs will pay off for us in the long run with good quality piglets in the future! 

The piglets themselves were priced fairly.  We gave $45 a piece for three girl piglets back on April 22nd and made arrangements with Kevin to come back later to get a boar from a litter in the near future.  It turned out that the 3 little pigs got sick and one of them eventually died on May 9th.  When Kevin heard about the one fatality he said that we could have the boar I wanted for free!  When I picked up Blackie yesterday I tried to offer money for him, but Kevin wouldn't take it!  They really seem to be a good operation at K and T Showpigs and great people!  So, we still only have $135 (plus gas) invested in the three pigs from K and T.

The plan is for Blackie to get about 6 months old and be ready and willing.  By that time, he would have a very large one year old sow named Kimper that had never been bred, as well as two 8 month old sows that would also be wanting to be bred.  We may try to space out the farrowing times for the three litters instead of having them all three at once, but we'll see. 

Anyway, if the plan comes together, we should have piglets once again running around Pure Water Hollow by the end of February or beginning of March!  And then it will be time for a new post about the Pure Water Hollow Pigs of 2013!