Happy Thanksgiving

This morning I showed Olivia how to roast pie pumpkins in the oven and then peel off the skins. Tomorrow we'll put the pumpkin through the food mill and bake pies for our family gathering at my aunt & uncle's house.

Looking forward to spending time with family and friends this weekend, and our day-after-Thanksgiving tradition of getting our Christmas tree, decorating the tree & house, homemade pizza and the movie "Elf".

Be well, friends!

For the beauty of the earth,
for the glory of the skies,
for the love which from our birth
over and around us lies;
Lord of all, to thee we raise
this our hymn of grateful praise.

For the beauty of each hour
of the day and of the night,
hill and vale, and tree and flower,
sun and moon, and stars of light;
Lord of all, to thee we raise
this our hymn of grateful praise.

For the joy of ear and eye,
for the heart and mind's delight,
for the mystic harmony,
linking sense to sound and sight;
Lord of all, to thee we raise
this our hymn of grateful praise.

For the joy of human love,
brother, sister, parent, child,
friends on earth and friends above,
for all gentle thoughts and mild;
Lord of all, to thee we raise
this our hymn of grateful praise.


1 year ago:

Loaded

Whew!

Grain wagon still life

This time, the story has a happy ending! We got Ava back this morning. She'd been found a few miles southwest of here and brought into the vet clinic. My brother works there and called first thing this morning. She's so happy to be back on her porch, tormenting the cats!


3 years ago:

Thankful

Deja vu

Sadness has hung like a cloud over Sugar Creek Farm this weekend - our Ava has been missing since Friday morning. Ike somehow escaped the backyard fence Friday morning and took off on a walk around the neighborhood, as he likes to do on the rare occasions that he manages to break out. We assume Ava followed. About 6:00 that night Ike returned, without Ava.

It's a bad, bad case of deja vu.


3 years ago:

7 days without blogging

2 years ago:

The obligatory self-portrait

Feeling spoiled

Get your sausage on

Happy Thanksgiving!

1 year ago:

I have to share a little brag

Diversifying

More weanlings

Not only have the calves been weaned, but so have the piglets. Rafe gave them some apples on Sunday, but it took a bit for them to figure out what to do with them.




1 year ago:

You just never know

Beef availability update

Calf weaning for 2008 is done!

I wanted to give our beef customers a quick update. Some of you usually get your quarters in the spring. Our newsletter earlier this year indicated that we would have a limited amount of beef available in spring '09. However all of the calves have ended up finishing more or less together. So there will not be any spring beef this coming year. We still have a few quarters available for late December, and that will be it until November '09.

So please don't wait to get on our list! Email sugarcreekfarm (at) osage (dot) net to reserve your quarter or half beef for late December.


3 years ago:

One chicken's mess

Doin' a "little" raking

Before and after

2 years ago:

Paige

Another fall job done

Opera singer

One person in this world

1 year ago:

First video

Second harvest

Stockpiled (or piled stocks)

Loaded

Matt's been busy hauling manure lately, I don't know how many loads but I think several dozen like this.



Because our manure spreader is so old, it doesn't spread things as fine as some of the new-fangled ones. Spreading after beans in the fall works best, because in the spring our neighbor will turn the soil over to plant corn. But in the years that he plants beans he "no-tills", drilling the bean seed amongst the corn stover. Large chunks of manure can interfere with the drilling. So last year's manure was piled and composted until it could be spread, along with last year's manure.

Spreading manure always starts that song "spread a little sunshine every day" running through my head!


3 years ago:

As promised on Friday...

Bales in the mist

Expansion

2 years ago:

Attention K-Mart shoppers!

Oink

Then and now

1 year ago:

Switching gears

Are you ready for some football?

Band on the run

The piglets are at that age, squeezing under gates and through fences for adventures about the farm.



But as soon as they see that they're busted,



they're a band on the run.



Remember last month, I mentioned that we were going to cull our sows? Not long after, Matt & Madeline took the open sow to the hog buying station. We assumed we'd get cull price, but when the check came in the mail we were pleasantly surprised to find we'd got 45 cents a pound! My dad thought that because she was over 500 pounds we got a premium, because food companies want these heavy cull sows for their frozen sausage products. If we can get that for the other sow when we cull her, we'll have paid for our 3 replacement gilts!


3 years ago:

When organic isn't organic

Happy Halloween!

And Happy Birthday Mom

Post Halloween pumpkin clearance sale

2 years ago:

Boo

Treats!

Commando farming 101

Cleaning the coop

1 year ago:

End of October garden?!?

Pigs in the pasture