Filling up

Pullets explore outside their coop

Yesterday was the Leopold Center's Marketing and Food Systems Initiative workshop. I was there to co-present on a little side project I've been working on. That meant I also got to sit in on some of the sessions. And what I found out is that there are some really cool things going on around the state to develop local food systems.

One session I attended was about new tools for building local & regional food businesses. One is the U.S. Food Market Estimator, which helps you calculate potential demand for over 200 individual food items for every county in the United States.

Another is a web-based local food ordering template, which I'm quite excited about. It will be released around May 1st through the Leopold Center's website, free of charge for you to integrate into your own website. It can be used by individuals or groups. I'm hoping we'll be able to make this work for ordering for our winter deliveries next year. Or possibly for pre-order for farmers market this summer.

The project I was there to talk about is a website I've been developing with Penny Brown Huber for the Grow Your Small Market Farm program. It's still under construction, but take a look at what we've got so far.

Conferences like these are one of those things that "fill me up". (And this one also literally filled me up with a wonderful all-Iowa lunch!)

Tomorrow...I'll introduce you to our 3 newest residents. Stay tuned!


4 years ago:

Noon scenes

Working the plan

g()dn3w$

3 years ago:

Disneyland

Hollywood week wrap up

2 years ago:

I spent my evening...

Garden, March 28

What we're afraid of

1 year ago:

And so it begins

Good for what ails you

Another new bird sighting

Nine, ten, a big fat hen

Gratuitous cuteness

Piglets are very obliging when it comes to photo opps.



3 years ago:

Hollywood Boulevard

2 years ago:

Heartbreak is...

Naptime

1 year ago:

At least somebody likes mud season

Worry

Ava, on the job

It's hard to see in the picture, but up until Sunday this was the arrangement in the garage. Pig pen to the front, pullet pen to the back. But the pullets didn't actually stay in their pen. They were everywhere - all over the garage, in the pig pen, and outside when we'd open the garage door.

The first time we let them venture outdoors a few of them hid out somewhere when we rounded them up for the night. The next day I was walking by the kitchen window and noticed them hanging out on the deck behind the garage.

And also hanging out back there? Ava. And she was worrying about those chickens. She didn't chase them, which is good. She was just sort of pacing around, keeping an eye on them, keeping them in place. And possibly hyperventilating. If she could talk she would have said, "Ohmygosh, I know these chickens aren't supposed to be here but the garage doors are all closed and I can't herd them back to their rightful places and I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH THEM!"

We moved the pullets out to the coop on Sunday, so the pigs have the place to themselves for a couple of weeks. They have to be out before the first batch of broiler chicks arrives - there's not room enough for the pig brooder and the full size chick brooder. Haven't yet figured out where the pigs are going...


4 years ago:

Birds of a different feather

Free range pork

1 year ago:

Great blue heron

Spring is...

Spring is chiseling mud off the bottom of school shoes on Monday morning before school. When mud calls, little boys go running...missing play shoes be damned. Time to bring the rubber boots out of winter storage.


4 years ago:

Inspiration

1 year ago:

Seed starting

Interested

It's a good thing we have nice cats.



Before we moved our new pullets from the garage to the newly cleaned coop on Sunday we'd been giving them a little bit of freedom to range right outside the garage.



Sandy found them quite interesting, but fortunately not too interesting.




4 years ago:

I struggle sometimes

3 years ago:

What a trip!

1 year ago:

Anarchy

Spring cleaning

a spring-cleaned chicken coop, courtesy of Olivia

Sorry for the long pause there. I feel a little like I've been undergoing an internal spring cleaning this past week or two.

It's typical for me to battle those wintertime blues, lack of sunlight and all that. But this year I thought I was busy enough, keeping up with the kids and their various activities, getting in some exercise. Apparently I was too busy to notice that I wasn't actually on top of things like I thought.

But now, with the increasing hours of daylight, the changing tone of the sunlight, the slowly warming temperatures, I feel like I've been set free. Too bad I didn't know I was a captive, until now.


5 years ago:

Babies!

4 years ago:

The List

Head to head

Sled of death

3 years ago:

Sugar Creek Farm goes Hollywood

2 years ago:

R.I.P. Superstar

Weird (and rather boring) things

Garden, March

Signs of spring

1 year ago:

Locker day

Weekend chicken blogging

Layover

If bad things happen in 3's

Farm art

Joy

Seven

Rafe Henry with his birthday supper request - waffles!

Seven. Seriously? How did that happen?

At seven you love Clone Wars, and Mario Cart for Wii. You enjoyed wrestling again this year, and are looking forward to another season of soccer and your first year of t-ball. And lately you've started singing a lot, around the house and in the car. Following in your sisters' footsteps, hopefully.

You are one loved little kid. It's pretty nice to go to parent/teacher conferences and have your teacher start out by telling me how much she loves you. You got a birthday card (and a $2 bill!) in the mail today from the guy that lets you help run the elevator at church. Your teacher's father, who comes to your class to read, loves you. And of course we think you're pretty special.

You're having a fantastic year at school. Your reading skills have exploded. Your teacher says you get right to it and get your work done. And it's probably too early to tell, but fingers crossed you might be the only one of my kids that shares my love of math.

You've grown and matured and changed so much in the past year. I can't imagine the changes we'll see by the time you're 8. I'm excited to see what kind of person you grow to be in the future, what kinds of things will catch your passion.

But let's not rush it, okay?

Love,
Yo mama

Adventures in cow buying

You might remember that last fall we culled our bull and 3 of our cows. Yesterday it was time for another trip to the sale barn at Dyersville to try and pick up some bred cows.

We'd tried to make to their February bred cow sale. But that day we only got as far as Floyd (about 20 miles from home) when the truck started acting up and we had to turn and go back home.

Because of the nasty weather forecast, we'd decided to leave around 6:30 a.m. So my alarm went off at 6, and I laid there thinking about who knows what, but some thought in there jolted me out of bed with an, "Oh crap, I forgot to set the clocks ahead last night!" But it worked out, the weather didn't start until we were on our way home.

So we're on the road for home, with a trailer full of cows, and the rain turns to freezing rain and sleet. We're going 40 mph, gawking at a number of cars in the ditch. We decide to exit at Independence for gas...at this point we're still a couple of hours from home. Another truck pulls into the gas pump next to us. A guy gets out and says, "You know you lost a tire on your trailer, don't you?"

Uh, no.

He tells us he saw it come off, right before we exited. So now we're off on a scavenger hunt around Independence, on a Sunday, for lug nuts - hoping the other tire on that side holds until we can get the spare on. We strike out at Walmart, but find a farm & fleet store open with what we need. Matt gets the spare on, and we head back to the highway to look for our lost tire. There it is, out in the median. Matt jumps out and grabs it, and we're off again.

Fortunately that was the end of the adventure and we made it home with our load - five 4 & 5-year-old cows from a herd dispersal. They should start calving in 2 to 3 weeks. Here's a few of them...





There's two more solid black ones, as well. They're smaller framed than the ones we have, which I like. And it seems we bought at a good time - prices were reasonable yesterday.

We have a new bull picked out from a local guy. Just waiting on weather & schedules and planets to align to have him delivered.


4 years ago:

Spring is in the air

Farm sale

The best things in life are free

More woodchips

3 years ago:

More chicken models

Yearlings

2 years ago:

Modern art

Sows in snow

The farm where I grew up

1 year ago:

How many licks whorls

Small Farm Business : Enterprise Budgeting

Sleeping arrangements

Pigs like to cuddle. And to spoon. They're very affectionate.

But this doesn't look very comfortable...


Neither does this...


Chickens, apparently, like their personal space.



3 years ago:

Congratulations!

2 years ago:

Powered, the town version

1 year ago:

Installment #7

Cuteness ensues

It's that time again, time to pick out Madeline's 4-H pigs. My brother breeds several litters of "show pigs" just for her and lets her buy her pick. She got 8 again this year. She'll take 4 or 5 to fair, and sell the rest to our customers.

Olivia got some, too, this year. But hers are just a money-maker project, she's not going to take them to fair. She brought 3 home, and will bring 3 more home a little later. My brother had a late litter that didn't fit size-wise with the rest of his pigs, so he gave her a deal on them. They need to get just a bit bigger before we get them.

(Let us know if you want on the list for half or whole hog for August - we're already getting orders! The girls get to keep all the profits on these for their college funds.)

Last year we used a hog panel as a makeshift brooder pen. It wasn't the best solution, because the little stinkers could pick it up with their noses and squeeze out the bottom.

Matt had been looking at buying some new hog gates (heavier than panels) and making a pen out of those. But hog gates aren't so easy to find these days and cost a pretty penny (because most hogs are raised indoors nowadays, no need for hog gates.)

But first he asked his friend Rod if he had any old hog gates on hand. Rod's a "junker" (there's probably a more proper name like "reclamation professional"), and he's been able to hook us up with various gates, old-fashioned feeders & waters, campfire rings, etc. in the past. Sure enough, he had some old gates that pin together and they work perfectly for a temporary pig brooder in our garage. And all for the grand price of $20!



Unfortunately we had a repeat of last year's tragedy the very first night. We put a lid on the water bucket, but during the night they managed to get the lid off and once again we had one drown in the bucket. No more bucket waters for us!

I'll leave you with this bit of cuteness, with more to follow...



4 years ago:

Q&A: Blood spots

Commando farming

Maternity ward

Why we do this

Fudge

Waning poetic

Q&A: Pigs - The Large Black

3 years ago:

What's in your butter dish?

Before & After

Baby watch

Jimmy, Male chicken model

2 years ago:

Ice storm

Powered

Entertainment

The latest...

1 year ago:

Maddog's Hogs: Chapter 1

So cute I can't stand it

Study: Cornfield in a snowstorm

I think she's got it backwards

How to Cook : Ham Steak