Breaking News

I wanted to wait until after my birthday for this very major announcement. Oh yeah, you WISH the announcement had to do with my quitting my blog.You're out of luck Chuck,better make a new plan, Stan, because I am doing exactly the opposite.

I'm expanding.

Yup, more of me, more of the time. Lord help YOU. For many months I have been feeling pulled towards doing more with my cyber time. By "more" I mean something of more value. For the last two years I have been all over the blog boogie board. A little bit of family, a little bit of farm, a little bit of grand kid talk, a little political (THERE ! Another grand band name. Little Political How do I do that ?!") and lately more than a little about soap, of all things.

 By the way last night I made a horrible batch of brown soap so I rebatched it, added superfat and great blue colors and new smell and now it is the most fabulous midnight blue soap bar that I will call NIGHT SHIFT in honor of all the night shift workers in all the world especially my friends at Gibson Area Hospital, my daughter Raven, son Colton,  and my newest night nurse stalker, John  in North Wales . Wait ! You got it wrong. He's not a stalker of night nurses, he is a night nurse who stalks my blog as I do his, But I digress.

Air  R  E ?

Oh yeah. My new blogs.

This one, the Midlife FarmKook will remain right here. But the focus will be slightly right of center. I will speak of the usual family and daily farm life stuff. The real great farm life stuff. The fun stuff. Stuff that makes my heart SING. OK you get it.

Farmer Keith and GK Wes ,window shopping
in Chicago after making pork deliveries last week.

Blog number two, already up and running but in a very secret way until now, is called The Seanachai's Daughter. I started it several months ago in a different  "venue" (I hate that word, weddings used to held at the VFW club house, now they are held in "Venues," what a load of donkey ripeness.) I'm using WordPress to produce it. That blog will focus on my fledgling writing including excerpts from my Novel in Progress, some poetry (you said it I didn't) and short stories. You can visit my new blog here: http://seanachaidaughter.wordpress.com/

Blog number three will be made public very soon. It is at this moment unnamed but its focus will be strong and clear; farmer rights and struggles in a time of government suffocation. I am a renegade farmer and I have reached my boiling point. Farm after farm after farm has been being raided, shut down, and destroyed over ridiculous things like the sales of raw milk and yogurt. Other champions have risen to this calling and its now my turn to put up or shut up. This new blog will focus specifically on events occurring here in Central Illinois to champion farmers and generally on actions being taken nationally. Congressman Ron Paul has gone out on a political limb through his support of raw milk sales and he needs farmer support in this work.

So there you have it. Announcement over. Please go back to your regular programming, but don't forget to come back. Put it on a Post-It Note.  Works for me...sometimes.

Who let the hogs out ? Woof woof woof woof woof.

   We have been blessed with some great  visitors this week and more to come tomorrow. On Tuesday, in addition to our reliable and hardworking intern Aaron, we had a PhD Candidate from U of I, Sasha, come for a chat and a tour. Of all the topics in all the gin joints in all the world, he chooses "Rare Swine Breed Conservation" for his thesis. How fun for us to drone on and on about the Red Wattle to someone who actually wanted to hear about it, instead of to our family who only pretends to want to hear about them...again. Sasha even asked if he could back some time and WORK with us. Heck YES, Mr. PhD . I knew we would like him when he pulled a pair of official Muck boots from his car. We liked him even more when he called our Red Wattles the " Maytag of Livestock" referring to the fact that they rarely get sick.

Keith (with beard) telling Sasha (with beard)
about the gentleness of our
Red Wattle Boar, Mad Max



Keith SHOWING  Sasha how gentle our Gentle Giant really is.



Today, two women from Washington (as in Illinois) came  to tour the farm and before leaving not only did they buy meat from our store and raw milk but they also ordered a whole hog and a 1/2  beef. Thank you. Thank you very much.

This afternoon, the well traveled and ambitious Matt and his cool mom came to check out the Red Wattle feeder pigs we had for sale. They are newbie homesteaders from the Lemont area. They asked fantastic, well thought out questions and reminded us why it is we do what we do. We often forget, that is why people need to remind us. If these two take 1/10 as good care of our pigs as they do their chickens, those pigs will be a couple of  deliriously happy porkers. There, I did it again ! Another great name for a rock band just pulled out of thin air. Really, how do I do it ?

Tomorrow, another student writing a paper about the relationships between farmers and their land, is coming for another interview. Traveling all the way from Massachusetts you might wonder how she found our little farmette. Well, she's actually a local, from Chenoa. Small town girl goes to big city college in order to write a paper about a small town farm. We'll looking forward to meeting her.

Tomorrow afternoon, we'll embark on an all new adventure. A woman from Wisconsin is bringing her Red Wattle gilt "Barbara" to meet up with  (code for  "meet up with" ) our Red Wattle Boa,r Mad Max. Hmmm, I wonder if she would mind if I called her "Babs" ? Yeah, you're right. I should probably wait until after the official breeding event before I get all casual with her. If she and Mad Max don't hit it off right away we have made accommodations for Miss B to spend a few nights. Keith and Aaron cleaned out one of the barn stalls on Tuesday and it is looking mighty cozy in there  what with the chandelier  (Yes Kristy, its yours) and the bottle of  wine cooling in the waterer. Yes, I am aware candles are more romantic but HELLO ! Its a barn, with straw.  You People.

Oh baby !

Last night was an eeire and weird sort of night. Rolling clouds, bright full moon, breezes too warm causing the midlife farmwife to swoon. Sorry.  The last time I "swooned"  was 1975 and I'm pretty sure it was not romance related.

So, the sky was very Fall like, but last I looked it was still February in Central Illinois. Something is up, I thought.

This morning when Keith did chores he found this wonderful sight

Our crossbred sow Dot with her FOURTEEN piglets ! She looks very comfy and satisfied doesn't she ? I always had my babies just ONE at a time and I know I never looked this good after delivery. She farrowed in one of the custom made hutches Keith custom made this past summer. Its a great design with plenty of room for mom and babes and an area in the back that babies can snuggle into but remain safe from mom accidentally lying on them.

See the boards (two 2x4's nailed together) behind Dot ? And the way the hutch roof angles towards to bottom of the hutch.? Both these measures help decrease losses due to crushing. Those and the fact that mom can come in and out of the hutch as she pleases with lots of room to roam outside. Ideally we would have them farrowing in the woods, if we had any woods, but we do not so we do the best we can with the pasture and the hutches we have. With each version of this farrowing hutch Keith tweaks a part of the design and our survival rates improve. Another decade or so and we'll have this hog raising thing licked...chewed ? Smoked ?

Ooops. I forgot to thank Mad Maxx our Red Wattle Boar and daddy to these piglets. What a great job he did of passing down his Red Wattle coloring. Tomorrow we'll count wattles.

In a lather about rectums

January continues and so does our farm planning. We're no where near a ten year plan or a five year plan, in fact coming up with a one year plan is getting difficult. Especially since technically it will only be an 11 month plan, that is IF we finish up the plan before end of month.

Life keeps getting in the way.

The problem of today..the prolapsed rectum. Oh, don't be so sensitive. Farm blogs can't be about sunsets and soap making all the time. Well, its not my fault you haven't finished your breakfast. Get up earlier.

The rectum in hand, so to speak, belongs to one of our our smaller Red Wattle feeder pigs. A runt from the beginning. As soon as we noticed it, we tried to gently reduce it (Keith found the best angle and had the best results) and we separated the piglet from the others it was running with. Then I did some web research and talked to another pig farmer friend. Prognosis is poor and I expect we'll be euthanizing said piglet soon. To avoid future occurrences we'll follow some of the suggestions of the more experienced  pig farmers.
http://flashweb.com/blog/2011/01/rectal-prolapse-in-pigs.html


Seems the problem is often genetic and culling that gene from the herd (over time) is the best remedy. In the meantime prolapsed rectums can be avoided by providing large amounts of water, hay, good bedding and room to stretch out. Pigs are groupies though. They like to be with each other and in the winter have been known to lay on each other thus increasing abdominal pressure and adding to the problem.

So we looked at our largest group of pigs.

Looks cozy and spacious. Room for both the bacon and the eggs. But if you pan that eye of yours to the left

You can see how the hogs like to snuggle. Outside of this barn is lots of pasture and room to run but when it is cold pigs will lie together for warmth and debauchery.  So today, after Keith takes yet another hog to the locker, we'll talk about how to move which hogs where and when. Yesterday we tried to warn them of the upcoming moves

But when there is milk in their feeder, attention span is short.  So come on you fellow pig farmers out there. Tell us how you deal with the prolapse issue. How often do you see it , what do you do about it and how do you avoid it ? And thanks again to Walter Jeffries who covered the topic so much better , which I swear I did not know until I was researching this here blog and THEN looked at his blog to find he had blogged about said rectums several days earlier . That's my story and I am sticking to it. Your honor Sir.

In your face

When we decided to go public with our farm venture our Marketing President (moi) struggled with the appropriate slogan. She discussed it with the General Farm Manager (Keith) who ran it by the Ways and Means Committee. (That was Jason saying "what do you mean ?" and Kyle saying "No Way!" when I suggested our slogan.

Seems some of the higher ups (they are all taller than me) thought the slogan  I was suggesting was a little rude.  Like the slogan "Where's the Beef ?" of the Wendy's company from the early 80's wasn't rude.  Not only did their slogan become famous, the little old lady who yelled it recieved all kinds of awards.

So the Marketing President cooked a great meal for the General Farm Manager , including homemade baking soda biscuits, and got her way. And it wasn't even a Thursday. The Ways and Mean Committe never really had a say since they don't bunk here anymore. And thus our farm slogan was born.

But for those of you who are the softer, gentler type of human being, we also have these

T-shirts (short sleeved) are available in our store or by mail. $20  for the black slogan shirt and $15 for the white shirt with the pig pictures, plus $4 for S&H. They come in adult sizes S, M, L,XL and 2X. I do not yet have kids sizes. Would Make THE MOST EXCELLENT Christmas Gift. Please email me you order at   opies99@gmail.com 
And thanks so much for helping support the small family farm.

Pied Piper of Pigs

Once again, because the demand for our product is growing so fast, we recently bought a "few"  feeder pigs from a neighboring farmer. Soon our breeding stock will be in full production but as our growth has been so wonderfully rapid, we have had  to "outsource" some of our pork chop crop. All hogs are still raised here but only about 75% are born here. (We believe this will be our LAST group not born on South Pork Ranch.)

So we buy piglets as young as we can and then we move them OUTSIDE. It is often the first time these piggies have ever felt dirt or been able to chew grass or bask in the sunshine.

In the beginning,  confinement hogs are very wary of people. They are used to being indoors, in tight quarters. They are often fed by automated means. They don't get the kind of behind the ear scratches and shoulder rubs our animals are accustomed to receiving. Then they come to South Pork Ranch and their lives change.

We get them on pasture as soon as we can get them acclimated to an electric fence. The REAL fun happens very quickly as Keith begins to feed them raw milk from our certified organic dairy. The pigs love it and of course fall deeply in love with Pied Piper Keith.

Introducing, The Red Wattle Review !

 Now for the first time ever, South Pork Ranch is proud to present their first Red Wattle Pig all dressed up and somewhere to go ! Our first Red Wattle feeder pig for our own use, was unveiled with several friends recently in a BLT fest. The bacon was a deep red with plenty of fat and cooked very quickly.We were told, and had read  in several sources, that Red Wattle meat was leaner than the average pig and thus the reason it fell out of favor with the settlers in the 1800's who relied on lard for so much of their household cooking. So we were surprised and pleased to see the tasty fat. I suppose those folks did not have access to the certified organic milk we feed to our hogs.

"Yum" and "yummy" were the official taste testers words. I hang with a very elite and highly intelligent group.The bacon disappeared as quickly as it appeared on the plate. Some actually used forks to grab their share but several reverted to the age old finger grab. Last night Keith made himself porkchops, tonight we will try a ham steak and hopefully by morning there will be enough leftover for Daves Supermarket in Fairbury.
http://davessupermarket.com/   Daves will begin selling our meat this week. Yeah !

Three weeks ago , at the same time we took our own Red Wattle into the locker, we sold our first two Red Wattle feeder hogs to two of our Chicago chefs , Jared Van Camp at Old Town Social 
http://www.oldtownsocial.com/ (and faithful side kick Yoni) and Chris Pandel at The Bristol,  http://www.thebristolchicago.com/
In Chris's own words in a recent email , "The wattle is super. (or did he mean "supper?" )We have much of it curing for future use but the animal was beautiful when we butchered it"

So there you have it. The first reviews on the tastiness of the critically endangered, exotically beautiful  Red Wattle Hog are in. The reason I am telling you all this is to remind myself why we are raising these little boogers. Yesterday afternoon we almost butchered ten of the little monsters right there on our front lawn with our bare hands.

Seems Red Wattle babies are of the adventuresome sort. Once secure with the location of their home base, they like to, how shall I say it..RUN AROUND LIKE DRUNKEN WILD BANSHEES IN MY FRONT YARD TEARING UP EVERYTHING IN SIGHT WITH THEIR HUGE  FLAT BULLDOZING SCHNOZES. The fact that Keith has lowered the electric fence three times in order to give them a good jolt if they try to leave ground zero, made no difference. Once one little wicked bite-sized hammette decides to go for a stroll, the rest will follow. Lemmings disguised as sausages, they run out of the pasture, across our gravel drive and into the front yard. Our herd dog Freddie is not a lot of help.Still young and untrained (will someone please just call the dog training lady whose phone number has been stuck on the frig for the last 6 months ,and register us for classes ?!?!) Freddie just circled the renegade pigshits, I mean piglets,around and around just a few feet from our front door. The poor dog has no sense of direction but he does know his shapes. Well, one shape. The circle. Or on a very good day, he does some nice ovals.

With the yard still very soft from recent rain, the 4 week old piglet feet, cloven like the devil's own,  left wonderful holes all over, nicely accenting the big craters left by loose horse hooves the week before. When we opened the front door they stopped in their tracks, looked at us simultaneously and then ran like fats out of hell back UNDER the electric fence and into the protective hogcienda. None of the four sows even bothered to chastise them. Parenting skills of a pig I tell you.

And now we leave this story for a raw milk update. We are still selling it as Illinois State Law says we can. The milk truck from company A did pick up our milk on schedule. And tomorrow is Monday. Stay tuned.

South Pork Ranch is proud to announce...

the arrival of our first Red Wattle litter. I told you a little about it yesterday but without pics what is the point ? The bambinos are doing well this am. Mama Debbie is not being bothered by the other 3 sows and in fact when she gets up to go outside the hogcienda to eat, the little ones are smart enough to find their way over to Lady Anna's wide bottom. They snuggle up against her hide end until real comes back. Then Debbie  makes this little bark noise and they all get up and come back to her.

Debbie had no problem with me being in  her space this morning. I went slowly with my back to the open doorway (just like they teach  us nurses to do with psych patients) but she was totally OK with me being next to her. I scratched her ears, rubbed her neck and she fell back asleep.Suddenly, she lifted her head and growled this low, deep, alien coming out between her udders , menacing growl. I thought "here we go, she is going to make an HLT (that would be Human-Lettuce-Tomato )  sandwich out of me !  Then I noticed from behind me, one of cats sneaking in for a closer look at the new arrivals. The cat got Debbies hint very quickly and RAN out of reach.

The piglets remind me quite a bit of human babies with their delicate see-through  skin, their little wrinkles, the fine hair on their back. But those crazy ears ! Never seen those on a humanoid. Good thing.  

And check out that nest Debbie made ! Keith put in three big bales of straw on Wednesday but did she use that ? Nope. Obviously that building material was too common for her. Instead, she tore away at the big bales of organic hay just in front of the hogcienda and used it for the king size mattress she built with JUST HER MOUTH. If I had to rely on just my mouth to make a bed, well it would still be unmade. In fact it is still unmade now at 10 am. So what was the point of that comparison ? I have no idea. I have flights of ideas lately but no real solid ones. I blame it on the plaster dust from our recently sanded , lead painted windows, walls and trim.

What was I talking about ? Oh yeah, global warming . There is no such thing.
Oh, I almost forgot , we have Red Wattle babies and we like them.