Sophies Choice

Mama's Boy

We started raising Red Wattle hogs three years ago. Still listed by the American Livestock Breed Conservancy as "Critically Endangered" we thought we'd like to do our part to increase their numbers. To date there are still less than 2000 of them in the entire world.

Of those 2000, South Pork Ranch is home to 17 of the gentle giants. They are cool pigs, but we have found some of the females to be on the quirky side.

Sophie is one of the quirky ones. Her first litter produced 10 wonderful babes and just one died a few days after farrowing. She was a great mother to the remaining group. Her second farrowing went differently. She had another beautiful litter and all went well until day three when mysteriously...all but one remained.

Her story was flimsy. Granted Sasquatch has been filmed in some parts of the Northwest but not so much in central Illinois. Tracks of the mighty half man, half gorilla were not found near her hutch, unless the hairy beast has taken to wearing rubber boots, the only tracks found anywhere near Sophie's house of ill repute. Hey ! If you suddenly "lose" a group of piglets your home becomes ill-reputed in my eyes. I'm judgemental that way.

Sophie, too busy scratching herself to answer
questions about her missing piglets

So, the case grows cold in front of our very eyes as Sophie focused all her motherly love on one spoiled mamma's boy. Yes, just one male remained and having every single one of Sophie's teats to himself, he has grown fat and sassy since his arrival 4 weeks ago. He also has all the makings for good breeding stock so we left him uncastrated. Oddly just a few days later we got a phone call from a farmer IN NEED of another Red Wattle Boar.

Two wattles, Nice ears, all good reasons
for letting this Baby Red Wattle
keep his pigjigglies.

SOLD. Baby boy will go to his new owner in a few weeks after he is weaned.

So , now we have that tough decision to make. Sophie has had one good litter where she proved herself well. Followed by another litter where several piglets are still unaccounted for. Did she consume them out of boredom? Sell them on the black Red Wattle market and pocket the cash for herself? Do we believe her far fetched Sasquatch fable and give her another chance or do we make her into one large batch of cheddar brats?

Decisions...decisions...

Saponification Sunday , Fiona Farrows and WATCH OUT Tide.

Sunday, Sunday Sunday. A day to relax and rest unless your friend Jay comes to visit. I keep telling myself that one day that guys' battery will run down...in the meantime we feed him, we watch movies together (Waking Ned Divine, LOVE IT) we count new born babies, we test powders and clays and then he helps me make laundry soap for the farm store.

Full Bred Red Wattle Hog Fiona and her
new brood, about 12 hrs old.

This week I pulled out all the natural coloring bags. Indigo, Woad Powder, Orange Peel Powder, Wheat Grass Powder, Maddor Root powder. and French Red Clay. Why so many ? "Cause when Mr Jay is here, he and I have a hard time focusing. Residual bad behavior from our teen days of running from the cops, I mean "in track." Yeah, we were on the track team together. Athletes. Sure we were.

As a nurse I thought Castor Oil had only
one redeeming trait. Who knew it could create
happy bubbles as well?

Soap made with (from top down on tiny bars) 
Orange peel powder
Maddor root powder and Indigo powder

We spent a good part of the morning testing different powders  and their solubility in oil VS water. Then we made laundry soap with him cutting little circles with a box knife out of paper bags while I ground up shaved bar soap with washing soda and borax. Truly with all that white powder floating around in the air we're lucky that...lets just say we were lucky.

Just one more product for the Farm Store
Watch your backside TIDE

We cut, we ground, we shaved, we labeled and then after feeding him fresh eggs, fresh sausage, fresh coffee we sent him home with a big bag O' meat for his Greek step father Gus.

Yes, he really has a stepfather named Gus, who is Greek, who owns restaurants and if he hears you making fun of him you might want to hide under the table. He may be 86 but he is no cream puff. He has a great recipe for one though. Of course it is a secret and if he tells you he will have to kill you.

When Harry met Sally...the farm adaptation.

Several weeks ago we arranged for a trade. "You give me a fine looking virile young man and I will give you the same" we said to the other party. Dates and places were agreed upon. Soon one of our Red Wattle boars, whose blood line was just fine, thank you very much, but too well known among the female RW's at South Pork Ranch, was traded to another team.
His replacement was named Wally and we liked him immediately. Heralding from Wickham Farms in Iowa  http://wickhamfarm.blogspot.com/2011/10/apple-time.html He was not quite a year old but  shaping up nicely. I especially loved the fiery gold strands in his body hair. What red blooded female wouldn't?  After allowing him some time to adapt to us and his new digs we sweetened his life even more by introducing him to a young RW girl named Sophie. Sophie is of the Kiss My Grass Farm fame (now on hiatus, the farm not Sophie)

At first they were not impressed with each other. He said she had a picky way of ordering her food in a restaurant. She said he ate like a slobbering, drooling, grain mashing, flatulating, grunting pig.

Wally left, Sophie right.

Over time, and realizing that there were not that many other RW's in the farm yard to select genetic material from, they agreed to a casual friendship, a date now and then, the occasional shared trough of soured milk.  It was not immediate but after a few more weeks, they began to look to the future.

With the camera woman holding a bucket of raw milk, "looking to the future"
 became piglets play.

     Personal displays of affection were witnessed and the clock was set ahead to three months, three weeks, three days, three hours and three minutes.

Sophie began taking long extended naps, even in the middle of the day.

Protective Wally left,  Gestating Sophie right.



You'd nap often too if you had 8-12 infants on the way.

Bare Naked Soaping Ladies

Yes. I will give you a moment to get that visual OUT of your head.....Better ? All righty then. I am speaking of the group Bare Naked Ladies, one of my favorite, to which I was soaping tonight. The CD makes me happy and soaping makes me happy so here I am right now, happy. A good place to be.

He is another visual of happy

Newly weaned piglets following Keith AKA The Milk Man.
Inside those buckets are the magic of cultured raw milk mixed with
organic grain.

These 7 week old 1/2 Red Wattle piglets were recently weaned from their mother. Since they spent a good amount of their day roaming our farm anyway we felt they were ready to be moved to a cute little piglet dorm we have in the main barn. They went willingly but they also left willingly. They hear Keith and his rattly wagon and they go through the electric fence to meet him. At about 2 months they will decide they hate the fence and will stay away from it and inside their area where they belong. Our adult pigs have great respect for the electric fence but the little ones not so much.

Makes me wonder if their pain tolerance is higher or they are just dumber than the older pigs or smarter figuring the pain of the fence is short lived and the running free and wild is worth it ? It doesn't much matter as customers who come to buy meat and milk enjoy being escorted up the drive by live pork chops.

Enough about bacon lets talk lard, as in soap. Going mostly natural is working well for me. Nothing like sipping on a Diet Coke and snacking on Lays potato chips while I am mixing up all organic oils and steel cut oats for my soaps. One complex babe, yes tis she.

I turned the corner a few weeks ago when I looked at some of my more brightly colored soaps and decided I really liked the earthy ones. This soap was colored with organic coffee and scented with Sandalwood EO. Swirls were just made with the uncolored part of the soap batch and a wee bit of powdered sugar. Non-organic.If I'm anything, I'm inconsistent.

Made this soap with ground oatmeal and some organic pumpkin pie spices along with my new love, Mango Butter.

Scented with an Amyris, Rosemary EO combo it is heady and earthy and makes me want to light it up like a big fat...stick of incense. Yeah, thats it. Incense. (Of course I am kidding. Everyone knows marijuana is illegal, immoral  and interacts with Maalox in a nasty way)

Knock Knock...its me, opportunity.



The Critically Endangered Red Wattle Hog. To save
him is to eat him

So I'm sitting on my very comfy couch  in my sorta red but not quite cinnamon colored robe, reading the latest edition of Scientific American  thinking how happy I am that it is Wednesday and I do not need to go anywhere thank the heavens because even though it IS only Wednesday we've already had this really really crazy super busy week with too many meetings and too much rain which caused all this mud that makes doing chores that much harder, when I hear knocking on the door.

I will admit...I considered pretending I wasn't home.

The knocking continued. I stood up and plodded my way to the kitchen door. There was friend and fellow farmer Kim Snyder of Faith's Farm. She was very excited. " 175 pounds...They called...dropped out...farmer...they need another pig... you have  pig ?!?!...A heritage hog...its big really big... going to call right back...its big this thing...gotta know now...big...Keith said you to talk to.."

After throwing enough ice water in her face to get her to complete a  few sentences,  her phone rang.  "Yes Michael, she's right here."  (See, the ice water worked. A common misconception is the need to slap a hysterical woman. I find that action to be overkill and not as much fun as the shock of the ice water trick.) Back to the phone. Enter Michael Sullivan  AKA  The Reverend of Fat. Really that's what he said his name was. Turns out he was one of the coordinator on this years Cochun 555 event , THE pork event of the year. Read more here http://www.cochon555.com/  Briefly the event involves 5 top chefs, 5 heritage hogs, 5 top wines, tons of media and lots of fun.

I knew nothing of such an event. Never even heard of Mr. Cucucachu or his 555 porcine friends. Turns out though that our friend Kim knew about it as she had been asked to deliver one of her heritage hogs for the event. This morning after dropping off that hog at the Chenoa locker she dropped by our house to buy some milk. As she was leaving her phone rang and a very upset and worried "Reverend" called to tell her one of the other farmers who was supposed to provide a hog for the event was suddenly unable to and, here's the really good part, did she know anyone else who raised heritage hogs ?

That is why she turned back around (livestock trailer and all) and ended up banging on my back door at the crack of  dawn . (8 am for me is indeed the crack of dawn. I may be awake at 6am but I do not begin to compute until 10 am and the coffee pot is sucked dry)  So, long story abort...I agreed to the request, honored to be asked even if we were runners up. Keith and I went to the barn , picked out the perfect hog with nice wobbly wattles and a "winning !"  smile that would make even Charlie Sheen proud, and escorted him onto the trailer.

The weird thing was, this Red Wattle was in a pen with 20 other hogs and when we came into the barn he just walked up to the gate like he was happy to be Dead Ham Walking. We opened the gate, he sauntered down the barn aisle and even took enough time to pause at the end of the trailer, turn and wave to his friends left back in the barn !  I told you it was weird.

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.

Leaping off the Lap of Luxury

Keith and I are not rich but we are not poor either. We are in fact smack dab in the middle of Middle Class. Very soon this will dramatically change as I leave the stable world of nursing for the unstable world of full time sustainable farming. In a matter of 3 days our joint income will drop by 60 %. WHAT DID YOU SAY ? Yes, it is true 60%. This will include my salary and all the benefits that came with my RN job. ARE YOU INSANE ? you might further inquire. Why yes, yes we are.  You'd have to be to give up the guarantee of good money and great benefits like free teeth cleaning, in exchange for no quarantee of any income what so ever. But thats us, just a couple of wild and crazy kids going for a Blues Brother joyride, seatbelts OFF.

Its been a dream of mine.

The dream of being totally self supporting. The dream of setting all our own hours all the time. (Except for picking up Allana at 2:30 and seeing Aunt Bernie at 4:00 and being at mass at 7:30 , other than THAT...)The dream to make a living the way we choose, by farming  and for me a little writing too. OK a lot of writing. Maybe in between the farming, or about the farming or while farming, not sure how to mash it all together yet. Actually, I have a pretty good idea how I will mash it together...with bangers. One can never go wrong with bangers and mash. Here is a great recipe  http://southernirish.com/bangers-and-mash.  But I digress.

It is all very exciting and very worrisome. Its so easy to have faith when your life is good, not so easy when you are faced with the unknown, but how will we ever know if we do not try ? We know we won't starve, we have enough burger alone to keep us going until 2013, but utility companies have never been ones for taking beef patties in exchange for electricity. Thus we will be cutting back WAY WAY back in all areas. Thats OK, neither Keith or I came from Daddy Warbucks. We were both raised by hard working lower class folks who knew how to make a jar of mayo and a pound of bulk bologna go along way.

So here we go. Prayers are appreciated.

Like Gilda said "Its Always Something"

Yup, its always something. As the sun goes down on one phase of our farm, it also rises on another. Keith and I have never been satisfied with leaving things the way they are. First we had to be certified organic, then we decided to stop dehorning calves, then we opted to eliminate all grain from all our cattles diet. This included milk cows, new borns, steers, you name it ,we took the corn from it. Nine months ago we thought it would be entertaining to try our hand at raising the critically endangered Red Wattle hog, so we bought some and then bred some. After that we thought "Hey ! Lets sell more raw milk". So we did, but the folks at Foremeost, never big supporters of the entrepeuneur type farmer, decided thaey didn't like that. So they told us to stop. I mean really why should we keep selling it directly to consumers at twice what Foremost was willing to pay us ?

We were oppossed to this directive being as THIS WAS OUR FARM and it was never in writing . No contract given to us to sign and nothing in the bylaws to support their directive. Not to mention, but I must, that we had been selling raw milk for years and Foremost knew it. Thus we chose to do it "our way" by continuing to sell raw milk the way Illinois State Law says we can and Foremost rewarded us by refusing to buy our milk any longer.

Thus on May 15, the milk truck picked up our last load of milk. The last time our excellent high quality milk from our very healthy herd will be mixed in with milk across Illinois, heated and homogonized beyond recognition and good taste and turned into a varity of equally taste-free products now appearing on your local grocer shelf. To Foremost we say whole heartedly...Good Riddance, and of course "Don't let the tank room door hit you in the ass on your way out !"  (Just channeling my mother a little)

. The recent news stories,http://bulletin.aarp.org/yourhealth/policy/articles/raw_milk_personal_decision_or_public_danger.html    blogs by others, http://thebovine.wordpress.com/page/8/   word of mouth communication regarding this story about our wee farm has helped us tremendously . Our customer base is growing , our name recognition is , well, being recognized, and I have three more restaurants on our waiting list for pork and beef. Our customers are thrilled that there is cold fresh milk in the tank EVERY DAY and no longer do we Aricept minded folks have to remember if this is "milk-truck day" or not.

A neighbor of ours is planning  to buy more of our milk to use as a field fertilizer. Recent research supports this and he is ready to give it a try. http://www.greenpasture.org/community/?q=node/228 Our hog herd has tripled in the last 3 months which means more hungry mouths to feed. More pigs drinking more raw milk makes an even better pork product for our restaurants , grocery stores and farm direct customers.

 So basically,  Don't cry for us Agentina. We're going to be fine, one way or the other.