Tilling the Soil

Well we finally got some much needed rain last night. We have been under fire bans for awhile. For the first time since they have been keeping records we didn't get any snow in March. What? Yes folks that is correct. Amazing. Even without rain the "Boys" have been tilling in their pen. Loosening the soil, digging up the rocks. They are good. Want to rent them to till your garden? Let me know. All natural, no pollution from gasoline engines and they fertilize as they go. Pretty cool. Didn't get the boat out yet. Maybe Thursday. Tomorrow I go with "The Farmer Daughter" for more pig wrangling. Taking some to St.Paul and picking some up in Montrose. It's like recycling, get rid of the old, pick up the new. Did the last duck the other day. I'm not doing ducks again unless I'm hunting them. Pain in the butt. Lots of meat though. I found my little journal that I wrote in when Gramma and I went to Ireland. I think I might put it on here a bit at a time, I think you might find it interesting. If not, oh well. Remember "It takes 43 muscles to frown, 17 to smile and 3 to pull the trigger".

Today I found a video on You-Tube on how to determine the sex of chicks by their wing feathers. This is much easier than the other method which you probably don't even want to hear about. They have to be about four days old for their wing feathers to be in. The hen feathers grow faster and are in two layers, a longer one and a shorter one. Top pic rooster. So Gramma and I checked them all and we're pretty sure we have five hens and one rooster. We are happy. The one we believe is a rooster is the one that we thought might be from the start as he is a little different in color. He has no white by the eyes and all the others do, and he is just slightly darker on his front and underside. So we will have to wait until their combs start growing to be totally sure, but it looks like we got lucky. We may have to put Frank in the freezer cause he has become a bit more aggressive lately. He attacked me from behind the other day and I had to give him a couple of good kicks before he quit. We have been circling around each other ever since and he hasn't done it again. I don't want to do it till after the B.R. kids get here so they can see him. Maybe we'll keep him in the coop while they're here. Hoping to try out the new boat tomorrow if it isn't too windy. Later.

Well on Monday we went to Cloquet to get the new chicks. We met G. G. Gramma and my perfectly proud piggie preferring sister in-law for lunch and shopping. I went my way and the girls went theirs. Works good that way. The Wal-Mart in Cloquet carries guns and ammo, but not as much as the one in Little Falls. The one in Elk River has no guns or ammo that I could find. I wonder what they are afraid of. Interestingly the W-M in Little Falls has no self-checkout lines even though it's one of the newer ones and one of the largest. What do suppose that means? We got the chicks home and all are well. Got 6 not 8 like I thought. Gramma does the business end, I just do the food-in, food-out end. They have feathers on their legs. Down the outside of the leg and all the way down the toe. Neat. Don't know if you can see in the pics or not. One chick is a little different from the others and we're hoping he's a rooster and the others are hens. (Cross your fingers please.) Yesterday we got the biggest egg we ever got. Weighed almost twice as much as the others. Double yolk of course. Can't tell in pics but when I got it out of the nest box the spots were a purplish lavender color. Really cool. Ate it for lunch today. Check back again for more new and exciting news.

Easter

Happy Easter. I hope it was good day for all. We went to our son's for brunch today, and our favorite daughter in-law put out a wonderful feast. We even got some leftovers for the boys. They are happy. Some of Sue's family was there, including her Grampa , so it was nice to see them again. She roped her brother into making pancakes, and I definitely think he could have a second career at I-Hop. Our farmer daughter came, although a little late, but she had to deliver some pigs on the way, so it was understandable. They had some of our homemade syrup and some store bought pure maple syrup and I was a bit surprised by the difference in taste. It was made in Minnesota too. Probably has to do with soil and stuff. Glad we live where we do because I think ours was much better. I'm not prejudice or anything, but I'm sure I am correct, and we don't even have sugar maples. Tomorrow is the chicken run. Looking forward to it. I'll post some pics. Bye.

The Farmer Daughter

Hey. I forgot to mention that today we got to watch our oldest daughter (the horse,pig,chicken,cow,turkey,duck,dog and cat farmer) get interviewed on a tv news show. It was pretty cool. So a newspaper, radio program, and tv news has done a story on her present situation. What next? TV Movie of The Week? "The Wive-inlaws of Morrison County." The everyday struggle of two women trying to survive the ups and downs of todays economy without any bailouts or stimulus money. Hey. I'll watch.

Chicken Adventures

We have been letting the chickens out in the afternoon the last few days. So far they stay in the barn or just outside the door a couple of feet. In the pic they actually went around the corner. I think they wanted to be closer to the pigs cause they like to watch each other and the boys were outside. I think they will get braver as times goes on. They put themselves away when it starts to get dark and the hens go back in to lay their eggs. We haven't bought eggs for awhile so that's good. On Monday we're going to Cloquet to get 8 more chickens. We want a few more hens for laying. Never know what you're getting with some breeds cause they are colored the same. These will be Black Copper Marans. I don't know why they're called that cause copper isn't black. Go figure. We're meeting G.G.G. Gramma for lunch so it will be nice to see her. She's going to come down when the southern part of the family comes up in May also. We got the permit for the hay shed today so I hope to get started on that soon. The guy that does the permits has some Belgian draft horses and they are having a horse drawn plow event on the 24th of this month and plow his fields. We missed last year but we're going this year. They had quite a few teams last year, even some mules. Should be fun. That's it. Be good. :-)

First official post: Pig pics

I don't know if I'm doing this right or not. This post is especially for my sister inlaw who seems to have a passionate penchant for pictures of Perky and Pinky and all things porcine. Anyway the first pic is the boys getting along and eating some grain I put out to try and get some pics. The second one is actually a food fight. The last one is what it means when you see the words "Pork Butt".

Our farmer daughter called today to let us know that her sow Gilly finally had her babies. 10. No wonder she looked like she was going explode. Just waiting for pics now. Like to figure out how to just caption each picture so I'll just play around with it I guess. Th-th-th-th-th-th-that's all folks.