I have been feeling a bit subdued today after watching a barn burn last night. It was located a fifteen minute drive from here, following a circuitous route across the Mohawk River, but only about three miles as the crow flies. From our hilltop there is a clear view to the farms on that side …
We added a new member to our bacon family. This week we received our first batch of Cottage Bacon back from the smokehouse. It is a cured pork shoulder (Boston Butt to be precise) that has been smoked and sliced. Cooking in a skillet is fast and easy, just like bacon, but this is a …
Harry is the king of malapropisms around here, and the words and phrases he coins are usually superior to any of the correct ones extant in the English language, so we have adopted some Harry-isms into our vocabulary. Here’s the story on his latest: freezer park. This Saturday I finished installation on our second walk-in …
After months of flooded fields and delays due to my recuperation from leg and back injuries, the pigs are finally out on pasture. We usually can get the pigs out of their winter yard by early May once the grass starts growing, but this spring has been atypical. The pigs all were happy to be on …
Update Jan 2018: I wrote a follow-up with dimensions here. I guess I can say I’m a veteran chicken feeder builder. I’ve learned that there are innumerable ways to build a container from which chickens eat, but very few of the feeders I’ve built (or the ones I’ve seen elsewhere, or the store bought ones …
We have a steep, weedy patch just behind the house. When we moved here it had a small mowed path through the middle, but the rest was dense overgrown sumac and wild grape tangled under a poplar canopy. After running the pigs through and then following up with untold hours of chainsawing, we managed to …
Mama didn’t raise no fool. The kittens are getting taught by their mother to hang out right at the front door, since there’s always a chance that one of us will bring them something to eat. Not that there are aren’t a zillion mice around in the fields and voles in the gardens, but the …
Someone recently asked me what we thought of Cornish Cross broiler chickens. The answer is complicated (the kids would point out that all my answers are over-complicated) and I won’t try to replicate the exchange or the subsequent conversations we’ve had at home on the topic. I will agree that as a whole Cornish Crosses …
We’ve had some close shaves with frosts and even a little snow this week, but it looks like the apples are going to pull through without any damage to the blossoms. Apples are blooming everywhere!
Five years ago I built a portable shade hut for the pigs when we had them in an open pasture. We stopped using that field for pigs, and the hut has been left sitting out in the field ever since. But after years of neglect, my plan for this Saturday afternoon was to strip off? …
