I’m amazed at how patient the boar is with all the piglets. He doesn’t act very paternal; I’d actually anthropomorphize his relationship as more avuncular than patenal. Which is to say he isn’t involved in their care and maintenance, but he plays games with them occasionally and shows up for birthday parties where he wins their affection by …
Wiring up all the doodads on the mobile chicken coop has dragged out longer than I hoped due to several parts arriving late. But today I completed all the wiring, only one week after this season’s pullets moved in.
I noticed a heifer had a loop of electric fence wire tightly wrapped around her foot. It was old galvanized wire, a light gauge wire that remains partially buried here and there. The wire is probably twenty or more years old. It was strung all over the farm on rebar posts, then abandoned. It is particularly …
This evening while moving the cattle to new hay bales I spotted a patch of ramps in the hedgerow. Everything is greening up three or four weeks ahead of where were were last year. We’ll be jolted back into snow and temperatures in the teens this weekend, so some of this early growth may stall …
Our compost piles have been colonized by redworms, a member of the earthworm family. These worms are popular in home- and industrial-scale vermicomposting. They can be ordered online, but they seem to find our compost piles on their own. Although the piles froze this winter, they didn’t freeze completely as in previous years, so the …
The ideal body shape for pigs has changed dramatically across history and geography, depending on both the types of pork products desired and the available feed resources. The incredible morphological plasticity with which pigs have responded to these pressures is amazing. Fat or lean, long or blocky, coarse haired or smooth, one can find a …
Last week I put the finishing touches on the multipurpose tractor carrier. I enjoy building one-off projects, especially when I can scrounge many of the materials from my offcuts and from the discounted “shorts” piles in the back room at Albany Steel. I fabricated most of the steel work in January during evenings and in-between other tasks, …
I finished Dan Barber’s latest book, The Third Plate: Field Notes on the Future of Food. It was published back in May 2014, so I’m not on any cutting edges here. I enjoyed the book. I also grumbled my way through it. Dan’s point is that we need to continue changing our eating. Lots of folks have pivoted away …
Dust bathing is an important activity for chickens and for many other birds. They scrape up dust with their claws, then scrounge around it in, ruffling their feathers and contorting themselves into all kinds of curious poses in the process. The activity cleans feathers of dandruff and oils (basically everything shampoo claims to do for humans) and …
