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3.7.21 Buster was a lovely boar, kind, lovable, gentle and awfully good looking! When dispatch day rolled around it was hard not to give him one last hug before the deed was done… Darrell and I have been raising pigs for nigh on 30 years now. It all started with Milly and Tilly, two lovely… Continue reading Buster’s Bairns

1.3.2021 Another year has ended and another one looms large before us, a clean slate just waiting to be written upon. So many folks I know, us included, were heartily glad to see 2020’s final page turned for good. The end of what for so many was an epic year. Yet as we reflect back… Continue reading 2021! A New Year Ahead!

9.20.15 Here I am, a little past three o’clock in the morning, bundling up in my heavy tattered old barn shirt and pulling on my wellie boots with flashlight in hand as I head out the door to go check on Lass. Now I had decided last night I was going to have a lie-in… Continue reading Starry Skies…

Today is definitely going to be piglet weaning day no matter what! No more procrastination, but off to the weaning pen our fifteen piglets will go. The new section of the farrowing house for the pigs that Darrell added on to the end of our cow house is not quite finished as yet, there is… Continue reading Blessings not bane…

Rain! We finally had rain! After such a very long spell of hot dry weather it has been a real blessing to wake up to the drip, drip, drip of rain falling from the roof. Along with this much needed moisture also come cooler temperatures. It is so nice in the mornings to have to… Continue reading September morn…

The dog barking at a coyote that must have been at least two miles away woke me up this morning a tad before my usual rising time. I could have snuggled closer to Darrell and dozed off again for a while but then a doe started to climb up the wooden steps of the deck… Continue reading Corn Canning Day…

As I headed up to the butcher shop this morning in the early light of dawn it struck me rather ironic that I would be adding to the smoke hanging in the air as my next move was to get 125 pounds of sausages in the smokers, thus adding more particulate matter to an already… Continue reading Fire Season Smoke…

There is nothing quite like the odor of skunk to pull one out of a sound sleep into a state of alert wakefulness. How on earth is it that such a small, rather pretty looking creature can instantly bring one to a heightened state of awareness? Any other wild animal strolling past our bedroom window… Continue reading Skunk battle begins…

This has been a very stressful fortnight here on the farm. Not only have the temperatures once again soared back into the upper nineties and low one hundreds but we have been on pins and needles in the pigging department. As you may recall, Mary farrowed a lovely, seemingly healthy, litter of piglets pretty much… Continue reading The piglet saga continues…

Today is rabbit dispatch day. Rabbits are a pretty easy meat source for a smallholding farm. I remember many years ago reading a book from Rodale Press called “Stocking Up”, a book I still have by the way, in which they took you through all the pros and cons of raising different farm animals. Rabbits… Continue reading Rabbit meals and monikers…