If you live in the country surrounded by hundreds of acres of corn, a cow pasture, the wetlands and Virgina’s house do you call the large field of grass behind the house a yard?  I always feel strange saying front yard or back yard because that makes it sound like we have a privacy fence and a swing set.  We have some barbed wire and a fort built on the foundation of an old smokehouse.  Just wondering.  Please discuss this topic in great detail.  Thank you and goodnight.

Oh, wait…I almost forgot…

The pigs are out.

The first time our pigs busted out of their pen was this summer and I grabbed my camera to have fun taking photos of them while we walked around with them as Clay repaired the pen. 

The second time they busted out was when we were trying to load them onto the back of the truck to be hauled to the….butcher.  I have no pictures of this event because it was six freaking o’clock in the morning, pouring rain and nobody was happy, especially me.  It was two months ago, did I mention it was raining?  Did I say we were covered in mud and pig crap?   Did I tell you Clay’s head nearly exploded when Seth and I didn’t move quick enough to save the chute  from tilting to the ground, allowing the pig we had been trying to load for a good 45 minutes to squirt out the side to her freedom?  Yeah, it was a fun morning.  For a few minutes Clay and I stood in our ‘back yard’ a good fifty feet from each other, not saying a word because we were both thinking we’d just set the pigs free, but were afraid to admit it to the other person.

We finally were able to load two of the pigs because they willingly walked up the ramp and onto the truck bed.  We have zero skills in loading pigs.

Since that wonderful morning our remaining two pigs have grown so large and strong that they make match sticks out of the boards and crumple the tin paneling like aluminum foil.  One of the pigs tossed Clay up in the air when he was nailing a board,  just hooked  her nose under his bent knee and flung him like a rag doll.

We are Ma and Pa Kettle when it comes to farming.  If we weren’t on this DAD-GUM Mother LOVIN’ debt reduction we’d purchase new building materials to add on to the barn and make a bigger pen for the pigs and chickens.  We built our pig pen and chicken coop out of old materials that were found on our property.  It’s not pretty.  Up until the pigs were huge it worked just fine, but now, not so much. 

The last two pigs will be hauled away next week.  Right now we have railway ties and metal and boards and concrete blocks holding their pen together.  It’s a ridiculous maze of crap.  Clay jokes about losing his architecture license if anyone sees his handy work.  It’s our dirty little secret.  The man that designs beautiful commercial buildings has a pile of junk behind his barn that he built for his pigs.  Is this a contradiction or what?  It’s life on Coal Creek Farm.

The pigs are out, just another day.

Good morning sleepy heads, time for breakfast!

Coal Creek Farm has four pigs this year.  They’re all females, so maybe I should call them sows, but they aren’t bred, so maybe they’re hogs.

Hog, sow, boar, pig, swine.  Why are there so many names for these animals?  I think I need to read up on this a bit more.

This is our second year with pigs.  We loved raising them last year.  We buy them when they weigh approximately fifty pounds and are around ten weeks old.  In these photos they have nearly doubled their weight.

This morning we’ll be having corn and soybean meal.

Last year I went to the local feed store and bought all the pigs food.  By month three I was spending $60 a week feeding them, it was horribly expensive.  This year we have cut our feed cost down by buying bulk feed direct from a mill.  We have the mill mix clean feed, which means we don’t feed any antibiotics or hormones to these pigs.  They eat what is called 16% feed, which means they are getting a ratio of 16% protein consisting of corn, soybean and minerals.  I’m almost certain I’m saying something wrong here, so please correct me, I’m still new to the pig farming.

These pigs are gaining weight much faster than our pigs from last year.  Because we have four of them they are more competitive with their food and don’t waste one drop of it.

How do you like our feed trough?  It’s some sort of tank that was cut in half and left on our farm for us to find and say, “Hey, that’ll work great to feed the pigs!”  Except the pigs like to move it around and occasionally bury half of it in the mud, so maybe it’s not the greatest feed trough, especially in the morning when it’s pouring rain and I’m trying to figure out how I’m going to get the trough out of the mud and feed the pigs and not have to take another shower.  Please don’t tell me how stupid I am for taking a shower before I feed the pigs.  I know this.  I just can’t seem to stop.

This is part of the ton of grain we hauled home.  When I say we hauled home a ton of grain….I mean we hauled ONE TON of grain home in our truck.  The hitch was nearly dragging on the road and we thought for sure we were going to bend an axle or pop a tire or destroy something, because we are very good at breaking things.  Especially when we get over zealous on our farm projects.

I’m using this grain to feed our chickens too.  We use one 50lb bag of feed a day and we’ll keep using more and more grain each day until, um, well, I’ll get to that in a second.

I like to feed the animals, but I HATE to water them.  We don’t have a convenient watering system and it drives me crazy.

This is my watering system.  Yes, it’s cute, but not convenient.  I have to say…every…single….day, “Okay, I’ll holler when I get back to the pig pen for you to turn on the water and then I’ll holler again for you to shut it off…don’t leave…stay right there.  Okay?  Okay?  Are you listening?  Stay right there.  Don’t move…okay?  Please?  Please?  Stay there honey, okay?”  Then I run and pray that just this one time he’ll not get distracted and stay by the hydrant until I get back to the pig pen.

It never fails, the water system screws up every time.  “CLOSE THAT LINK!  NO!  NO!  DON’T RUN AWAY FROM IT!  NO!  SHUT IT OFF!  SHUT IT OFF!”  I make a lot of trips back and forth from the hydrant to the pig pen to ‘fix’ the watering system.

This is the reason we will be using a bit less grain.  It’s time to um, well, say goodbye to these birds.  You know I’ll fill you in on all the details when the day comes, because I like to share every detail of this farm life with you.