Crystal’s piglets are growing quickly and are completely different in personalities than Wattles piglets were. I have a lot to learn. I’m enjoying the process though. Most of the time, the piglets are content to sleep in their pig hut, but I’m going to have to keep an eye on one of them. That little guy started a serious brawl with a couple of his siblings that lasted for a minute and a half! I’m hoping he was just having a bad day, or just got carried away playing, but I certainly don’t want any aggressive pigs on my farm. I did get “A New Paddock and a New Pig Hut” posted on Monday, showing me trying to hurry up and get the pig hut constructed before Crystal farrowed. It can be seen here. I must admit that I was having a bit of a meltdown while we were moving the birds to new pasture. I’m glad it didn’t show much in the video.
I finally got my Greenstalk planter cleared of last year’s growth and replanted with flowers and herbs. I know little about flowers so I have no idea how the planter will look or even how they’ll grow but this is what I planted: echinacea, zinnia, morning glory, and marigold. On the top tier, I planted parsley, basil tarragon and thyme. I really love the look of the Greenstalk planter and how much you can plant in such a small vertical space. It goes well on our front porch. If you’re not familiar with the Greenstalk planter, I’ll post a picture of it from the plants in it last year. I do not have an affiliate link for this, but highly recommend it anyway. This one has five levels. We just hadn’t planted them up yet. Isn’t it nice?
I have another podcast that I like doing occasionally. It is called Books Highlighted. I love to read books and I mark all the passages that speak to me with a highlighter. This podcast is the highlighted portions of the book I have read. It’s audio only and I am having trouble getting iTunes to recognize my RSS feed. I’m working with some people now to see what is going on with that. I posted Episode 4: Eat That Frog! I think it can be found everywhere else, not iTunes, though.
I did get the video, Piglets! Farm Update April 21, 2024 posted. It can be seen here.
I have layer bird eggs going in the incubator right now. I am hoping to sell the chicks at an upcoming auction. If they don’t sell, I’ll be expanding my own flock anyway. As I try to stay on things that need to be maintained, I worked on the fencing that had fallen down between our “inner” garden and north garden. I also scythed some of the tall stuff in that area. We haven’t planted anything in the north garden yet but plant to put things like watermelon and other melons in hopes of feeding some of them to the pigs. Since melons go a little crazy anyway, we don’t plan to keep that area weed free. The stuff I scythed made my rabbits and pigs pretty happy.
For my series Are You Ready for the Next Great Depression?, I have also started shooting cooking videos, focusing on cooking from the pantry. The first one I have posted Easy Red Beans and Rice . It can be seen here.
The recreation league softball season is in full swing. Videoing and posting her games keep me pretty busy. I’m not sure they will play tonight though. After posting last week about how dry it has been here, the rain began to pour. There has been severe weather all around us but we’ve missed it although we did see rotation one evening. The rotation in the clouds dissipated and I’m glad. It was very cool to watch though.
After writing about how dry it is around here, the rain arrived. We had a couple of stormy nights and even saw some rotation in the sky from our front porch, but it dissipated. Several of our friends here in Oklahoma were not so lucky. Our prayers go out to everyone who had damage and loss of life in the tornadoes these past few days.
After almost five inches of rain, my poor little piglets were completely covered in mud and shivering with cold while I was doing the morning chores. I knew it was going to warm up quickly and waited for the sun to get higher in the sky by doing a little scything. By the time I was done, it was sunny, warm and bright, but the piglets still had not come out of their pile in the pig hut. I threw down some of the scythed grass for Crystal, the mama pig to distract her and gently coaxed the piglets out into the sun. I should have taken a picture of the muddy piglets but didn’t think about it. They are now dry and happy again with chunks of dried mud slowly flaking off of them.
I had a scare with my laptop Saturday morning. While trying to cook breakfast, I discovered that I had thawed ground pork and not pork sausage. I scrambled to find my recipe to make my own sausage and didn’t have any luck. I ran to my laptop to search for one there. Suddenly, the screen flashed warnings and a woman’s voice told me that I was locked out of my computer because of a security breach. Sure enough, the buttons I tried, didn’t work. Her vocal warning repeated over and over again and i couldn’t figure out how to shut her up. The number listed to report the problem didn’t work. I was panicking and really didn’t know what to do. Thankfully, shutting the laptop lid shut the vocal warnings off. I went to visit my son that afternoon to see if he could fix it. Thankfully, he fixed it out right away. Apparently, in my haste to find a recipe while I was trying to cook breakfast, I had clicked on some ad that set the whole thing off. After getting me out of that program, he ran a virus scan and I am good to go again. Thank you, Tony!
After a couple of nice days, we’re supposed to have some more storms roll through tonight. I would bet that we are no longer in a mild drought! See you next week!