I’m walking our biggest ossabaw sow, bess, to the barn today so she can farrow (give birth) in peace. Here she is taking a cool-down break in one of our ponds. 
Bess on a break
Red Jungle Fowl
We have many chickens on the farm here, many of which are the product of barnyard in-breeding, mutt-making and the freedom to choose their mates. Since the owners have always been interested in heritage and endangered breeds, we also have many old-timey and rare breeds from different parts of the world. I believe, from all this, we have spawned a few red-jungle fowl chickens. Red jungle fowl are the original chicken. They are like the rock pigeon or the wolf, who each gave birth through genetic manipulation (natural and unnatural alike) to all our breeds of doves and dogs. This makes me pretty excited, to have a wild chicken like that on the farm. I’m hoping to isolate this rooster (below) and get him and mama hen together to breed the most wild-ass chicks. Aside from their charm, I’m hoping these jungle birds forage like hell and make some good meat birds and laying hens.
Triple Hump
Our pigs are hilarious. I think these are all boys.
Lamb head butt
We started breeding our sheep this week which means sorting out the fit mothers and creating two groups. Sheep gestate for 150 days and we want babies in the spring for good grass and warm weather. I set up a corral for the sheep in the summer and although it works really well, I managed to get a nice shiner from a one-year old trying to leap over my head. Once again being short hurts. 
Livestock Farmer, Part 2
Some people think my last Livestock Farmer post trailed off into nowhere. Maybe it ended a little abruptly, either way, I was done writing about pigs. Yesterday and the day before were my two days off. I work Thursday through Monday, pretty much all the time since I live on the farm. I am the kind of person that used to like getting work email on my phone so I could work anywhere and thus not have to be in the office all day. Living on the farm is similar in that I can manage my time with a lot of flexibility. I regularly work after dinner in exchange for a long lunch or afternoon expedition. I’m also available for any crisis that arise in the middle of the night or when no one else is around. Heavy rains, escaping and sick animals don’t keep business hours. With plenty to do on my days on, what do I do on my days off?
I used to fill a lot of my free time with socializing, bars, driving-out-of-the-city-adventures and random hobbies like hunting, fishing and housework. Then, when I had a mostly boring job, I lived for the two days a week I could finally do what I wanted. Now that I have a mostly fulfilling job I find myself puttering around like a recent retiree not knowing what to do with myself. I get bored. I miss socializing, but not as much as I’m happy to be where I want to be. In other words, the trade is worth it, except when you have two days off and nothing to do with them. Then it starts to feel overwhelming. I ended up driving to our farmers market in Carrboro yesterday. It’s the most social time of the week for me and since I started taking Wednesdays off, I’ve missed the market a lot. I chatted with some pretty cool beekeepers and farmers and felt partially sustained with enough socializing for one day. But man, did I feel kinda pathetic driving 40 minutes to have a couple conversations with strangers I barely know.
I’ve got plans to take a class on Permaculture beginning in January and Kate and I are going to make a trip to New York City sometime soon. I guess I need more going on than bees, chickens, pigs, goats, sheep, donkeys, turkeys, geese, dogs and cats.
Snuggly Pigs
The only real weakness pigs have is for cold and wet. They get pneumonia if they don’t have a warm, dry place to sleep. We accomplish that with tin huts and the pigs keep it dry inside with their body heat. These two pregnant mamas are belly-to-belly in a toasty hut on this rainy morning.
Hansel
Here’s our buck Hansel showing off his climbing skills. We have a small goat herd of 11 does and 11 kids. Did you know that worldwide, goat meat is the most popular red meat? It’s only us crazy westerners who prefer beef. 
Giant Puffball
The giant puffball mushroom is the easiest to identify because it’s really big and has a soft, cream-cheesy interior. There are similar poisonous varieties, but if the inside is pure white and without the pattern of an emerging mushroom cap and gills, you’re good to go. I’ve been harvesting them all week while doing chores, they are flourishing in one of our cow pastures. I suggest frying thick slices in butter or oil. 
The Chicken Ark
Two days labor, eight old pallets, a box of nails and ten feet of chicken wire is all it takes to make your very own backyard chicken coop. The Ark is designed for safety, to provide adequate laying nest boxes, to be dragged around by one person and provide a little grass for early morning scratching. Everyone should have chickens. 
Livestock Farmer
Sorry for the long breaks between posts. Turns out farming doesn’t leave much time and energy behind for things like blogging. I hope to sum up the last couple months in this post, and then intermittently post shorties here and there to have something worth seeing and reading. Anyway, Kate and I have been back on the farm since September 1. We’ve settled into a routine and you can read her blog (reposted at right sidebar) to know what she’s up to. I manage the animals thursday through monday. On my two days off I have been renovating our little cottage, building a chicken coop, setting up a bee hive and now, perhaps, writing blog posts. Our little family has grown to include one mama hen and 8 little chicks, about 50,000 bees and now two kittens, in addition to our sweet dog and two pigs. Rudy is adjusting to the cats but gets along fine with mama hen, who doesn’t take any crap from anybody anyhow. Kate’s grandfather calls it our menagerie.
Mama and Her Chicks
Farming has been a blast. I’ve learned more in a shorter period of time than any other of my life’s endeavors. I also really enjoy what I’m learning, feeling more confident and reliable each passing day. About a thousand animals rely on me and our little crew daily to keep them happy and healthy and I believe we do so quite well. Farming has also been emotional, challenging and, at times, frustrating. Animals escape, hang themselves on fencing, get eaten by predators and die of old age. Recently we had to put down one of our eldest boars, Clinton, who was dying at the age of 7. He was the sweetest pig, very gentle and communicative, but slowly falling apart metabolically. Towards the end he had a hard time raising his 1000 pounds off the ground to eat and drink and we saved his life three times through medication, determination and hand feeding. Finally he had to die and rather than send him on a journey to new jersey to be made into pepperoni (old boar meat tastes horrible in anything but), we put him down on the farm and had him composted locally. This was a hard moment for me, reminiscent of putting my cat to sleep 10 years ago. I suppose raising animals means killing animals, but I didn’t expect to forge such powerful bonds with them.
At first putting Clinton down made me despise the idea of farming pigs. They have such complex characters and personalities, too similar to ourselves. I once wrote in high school, “Cats look down on us, dogs look up and pigs are our equals.” I didn’t know what truth that really was. So we shouldn’t raise them, we should let our porcine equivalents be, right? Unfortunately, if farms like ours didn’t exist, pigs would only be raised in the most abhorrent of circumstances, literally torturing these beautiful animals their whole lives. Farming like this is maybe the best thing we can do for pigs, save for stop eating them.
