Saturday, August 12, 2006

Etcetera


I haven’t actually weighed him, but I swear the pig must weigh 60# now. It is incredible. He’s also hilarious. My body moving anywhere means “food coming!” to him and he starts oinking and squealing and completely cutting a shine. He roots his feed pans and so we put an old torn up ball in there for him to play pig soccer with. He likes it, but not as much as his pans, or his dog kennel. Root root push root squeal. “Where’s the food, ok, there’s the food, where’s the MILK?!” That’s his life. And then I pet him. First he tries to eat the toes of my shoes but as I rub his ribs he stills, goes sideways, falls over. He loves his belly rubbed, and that spot in between his eyes where the bullet will eventually go and still him forever. And behind his ever so cute triangle ears. His rate of growth is amazing though. Our neighbors said if he had his absolute fill of food, he could go from weanling 20#er to 300#er between July and December.

On the other hand, we had another incubator full of eggs NOT hatch. Elder daughter said, reasonably, observantly, “I don’t think it is warm enough. The eggs don’t feel warm.” Well, the thermometer SAYS 100, but she’s right, the eggs have never quite felt warm. So we dug around for another thermometer and it was in the 80s in there. No wonder we didn’t have a hatch. So we’ll do an extra late hatching, hopefully now at the right temperature, and hope for the best all around. And on the bright side, we had a hen go broody on a nest we feel is reasonably well protected and so we gave her 15 eggs so maybe she’ll have success with her brood.


Back on the fortuitous side, a bag of snap peas had hidden at the bottom of the fridge and were found for a good supper side dish the other night. The peas are strung and sorted into “green” and “white”, and then the green ones are steamed and eaten and the white ones are shelled for seed. Well, these seed were sprouting already. And it just rained for two days. And turned cool. So if we can get them in the ground, that is just all good.

Also good is that an uncle gave us 25 bales of real good quality hay. Which reminds me of our barn project which hasn’t seen much action lately but that was always a long-term proposition.


And these are just cute.

4 comments:

Echo said...

You're writing always makes me breath in the scents of the world.
thanks!

eatmisery said...

I love snap peas. You've just made me hungry.

Madcap said...

When I look at that top picture, I smell BACON!

Unknown said...

what beautiful babies, such interesting stripe patterns