Chicken Moat

My husband stumbled across this wonderful idea a couple of months ago now, a chicken moat.

We're going to build a fence around our vegetable garden and then put a second layer of fencing around that for the chickens to run around in. We will also attach our chicken coop to their fence so they have shelter. This will keep the deer, rabbits, and a lot of the bugs out of our garden! It will also keep the weeds downs, because the chickens eat the weeds too! We will basically be starting a new flock of hens in the springtime, so in the spring of 2015 we should have lots of eggs to go around!

We've been working on getting our corner posts in and now the corners are done!

We also pulled one of our big gates from the back of the house and repainted it to use for this project.

Time to get the T-posts and the actual fencing to keep going with this project. More updates to come!

Wood Chopping

A couple of weeks ago our wonderful neighbors down the road saw us outside chopping wood with an ax. They stopped by and offered to let us borrow their 20 ton gas powered chopper. We have a small chopper, its an 8 ton electric, and we were trying to make some really big pieces easier to handle with the ax. We borrowed theirs and spent that whole weekend powering through all the wood we needed to get chopped up.

Here is before:

Both sides of our carport looked like this. The logs were very large! We would have had one heck of a time getting these chopped up.

Here is our after shot!

It was a lot of hard work, but it felt so good to have gotten it all finished. We also had cut down a few trees on the other side of the house, and we got that all chopped up for the most part.

Now we have lots of wood for this winter! I have a feeling its going to be a very cold and snowy one. We've already started lighting fires in the house to keep it warm and toasty for these indoor piggies of ours.

Solar Panels Round 2

Well, we have been working on all kinds of things around the house. I will post updates on all of these different projects in the next couple of weeks. Alex has been rebuilding the engine of a 1986 VW Jetta. We have been working on moving the animals around and getting them ready for winter. Our biggest chores have been cutting down trees and chopping wood. Anyway, it has felt like we've been working on all kinds of little things, and I couldn't figure out what to post on, so we'll start with the second round of solar panels.

We got these up in September, thanks to help from our friends Craig and Nathan. We used the same company for our solar kit, Anapode Solar. They have been great! We highly recommend them to anyone looking to do solar. Now we are in limbo with Ameren on our second rebate. They changed the rebate paperwork for additional solar panels, so we've got that all figured out and sent in now.

Round 2

The whole roof

The day before Craig and Nathan came down to help get the panels on the roof we cut down 2 of the 3 trees that were right in front of them. We cut the big one down later that week. We were cutting down and cutting up trees for a good three weeks. We then proceeded to start trying to top off the trees in the back of the house. All so we can get as much sunlight as possible on our solar panels.

It has all worked out great though. We put these panels up on September 15. Our electric bill for October was $7.16! Of course the weather has been great. So there has been no need for air conditioning or heating. Our house is all electric though, and its awesome that our bill almost nothing!

Rosemarie's Garden

I have been working on this garden on and off since early spring. I started by completely tearing out everything that was growing there. It also had a sort of decorative rock bed that I had to remove. I pulled 5 wheelbarrows full of this rock out of here. And whatever these plants were, they were terrible to pull out. There root system was crazy. I got everything out, had Alex till it up with our tractor. A couple weeks later more stuff was popping up, so I pulled everything up and he tilled it again. It was a process.

I also pulled the rock "wall" out and rebuilt it. This took me a couple days to do. I didn't do it all at once. And there were several large rocks that I didn't know what to do with. I ended up putting them in the middle in an attempted artistic looking way.

This is how it looked after all of that. A nice blank canvas.

Then I had to decide what to plant in this garden. I originally wanted to do an assortment of daylillies and some decorative shrubs. Then one day we were at our local Buccheits, and I saw a wildflower shade mix. I thought that would be perfect. So we got a box and I planted them.

Here it is about a month ago.

And here it is now.

The blooms are small and they seem to just be getting started, but it looks really pretty. It's hard to get a good picture of it. I plan on buying the same seed mix next spring and planting even more. It's a very beautiful perennial mix, and adding more seeds will only help it.

My uncle saw the post of all our gardens a few weeks ago and suggested that I name a garden for my grandmother. He suggested "Rosemarie's Garden." I had to think for a little while which garden I wanted to name for her. And this one has become quite pretty and the more I thought about it the more it made sense for me. This was that garden.

Mud Diving Pigs

I changed out their pool water today and this is what they did while I filled up their pools with fresh water.

 First there was nosing in the mud.

 Then plopping down.

 You can see he is covered pretty well here.

Now this is cute. They started taking turns diving into it and almost sliding across.

It really was cute. I wish I had filmed it instead. I'll have to do that next time.

The mud is really good for their skin. It helps keep them from drying out and it keeps the bugs from bothering them so much. The bugs have really gotten bad here in the last couple of weeks. I know that this fresh water won't be fresh for long though. They will swim in the pool and wash all the mud from their skin. I've been changing their pool water out at least once a week, but often twice.

Guinea Hogs!

   Well, we've always wanted guinea hogs for our farm. On Sunday we took a road trip down to Tennessee to get 3. We brought home 2 girls and a boy. They're all related, so we won't be using the boy to breed. We're thinking we'll use our mini pig, Drake, to breed with them. He's the bigger of our mini pigs and we have read on other sites about people doing this.
Guinea hogs stay short and get chubby. I keep telling Alex that they remind me of Wilson when he was a piglet. They have big cow eyes like Wilson.
    Anyway, here are some pictures.

    Unloading them was a bit stressful. Alex pulled the little boy out of the truck and handed him to me, and when I turned around to put him in the pen one of the girls jumped out of the truck and ran into the woods. We were worried about her of course, but thought she'd come back since the other 2 were here (and she did). Alex sliced his finger on something in this process and now has a huge gash on his index finger. While he was washing it and dressing it, I grabbed some sweet feed for the boy (who was alone at this point) to see if it would calm him down. Next thing we know, Big D had crawled under the fence and was now in the pen with him. She didn't like him eating with her. He got into their space and ran out into their electric fencing and I thought we were gonna lose him too. We got him back, and got Big D back where she belonged. We unloaded the other girl and I filled up a pool for them. (I had to take Della and Wilson's pool. Don't tell Della, because she really likes to swim.) They jumped in the water almost right away.
    Yesterday, I had to work, but Alex found that the girl who had run off was hanging around. He was able to trap her and put her in with her little family. They're doing well today. They're starting to come around to us, but they're still very shy. We'll work with them. Hopefully we'll be rubbing their little bellies in no time!

Going Solar

Alex started installing these panels a couple weeks ago. He got the racks and microinverters up on a Saturday afternoon, and then continued with the wiring. We used the Enphase microinverters for the grid tie in system, that way we don't have to worry about batteries or anything.

This past Sunday, we had friends and family come down to help get the panels up to the roof and installed. A special shout out to Nathan, Aaron, dad, Danny, and Nick! Thanks for all your help! My mom came down too and helped me cook lunch for our hard workers (thanks mom!).

We got a great kit from Anapode solar that came with the racking, solar panels, and Enphase microinverters. It is a 3kwatt system, 12 solar panels. Alex did a lot of looking around before he went with this kit. Our electrician is coming tomorrow to inspect it, then Ameren will come install the net metering system. After that we can send all the paperwork to Ameren for our rebate. They will give us $2/watt. And then when it comes time to do our taxes we'll get money back from the government too. The system will have cost us almost nothing when all is said and done.

Our neighbor up the road also installed solar panels. We went and talked to him and his wife a couple weeks ago about the process. It has gone really smoothly for them, they just got their rebate check from Ameren.

After we get our rebate we'll be ready for round 2. We want to put them over the garage roof too!

Farm Piglets!

Upon feeding the animals this morning, we discovered that big pink had her piglets! Mom and babies look like they are doing really well. There are eight for this first time momma. Two of them are spotted, the rest are pink.

They were hiding out in the wall of the house, so we added more straw so they would come out and still be nice and warm.

They're so little and they have huge ears! I love finding piglets in the morning!

It's been so long!

Well, a lot has been happening at Sweet Pig Farm, but our laptop was out of commission. Our hard drive got burned up. We finally replaced it! I tried to post a few things from my smartphone, but I was not able to load pictures (which was very frustrating).

The orchard is completely planted. We have lost a couple of the paw paw trees, but most of the others seem to be doing pretty well. We're still waiting for the granny smith trees to come to life. I have some hope left, because the pecan trees just woke up a few weeks ago. We shall see.

We've got the garden pretty much completely planted. It seem there is always more to ad, and Alex still has some peppers that were started inside that need to be planted.

We also planted a mini garden in 3 big wood boxes that Alex got. Its small enough to fence in, so the animals don't bother it. It's really coming along!

There are peppers, tomatoes, and cucumbers in these boxes.

The grape vines have really taken off this spring too. We've added a second row to them, and still have some room for more rows (maybe next year and the year after).

The blueberries are coming in nicely. There is some sort of bug that keeps getting them, but they are managing to produce berries!

We have a pregnant feeder pig. She's getting bigger and bigger. I'm not sure when she got pregnant. We took her boyfriend to the butcher a few weeks ago. It is really tasty meat. Yes, we love our pet pigs, but we still love to eat pork. We were raising these 2 pink pigs for that purpose. If this female is a good mother, we will probably keep her and breed her with the male red wattle hog that we brought home in the fall.

She's getting there.

We also bought a shorter electric net fence for the mini pigs. We talked about building a permanent fence around the field behind the barn for them, but this was much more cost effective. They've really been enjoying access to the grass.

 Perry and Drake are always talking!

Perry and Big D did really well with it. Pinky and Drake took a little time to get used to it. Poor things go running across the field when they get shocked. Today is Perry and Big D's day to get the field; tomorrow will be Pinky and Drake's day.

We sold all of our mini piglets! These two little cuties went to their new home last night. I'm glad they both went together. They're lucky little piggies.

They were both little boys. We called the one on the right "Freckles" because of the spots on his nose.

The Garden

The garden is going. Alex started the tomatoes and peppers some time ago, and now we're planting. In the front we planted tomatoes, sugar snap peas, romaine lettuce, spinach, carrots, zucchini, green beans, cantalope and watermelon. We've also got oats and corn growing for the pigs. We also started a smaller scale garden in the back with tomatoes and cucumber. Peppers will be added soon. It was 90 out there today, so i put out the mini pigs' kiddie pools! Haven't seen them swimming today, but they looked excited!

Burgess Order is In

The rest of our trees came in last week. Alex was able to plant them on Sunday. So for now, our fruit/nut orchard is complete. We do still have room for more, if we want to add to it later. He also tilled up the garden I'm working on in the driveway circle.

We've been working on getting our island ready for the kitchen. We bought a small cabinet we found on sale at the end of summer, and its been in the garage. We bought a nice piece of wood to use for the counter top and Alex stained it this weekend as well. (Alex did all the work on the farm this weekend because I had to work.) All that is left is attaching the counter top and painting it once we get it in the house.

I did some gardening on Friday and Monday. Today its a little wet and rainy. I dug up the weeds in the garden and planted my daylillies. I can't wait til they pop up. All my lillies from last year popped up and have already multiplied! I need to get some bushes for the driveway circle garden.
We also finally updated our mailbox, so I will have to do some landscaping up there to make it extra pretty.

Just enjoying a quiet, rainy day today. :)

Pond in Progress

Sunday we worked on the pond. We've got this big dip in the back of our property that we're working on clearing out to make it. Last summer Alex and his friends cut this enormous tree down. At the time we didn't have a way to get it out of there. We got the big pieces out of the hole, using the tractor and our scoop. We were able to load them up the hill and then rolled the logs up a ramp into the back of the truck. It was exhausting.

This is the pond after moving the big logs. Its hard to capture the dip here.

These were the biggest logs we've moved yet!

Big D Piglets

On March 28, Big D had her piglets. She had 7 this time. I think there are at least 3 girls. They are solid black, but some have her pink nose.

This past Sunday was beautiful outside. I tried to take pictures of all our pigs enjoying it. I'm working on getting good shots of the piglets.

 Perry and Drake seemed to be having some bonding time while the mommas were feeding their babies.

 The pinks were laying in the sun a lot, but they wouldn't let me get a picture of that.

 Everyone is up and about.

 Wils loves the sun.

Della enjoying the grass.