BEEN A REALLY LONG TIME! We are back. Two kids, many home improvement projects, and hundreds of pigs later, we got things handled and want to get back to sharing.

• No more pet pig breeding..... We heard too many sad stories from bad owners. Thanks to the good owners out there. Some pigs found some great homes.
• Smaller flock of hens. Keeping 6 just for ourselves, easy.  If we have extras, friends and family first get them first
• Feeders / finishers or butcher pigs just 2 or 3 a year. One for us and friends. A big herd just wasn't worth the work for us.
• One set of breeding pigs, one litter a year. Its been hard to sell the guinea hogs (AGH). Most people want something that grows fast. We had 3 breeders and over 40 pigs summer of 2017, it wasn't worth it. Check out the stages of growth of the pigs - Pig video
• Started work on the pond. Clearing the land first. Working on it here and there - Me in the skid steer (video)
• Fire wood, going through a ton. Got a wood furnace (video) or should I say modified one. 
• Got a wood splitter. Amazing deal got a few videos of it - log splitter
• Even went "green" with a cordless 40V chainsaw. Got solar, so why not - Log Cutting
• Still working on fencing. About 40% done. Side, front, and some of the field. 
• How can I forget? A MINI TRUCK found one with a bad engine then by some crazy luck found a working engine. Been crazy useful and fun. 

More videos to come. Projects included.... homemade brass hammer, casting metal, and of course the PIGS!!

Great Way to Cut up Logs

Check out our latest YouTube video for a great way to cut up your logs.
Here at Sweet Pig Farm we are working on clearing away lots of trees to make room for an orchard and pasture for our animals. We have discovered this awesome way to save us time and energy to cut up the logs.

Cutting Up Logs

We are able to cut down and cut up a tree in 30 minutes to an hour (depending on size) with just us two.

Indoor Starter Greenhouse

We're getting ready for a busy spring. We got our vegetable garden started by planting some tomatoes, husk cherries, and peppers inside.

We're trying something a little different this year. We've made a mini greenhouse to put in our bay window.

We used a clear under the bed storage container to make our greenhouse.
We took toilet paper rolls and cut them in half and then filled them with potting soil. Then planted our seeds.

This should help cut down on watering and keep our plants warmer. We only set our heater for 60* and when we're home heat it the rest of the way with our wood burning stove.

We labeled the outside with what we've planted where and when with a dry erase marker.

We saved plenty of room for more. We've ordered some more seeds today, including more varieties of tomatoes. I would like to try growing some yellow potatoes and sweet potatoes, but we need to get those soon to get them started. I've also ordered some butternut squash and spaghetti squash. I'm going to be busy making lots of dishes with all of our produce to freeze and eat over winter.... that's the plan anyway!

Chicken Moat Update and Guinea Hogs

The fence part of the chicken moat is up, and we've moved the guinea hogs up to enjoy it. We finished the fence at the end of November. Sorry for the delay.

We measured out the spacing for the T-posts, and I hammered them all in.
Then we had to take the fencing, fasten it to our corner posts, and stretch it using the tractor and a come-along to the next corner.
Then we hung the gate, moved the guinea hogs house and then moved the guinea hogs.

The guinea hogs have been enjoying all of the room. It's a win-win because they will get to forage though all of the plants from the summer garden that are left, which will tear up and turn the soil for next year's planting.

They made me laugh because there was a spot of untouched carrots in the garden. I went in and dug some out and tried to get them to eat them. They wouldn't eat them. So I took them down to the mini pigs for a treat. The next day they had eaten all the carrots. They must have been trying to save them and then saw me take them.

They're fun to chase around in the pen too. They buck around and take off. Then they come right back for a scratch behind the ears or a belly rub. 

This picture was taken when it was raining. They're so cute huddled in their house. Time to start planning for the building of a new one. This one is looking a little small.

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.

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!

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. :)