Putting the Oink in "Oinks n' Clucks"!

Its been a very very busy work week around the place culminating in bringing home 3 little piggies tomorrow morning.  We are buying Landrace/Duroc mix pigs that weigh about 60 lbs from a reseller in Black Creek. As I mentioned before, its not my ideal breed, but the age is right and the time is right. I hope they live a happy life here on the property, as a lot of work has gone into trying to provide for them.  Their 4 x 8 ft home is built ready to be assmebled tomorrow:

The fence is done, except for attaching some wire to the bottom two rails and putting on the gate:

And the Xterra is loaded up and ready to go!

 

As Jess is away I had to shimmy up some sort of barrier so Lilian would be comfy in the back seat.

Of note, I wanted to mention on the blog that I have read the pigs will eat anywhere from 2-4kg of food per day depending on their weight. 20kg of food costs $15!!!  If we only fed them commercial food, which is not recommended as diversity in diet improves their life and quality of meat, it would cost around $2.50 on average for the duration of their life to feed each one per day. They have to reach about 230lbs before being slaughtered, which I think will take about 5 months.  That adds up to at least $400 in food per pig just to raise them. So, I am asking that if you live in Victoria, and feel like meeting our pigs, please bring some vegetable off cuts, or stale bread, or anything other than meat that you are going to throw away. Everybody wins! They get to meet people and enjoy the food you give them, and you get to see our presumably hilarious attempt at proper husbandry. Maybe you will even be so impressed you will want to buy some pork at the end! The sale price of each pig should be $5/lb, and each should weigh about 100lbs per side.  We plan to keep 1 side, and sell the other 5. I think we have 2 pre sold already.  The plan is to gross $450 in profit per pig, which wouldnt include any allowance for time or costs of fencing/shelter/equiptment. Wish us luck!

Green shoots!

Its been a good week here on 'The Ranch'. The dogs are running freely inside the new deer fence, and things in the garden are starting to take shape.  Our seedlings are germinating nicely, and the ground which I am going to place them has basically been completed.  It was a lot of work to destroy years of perennials to get to usable fluffy clean soil, but hopefully its worth it.  Things are still a bit clumpy and muddy, but I am hoping that will fix itself as the ground dries out and the weather warms up.

Step 1: Last fall I thought I destroyed most of the stuff... wrong!!

Step 2: This week I pulled out all the roots and crap  (back hurts now 6 hours wtf!!!)

We also have been working on the fence for the center field to raise our pigs!

Slow going as we can only work on it on sunny days after Jess gets home from work, but I think its going really well! Probably 25% done at this point.

One disappointing thing though has been how difficult it is to find good pigs.  After reading a few books on different types of pigs, and the eating, breeding, and personality traits of each, I went searching for Berkshire pigs. Sadly it seems like its basically impossible to get weaner pigs from a farm that has purebred Berkshires for a person to raise on their own. I found one in Metchosin that sells to my beloved Whole Beast in Oak bay, but they dont sell live pigs. You can rarely find some sort of cross bred mut on Used Victoria, but I really didnt want to settle on a Duroc mix. I even called around in the Fraser Valley but they just refer to the pigs as 'pigs' as if a dog is just a 'dog'. Seems very odd to me that real breeds arent represented. Like why can't I go to a breeder and buy a purebred Tamworth, Yorkshire or Large Black if I want one?!?! Something tells me that might change over time.  I dont know what we well end up with, but hopefully something comes along soon.

Also last week I sold my Grandma's car for her, and the people who bought it just happen to be gardening extraordinaires!  When I dropped off the 2nd key this week they gave me 7 Greek tomato plants, a huge bag of kale, and a bunch of lettuce plants! Our greenhouse doesn't have a dirt floor, so I tried to make a bit of a pseudo greenhouse outside. If its sunny I'll pull the tops off, and then try to remember to cover them back at night. I brought the tomatoes into the office window and moved them into bigger pots. I am nervous about everything surviving, but I think I moved them gently and gave them a good soil mix... Hoping for the best!!