permaculture – Page 8 – Peacock Orchard

The joys of pigs

Last I wrote I liked the pigs a fair amount. You might even say I rather loved them. That hasn’t really changed. Some things have though. It’s warm out. Everyone is coming out of the barn and exploring the run now. The pigs are exploring the fences now. I was confident the fence would with stand the pigs. We built it for our dogs and they’re worse than pigs as they can jump 5′ easy. Like a gazelle, our great pyr is.

The fence is livestock fence fortified on the top and bottom with 2×4’s. They’re digging around it but haven’t made any holes I’m worried about as of yet.

The digging is quite impressive though. They have some massive spots getting tilled.

Our weak spot is the gate. We’ve had two escapes. Both on the same day. The first I was going out to do the morning feed with the kids in tow. I opened the gate and the pigs just bowled me over. I started chasing them in a panic but then common sense returned and I started rattling the feed bucket. They returned and we went about our business.

The second escape happened while the kids were outside chasing bunnies. The pigs come to the sound of our voices and scream like crazy demanding food. This particular day they must have been emboldened by earlier freedom as they started on the gate until it popped open for them. Wrangling them this time required the horse whip and a fair bit of running about.

Now we have the “tomb of the pigs”. The spool must be rolled aside to get access to the gate. I’ve seen plenty of testing of our new fortress but as of yet, no escapes.

It looks trashy at the gate now as everything that was once nicely stored in the barn is now outside the gate as the pigs were DESTROYING EVERYTHING!

To keep from getting bowled over at the gate I throw the scraps over the fence away from the gate before opening it and heading inside.

The duck pond extension fence isn’t quite as well fortified. Since i want them to gley the duck pond I’m letting them have run of the lot but….they’re pushing the corner out of it. I’ve stacked some rip rap around the base now and they haven’t escaped…yet. We’ll see.

If all else fails the electric fence is always available for routing around the base of the fence.

Now on to a few other animals.

The turkey is like this the ENTIRE time he sees me. He’s a real pain in my neck.

The ducks are glorious. I’m a real fan of ducks. I just think they’re adorable.

The pigs are good with the kids. Not great since personal boundaries aren’t their thing and they’ll bowl them over. However, the kids are smart and they wait until the pigs have been fed before going in to collect eggs (the pigs are fed near the nest boxes). They can pet them no problems. No biting problems. Hopefully this continues but if they start biting the kids will be sad as they do love their pig pets.

I like that the pigs can be trusted with all of the birds as well. Not a single incident aside from the day we brought the turkeys home. The male turkey made so much fuss that the pigs were chasing him about just for fun.

Mini-Kraters and Swales handling winter melt

The temperatures are rising and our snow drifts are slowly melting. Snow harvesting was a wild success this year. If you’ve followed any previous posts than you know that the snow is a problem for our driveway but the melt is the real nightmare. Our driveway and road turn into a mud pit. So last summer we trenched with our new excavator and the results have been amazing!

That is one fabulously dry road!

The trenches are full and the area immediately around them is saturated, but the driveway has been maintained fabulously. So far. We’ll let you know if I’m still confident about our earth works after a heavy rain.

All of the water kept off the driveway is then trenched to various places. Our swales receive most of it but we also have some retention ponds that get rather full.

The swales harvested a tremendous amount of snow and that’s melting off right now.

The harvested snow was wonderful for both insulating our fruit trees and now for watering them. The ground around the swales is amazingly saturated.

The kraters (some more than others) are still really full of snow. About 1-2′.

They are holding strong and I couldn’t be more pleased with our decision to dig them!

A downside of such heavy snow harvest is that the trees can be covered quite far up the trunk. We’ve suffered quite a bit of rabbit loss. My best, hardiest fruit tree was attacked. I tried to Dr. it but who knows if it will pull through the damage.

Doctor’d apple tree

Osage orange poking out of snow.

Blackberry. I covered them heavily this year as last year they were all entirely eaten away.

As always children running about with moisture inevitably ends with really wet children. I was taking a picture of the gorgeous ice designs in our trench when Son decided to go ice skating and…… well he learned to check the ice thickness before clambering on.

A life changing hope I have for the orchard

I’m excited about many aspects of our future, mature orchard. One of the things a lot of people probably wouldn’t consider is going to be the most life changing. I live in Wyoming. Windy, windy Wyoming. I also live surrounded by commercially farmed wheat fields. Wind and constantly plowed fields, not a good mix.

So what do I hope for? A plant filter. Dust is all consuming here. It seeps into the smallest crevices. Settles on every surface. Causes breathing problems and is just plain yuck!

I’m clearly a long way away from lush acreage.

My biggest hope is that the plants and trees that will cover our acreage will act as a living filter; stopping, collecting and keeping the topsoil blown to us by surrounding acreages. I can see some topsoil collection already in action, will take pictures when it’s not under snow. Speaking of the snow, it’s a great barometer for dirt. Our snow is quite brown, coated in topsoil from the surrounding areas.

These dogs don’t help.

Such a small thing to hope for if you live in a city, somewhere without wind or somewhere that just isn’t….here. It would be life changing for me. To wash the table and have it looking like I actually washed it. That would make me wonderfully happy.

Staying at home isn’t as relaxing as I thought it would be.

Ok I never thought it would be relaxing. I’m a busy woman and I had projects lined up as far as the eye could see. Still, I thought I’d be able to accomplish things. I suppose I am but it really doesn’t feel like it. Today I ran errands and cooked. That’s it. Where are my beautiful tomato seeds sprouting? Where is my remodeled kitchen? Well that’s a mess. Missing one wall and adding 4. Small walls though, really small ones. I will explain that later.

This rambling has a point I’m sure. Maybe it doesn’t. I’ve been so busy doing I’ve barely had any time to talk about it. Everything is going well. The pigs are growing by leaps and bounds. I still love them. B.L.T. is going to be a biter though, I can tell. He’s already at my legs. I keep something between us usually.

The children are fighting like cats and dogs. Arguing every little thing. Even having full blown arguments about whose mother I actually am. Still, they’re a joy.

I’ve been experimenting with home made bread a lot lately. I haven’t found a recipe I love yet, but I’ll get there. I’ll share it when I do.

As I write this I’m thinking about the wall I need to prime for painting. The shelves I need to stain for the new pantry. The faucet and sink I need to complete before I can move the fridge. Ok. Ok. Must not think about the mountain of tasks and focus on the wonderful things around me. Sounds of our children laughing while they color side by side. The smell of fresh brownies come out of the oven, just waiting for ice cream. The warmth of the gigantic hairy dog at my feet. My life, it’s wonderful!

That one time we put security cameras in the barn……

I am happy to announce we are getting eggs from our chickens once again. Even happier to announce that being home means I’m able to collect the eggs before they freeze, most of the time.

This was not always the case, however. We had egg eating. Lots of egg eating. I wasn’t able to figure out who exactly was doing it either. So we set up our surveillance camera system in the barn to watch the birds. Oh how exciting we are, I know.

Even still we weren’t quite able to determine who it was. I suspected it was some of the white chickens and so I separated them out. Still no eggs from the other chickens, and no eggs from the separated whites.

Naturally my reaction was that a cull was in order and thus we separated out all of the older, egg laying chickens with the turkeys for kill day. I had 6 immature chickens still so I was fine culling out the older birds.

I’m unsure how many of the chickens were actually killed. We had some escapees. One wriggled out of the kill cone and a few flew over the fence while I was attempting to catch them for slaughter. Whatever the reason for their escape it appears they have all been “scared straight”. We are getting eggs and no one is eating them. Joyous day! We have chickens and are only getting about 6 eggs a day but that’s fine for winter. Also I noticed that someone is laying on the ground and the pigs are eating those eggs. We’ll take care of that issue later.

I rode a pig today.

I rode a pig today and I wouldn’t recommend it. Pigs are big and strong and can scream really really loud. I’m not sure who was more upset about the situation, me or the pig. The pig probably, I was decently amused I admit.

So there I was hunched over pouring 3 gallons of warm water into their rubber tub when B.L.T. shoved himself underneath me. This knocked me off balance and I landed squarely on top of his back. There was a second of frozen silence before he started screaming bloody murder and bucking as hard as a small pig can. I landed on my side with a nice view of angry pig prancing about.

B.L.T. calmed down when food was divvied out but I don’t think the turkeys we acquired the 23rd will ever recover from the trauma of it. The male did enough gobbling to make me consider putting us both out of his misery.

As for Rocker-Digger, he simply watched out of the corner of his eye as he gulped water like a pig left in the desert for months.

I am sincerely thankful for the lined Carhart overalls Husband gave me for Christmas. I was nicely protected from a rageful pig and the cold, hard ground.

Oh and as for why I’m not using my wonderful auto waterer it’s because I fear the pigs would break it. They love to drag things about and are particularly fond of things with any sort of cord.