While we shift our attention to an upcoming high school graduation for our youngest son, we take time to reflect on how busy life gets. While life on the farm and operating a business can be chaotic, we also know that our children are better for having lived this life. It has taught them how to work hard, how to enjoy nature, how to appreciate what you have, and they have also learned that life isn’t always easy. While we have made sacrifices, we know that our life here on the farm has made us all better.
In addition to getting ready for Brandon’s graduation, we also are preparing for his last County Fair in August. While that sounds like a long time away, we needed to purchase a couple feeder pigs for him to raise and show at the Fair. So that means we needed to get the piglets now. You may wonder why we had to purchase piglets when we have so many right here. Well, April 29 is the first weigh in for fair animals and of course, we are always running a little behind on everything and unfortunately all our pigs would have been too big for this initial weigh in. We now have two little cute piglets who seem to enjoy getting out of their pen and sleeping with the lambs. Numerous times, Brian has went into the barn and couldn’t find the pigs. After searching several places, he found them curled up with a few lambs. We have decided that we must have the infamous “flying pigs” because we cannot figure out how they get out all the time. Maybe we should put a monitor in the barn to see the escape artists in action???
Brian has been working on cleaning out the beehive and getting ready for our new bees to arrive within a couple weeks. We unfortuntely did not have good luck with overwintering the bees but we are definitely not giving up. We loved having them last year and really noticed the difference with pollination of our fruit trees. He has also been taking advantage of the beautiful weather this week to continue to clean out the bedding pack from the winter and spreading it on the fields to help feed the pastures. I would say he is about quarter of the way done but what is complete, looks awesome.
Another reason our pastures look nice and lush are because our chickens enjoy roaming as we graze them. They in turn leave us beautiful eggs and in honor of that, we have been enjoying many deviled eggs and egg salad sandwiches. Many people always tell us how hard it is to peel fresh hard boiled eggs. Well, Brian is a faithful Public Radio listener, and the show stated that if you steam them, they turn out perfect and are easy to peel. That is now the only way we do it. Simply put your fresh eggs in a steamer and let them go for about 10-12 minutes. Take them out and put in cold water. They peel like a dream.
As always, Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food.