Can you see him?

Deep in the darkness of this pig shelter lies a fun sight!  There is a sleeping pig laying on the right side,  snout to door.  All the way in the back right corner is a rooster standing happily on the sleeping pig,  crowing.

Wish I would have captured the audio!

The beets are up!

The tiny beets Sprouts poked through today!

Can you see them?

New water setup at foothill

What a busy afternoon today!

We needed to modify the water setup at foothill for the pigs. The current setup was just too time consuming to maintain with the grain sprouting happening there instead of at the farm.  Plus .. the old car frame was struggling to ride the bumps with 2000+ lbs of water in the tank! So, we made a new setup.

The water trailer is now parked for at least a month at a time, probably 3 months, in a central location. The water line from the irrigation pump is 300 feet of 1.5 inch pvc bringing the water to the trailer. Then the trailer (with the solar powered 12v pump) is attached to 200 feet of 5/b inch water hose to reach the pig pen. This way the pens can float around the pasture as necessary and the water trailer can stay stationary.

An extra add was to install a pressure tank at the far end of the water hose, right at the pen and waterer.  This is a cheap hot water pressure tank holding 4 gallons.. . Putting this out at the edge should both stabilize the pressure available as well as slow the cycling of the 12volt water pump on the trailer for longer life.

Long afternoon, but we got it all set up and the pens moved today.  Good for another week or two!

Levi wanted to connect the flexible hose to the hard line. He loves working with tools.

Next the boy helped roll out the soft line.

Teamwork helping dad!

Levi struggles to open the top of the water tank. It was Tight!

And of course... a lesson in gluing PVC!

Finished product... a water fill pipe!

Look far off in the distance... toward the left... in the tall grass you may spot hunter working to round up some pigs that "wandered away"... those pigs!

Beet patch is in!

What a long day this was! We just finished the beet patch. whew.. tired!

This patch is the biggest beet patch yet.  it measured 44 rows of 75 feet each. Doing some math:

44 rows of 75 feet = 3300 feet
3300 feet with a beet every 3 inches = 13,200 beets

half harvested at 2 lbs = 13,200 lbs of beets
half harvested at 4 lbs each = 26,400 lbs of beets

for a grand total of 39,600 beets, or about 20 tons. Not bad for about 5000 sq feet of dirt!

These are heirloom beets, which we have been able to grow into winter to over 10 lbs each, still solid and juicy.  These guys make great pig and goat feed!

Not bad for a days work.. 20 tons of beets!

Cabbage Sprouts!

Our first crop in the ground is sprouting nicely!  The sprouts are all little heirloom cabbages. Actually too many to leave, they will be overcrowded.

We are using the same technique as we developed last year.. using the drip irrigation lines to sprout the seeds from day 1.  This saves us tome and maintenance. Just put the seeds in the ground with our Hoss automatic seeder, lay the lines out, set the auto water timer, and watch it grow!

Sauerkraut, here we come!

Here is the cabbage patch, 21 rows of 75 feet each

Look closely... a cabbage plant every 2 to 3 inches!