Ready set, let’s race!
This tractor I purchased for the finishing mower shows character and teeth. So does the Great Pyrenees, Sampson, the loyal guardian at the gate and protector of the farm.
Not your corner store pickled eggs
How do you like your eggs? I’ve scrambled them, deviled ’em southern style with friends, and fried ’em Tex-Mex with homemade garden salsa and spam. Now, I’ve fallen back to the old American tradition of pickling eggs. Homemade pickled eggs are surprisingly delicious and take on any flavor infused with them. I drove up to Wharton, Georgia with a friend to purchase cayenne pepper pickles from a local grower. We brought them home and placed our hardboiled eggs in the vinegar solution. Two days later the flavor had permeated the eggs. I then tried a variety of pickling methods, sweet-beet pickled eggs with apple cider vinegar and spices and dill spiced eggs.
Loin and the loinettes
After Loin’s birth, I moved her from the makeshift canopy I had created the previous night in the field to an enclosure keeping her separate from the others.
Hurricane Isaias and the evening birth
Hurricane Isaias didn’t affect the farm much. Instead, a brief but thunderous outpouring occurred just after the sun went down. Knowing the three sows were pregnant, I went out to check on them when the thunder had subsided. Sure enough, the stress incurred by the thunderstorm had induced the first sow’s birth — ‘Loin’s first litter! Three separate farrowing enclosures had been built but we had not gotten the girls inside in time. Loin was exhausted, breathing heavy, and nursing nine piglets. I built a makeshift canopy to protect Loin and the little ones through the night.