Yay.......... Wow........ More RAIN!!! Imagine that. I am about to the point of putting in some field tiles in the main gardens. I have never seen a year when the same mud puddle has stayed full of water from March through December.... Looking back and comparing notes from previous years. Tomatoes were 75% less productive, Green Beans 85% less productive, overall most of the gardens/fields were 70% less productive than average. Blight, bacteria and insects were pretty much uncontrollable in all but one hillside garden. We had lost 200 tomatoe plants before the end of June in a patch that is our most fertile soil simply because the soil stayed saturated. Then the main patch of tomatoes going up the slope started dying off in July as the wet soil and wet soil related diseases worked their way up the slope. In all 600 tomatoe plants were lost before the end of August. The bush green beans suffered the same fate as the tomatoes. Cucumbers were also a losing battle the first planting did very well and then the blight came and I watched as row after row of cucmbers leaves turned yellow/white then brown and the little cucumber dried and shrivelled on the vine. The raddishes initially did well also but as the rain and saturated soils continued they grew to fast and almost every raddish split down the side and were not marketable. The Red taters also were severely split not very pretty but they were still very tasty! THe weeds grew faster than I could ever hope to pull them and between uncontrollable weeds and squash beetles I abandoned the entire SW Garden to focus my efforts on the SE hillside garden and the original garden by the house. Those two patches were the Bell Peppers, Gypsy Peppers, Jalepeno Peppers, a handfull of cucumbers and tomatoes,carrots, Swiss Chard, and Zuchinni. Which did fairly well given the extreme wet conditions we had locally. That was also the bulk of what our market stands consisted of. There are a lot of factors I can control and manipulate to game the various growing conditions............ Constant Heavy rains is not one of the things I am equipped to compensate for when it stretches out over 10 months (Now). The raised rows in even a wet year would have offered the drainage to keep the rows productive but even they became saturated over time and just never got a chance to dry out :( I am not crying about it, this is just one of the many risk faced each year in unsubsidised non grant funded small farming. It is a risk I am well aware of and was well aware of when I began this adventure :) The gardens came in at a $7,800 net loss this year, It hapens :) 2015 is a new year and I will lick my wounds over the winter and come out fighting in the spring of 2015 to do it again and hope the weather is kinder to me ;) Diversity saves the day or rather the year in 2014! While the gardens were an overall loss it was balanced out with the Chantrelle Mushrooms that exploded in the hot wet conditions and kept exploding from June through September. We picked 1138 pounds of Chantrelles over the summer, I dehydrated around 200 pounds for our feasting pleasure over the winter and sold the rest at markets. The Chantrelles more than compensated for the overall loss in the gardens! The pigs very much enjoyed the wetter cooler summer and had ample forage to root out in the pastures and abandoned gardens. They grew a bit faster and were as happy as pigs in mud :) The Thunder 5 Ranch Members Club has grown our maximum capacity at this time and other than the processing delay debacle has been consistent and worked out well for everyone....... Although it was close filling all of the memberships the week before THanksgiving...... After everyone got their shares that week I was left with 1 Turkey, 2 chickens and 4 pounds of brats in the freezers. And pigs in the packing plant to restock the freezers for December thankfully Enfield Packing got the job done and the pork was ready to go last Saturday when deliveries resumed :) I have 10 more finishing in January that should carry us through January and February and 36 that will begin finishing in March, April and May. 2014 was a very good year for the pigs. I also added 6 new sows and Ogre the boar came of age and inherited his own harem. I am expecting the next farrowing session to put 93-97 new feeders into the mix in February/March I try to stagger the farrowings a bit so the farrowing sheds are not double booked :) I had hoped to get the old South Barn revamped into a big farrowing shed over the summer but got side tracked too many times. It has room for 6 12x12 stalls with 3 plank floors and 16x16 outside access for each of the stalls for the 3 weeks each sow and litter is in the farrowing nursurey. When the piglets are well on their way at about 3 weeks old I can just open each outside pen and let them onto the nursurey pasture with moms and move the sows back into the main breeding herds at 8-9 weeks after farrowing. I could pull the piglets at 21 days right before the sows first heat cycle and rebreed the sows right off the bat and force 3 litters per year out of the sows. Long ago however the decission was made to let the sows wean the piglets at 7-9 weeks hold her back from the breeding pen until the 3rd heat cycle and only do 2 litters per sow per year. That gives the sow plenty of recovery time, the piglets do much better health and growth wise and a sow has a breeding life of 6-7 years this way compared to 3 years in a factory set up. The math also works out better in the long run our sows will have an average of 13 litters over 6-7 years our average litter size if now 8.85 piglets per sow roughly 1 sow will produce 115 piglets over their breeding life in our system. A factory farmed sow will produce 9 litters over 3 years with an average 9.75 piglets per litter for around 98 piglet over the breeding life of a sow. I call intensive vs extensive swine practices. In a way it would make more financial sense to replace the sows every 3 years and keep them bred as soo as possible after farrowing. Some CAFOs are pulling piglets and weaning at 10 days old now to speed the rebreeding up even more..... That just is not how I want to roll. The reason our average litter size is between 8.2 and 8.85 is due to the elder sows. in year four litter sizes will decline our young sows often have litters of 12-14 piglets, our six year old sows last litter was only 6 and blondes last litter was 7 at age 6.5. Financial sense and moral and ethical sense are very often two different critters. The way I see it, I promised the boars and sows a happy and long life and I become friends with many of the breeders. When Betty our oldest sow decides to escape and go wandering all I have to do is get a egg or a bucket and she walks beside me back to where she belongs. LOL she is a 500 pound sow that acts like a puppy getting a treat, sometimes I think she escapes just to get the egg. The feeder/finishers I make it a point not to get that level of attachment with as they are only here 10-12 months but during that 10-12 months they have a damn good pigs life rooting, wallowing and doing very important pig things. They have a happy life, I am happy with them and the customers are happy with the pork and how I do things and the sacred hoop of life is honored in a good way. Anyway 2014 was a good year in laying the foundation for future increased pork production T5R Style :) It has been my experience through life that when one thing sufferes and does not do well, it is best not to dwell on that thing. There is always some to compensate for the short fall if you take the time to open your eyes and see it.
Posted on: Mon, 15 Dec 2014 16:42:45 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015