March 2026
Learning until I Die…
A few years ago, having learned from my frequent Gator rides, I decided, and eventually convinced Tiffany, that we should raise sheep as a source of income as well as meat for us and others. How hard could it be? I see large flocks of sheep in large pastures by themselves, smaller flocks in smaller pastures... Sheep and goats are everywhere. I'll get to that strangeness another time. At this point after taking with people and seeing how the sheep are managed, I figured this should be easy. I read several books cover to cover. I took a few online [...]
Sailing the Seas of Cheese
Nope. This is not about Jerry or his Racecar. Neighbor friends had more goat milk than they needed, couldn't store it, and didn't want to throw it out. So? They offered it to me. They figured at least it could go to the pigs and increase the marbling. They were, of course, right, but that is not what I wanted to do. I wanted to experiment with something that I always wanted to do. Maybe not always, but for a while. I wanted to make milk products. Tiffany has enjoyed cream from goat milk for quite a while as I [...]
I Stand (actually Sit) Corrected
What. Was. I. Thinking? "We'll get pigs in early December," I said. "It will be awesome," I said. "I won't spend anymore time running hoses and water three times a day to keep them cool," I laughed. Yes, I ran a lot of buckets of water. A lot. I could have filled a small to medium pond with all the water I hauled this winter after everything froze. Even with a heater in their water, the nipples froze solid. I bought a heat gun. That was able to thaw the nipples as long as it had not dropped below about [...]
Pigs at a Water Park
It was a beautiful afternoon, and the pigs needed some entertainment... https://youtu.be/GrojPka54H0
Pigs in Zen
This second set of pigs are progressing along just as well as our first set last summer. The differences in weights may force us to change the date of processing, though. The weights are coming in where are heaviest hog is looking about three weeks older than the smallest. Granted, Number 6's pronouns are he/him, and Number 2's pronouns are she/her. That is what I was old. I don't want to get in trouble for misgendering. They share the same bathroom anyway, and everyone is pretty comfortable with that. Number 6 is the hog in the picture. He is coming [...]
If you give a mouse some broccoli…
I have spent years figuring out how to effectively and repeatedly start vegetables from seeds. I am no expert... yet... but, I have made great strides. I even have some artichokes growing in the garage on the new shelves I installed with the new grow lights that I installed. I am hoping to get at least a couple of artichokes this year. That, unfortunately, is not the topic of this rant. We had horrible luck with brassicas last year. In fact, I don't believe we harvested a single brassica that we planted. The bugs were horrendous. I guess the only [...]
Is this thing on?
A couple of decades ago, I started writing on my own website. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Unfortunately, I changed host sites, and I lost my web page and all I had written. To make it more disappointing, I wrote many of those posts/stories for daughter Annie. I don't think I could recreate all of that even if I were so inclined. So, let's see if I still have a knack for writing stories and if my enjoyment of doing so is still there!