February « 2015 « JAZ Farm Blog

So winter has returned to the JAZ Farm. We have been sub-zero temperatures at night which has put a damper on the building projects for awhile. We are still waiting for the greenhouse folks to deliver and it is making me looney. For those of you who know me, incompetence makes me crazy. Don’t tell me you are going to deliver in 7 weeks and make me wait 16 and not tell me why. In my job I have messed up on only a few trades in my 26 year career and had my butt reamed each and every time. This guy has the nerve to act surprised about why I am annoyed. Anyway. Enough ranting. If he gets it here by our new agreed upon deadline all is forgiven. If not…. guess I’ll be going down to see what Austin, Texas looks like.

The babies are feathered out but can’t handle the zero and sub zero weather we are now experiencing. Two weeks ago it was 70. We use a 6 foot diameter water tank for the newly hatched chicks. At 5 weeks they were a tad over crowded. This morning we wrapped the seedling tables with chicken wire, sealed the escape routes, caught all the screaming teenagers and they all now seem to think the new digs are pretty awesome. Now they have enough room to grow until spring weather arrives and they can go outside and join the big girls. What a couple of red neck hicks. Chickens in the basement. Guess that is no worse than having calves in the kitchen when I was working in ranch country!

It SNOWED this past Tuesday. Yesterday and today has been over 70! Its FEBRUARY.

We took the opportunity today to get the pig shelter moved into place and then measure out, dig the holes and cement in the posts for the last wall of the pen itself. We ordered the waterers and it looks like our local feed store has a feeder for sale.

We have decided that we will likely get 3 pigs to raise. We inquired about organic feed and in order for us to be able to get it at all locally (within 100 miles) we have to buy 2000 lbs of it. 2 pigs will go through about 750 lbs of feed to get them to between 220 and 250 lbs. If we only got 2 we would end up wasting 500 lbs of feed. A dressed out hog will evidently yield 150 lbs of meat. 3 is then 450 lbs!!

So what we are planning to do is raise and process the three. 1 1/2 of those pigs we will keep, vacuum seal, and freeze for ourselves. The other 1 1/2 will go to friends who want to help us offset costs. We are figuring around $6.00 lb.

The fence will be easy to complete. We also are stringing a hot wire around the base of the fence to keep them from rooting around and tearing up our fences.

So between the laying hens (which we now have 21 new ones to go with the other ladies in the coop), chickens being raised for meat and the new additions of “Ham, Sausage, and Chop” in our new pig lot, I would surmise we will have more than enough meat for this “Mostly-Terian” family.

Check out the sexy overalls! I still gots it!