In the vein of yesterday’s post…
76째F/68째F Mostly Sunny, Spot of Rain
Jeffries Family Farm
Walter Jeffries Tinker, Tailor… A bit eclectic & a tad eccentric, polymath, quantum mechanic & Farmer. Also lucky at cards.Oven, Spit & Pit Roaster Pigs!
Enjoy Our Pork!
Enjoy pork butchered in our family’s Vermont state inspected on-farm butcher shop here on Sugar Mountain Farm. Affordable quality pork from our family farm to your family’s table. One time purchases or weekly, biweekly and monthly CSA boxes available from $40 each. Save buying in bulk as a whole, half or quarter pig. See the Pork Page for details.
Yep no missing that!
Thanks for the note about your garden! I am hoping and praying that by this time next year I will have my own tiny patch of soil! If Im really lucky I might be able to get one this fall, then I can try my hand at some green manure to enrich whatever I have!
Do you chit(I think thats the word) or do you plant straight from seed? Just wondering as I recently saw a garden trial that did chitted and unchitted potatoes and the chitted ones produced bigger potatos and more.
I was always under the impression that you had to grow great amounts of corn, corn being my absolute favorite food ever I would be happy to be able to grow a small family sized amount.
Oh I and I don’t really hate people, but in a big city sometimes I just find I want more peace. If that makes sense.
Walter howd you get such a great pix??? That priceless! you should do calendars or something!!!! I got your camera but I never seem to get pix like your ones. I think it takes an eye.
Walter……just a note to anyone interested……this Saturday and Sunday is Solarfest http://www.solarfest.org in Tinmouth, VT
its a great venue of Renewable energy vendors, seminars on Hydro wind solar permaculture biodiesel community and lots of great music and fun people…….come if you can……..AnonyI
Brandy, *grin* I had no idea what chitting was when you asked. Fortunately, with a bit of Googling, I’m now educated! :) Yes, we do chit, that is to say sprout, our potatoes prior to planting. We also cut any multi-eyed potatoes to smaller pieces and let them dry before planting so they won’t rot. This gives more plants per seed potato. Generally I use seed potatoes from last year’s crop but this year we didn’t have enough so we bought some more at Agway. I got several different kinds which will give us a chance to branch out our varieties. The gold is our favorite but it is also nice to have reds and whites both mashing and baking. We eat a lot of potatoes over the cold season as well as using them in soups.
On the corn, you do need a critical mass to get good pollination but it really isn’t that much. A plot two meters by two meters planted one foot apart should do well. (Don’t you just love mixed unit systems! :) ) Bigger will generally do better. Use lots of manure compost as corn are heavy feeders. If you have wet weather like we had this year then pre-sprout the corn.
We loved Mr. Depp in “Gilbert Grape”. One of his best and one of our long time favs so hi from other fans of the man. :)
PV, I was actually trying for a shot of the boar, took several and when I went to review the photos I saw that one with the two little piglets gazing up at his, er, equipment. It was so comical I just couldn’t resist using it like that with a thought balloon. Here’s another funny one – this time with our big boar Archimedes and the “gander” who often sleeps on top of him. I will tell you my secret to taking pictures… take lots. Sure, there’s getting the settings right and all that technical stuff but even with knowing that I still take a lot of photos. You are seeing one in a thousand, my best ones (I hope!). What you don’t see is all the bloopers. :)
AnonyI, We missed the solarfest but thanks for posting a note about it here. I did get to go to their web page – looks like good stuff. Mark is doing well.
HappyAbe, yes, the little’uns are certainly the cute ones but the big ones can be pretty goofy and funny. Our big 800 lb boar Archimedes was playing around in the bathtub yesterday. It was full of water and he had his head all the way in and was blowing bubbles. Man-o-man can that pig hold his breath! It was very comical to watch. But, you wouldn’t want him for a house pet. He eats, well, like a pig and a lot at that. And as UrbanAgrarian once observed, for every ton he eats, about that much comes out the other end… :)
Hello. Found your site and can’t seem to leave it. We are farmers at heart- not in reality. Have about 5 acres here in central North Carolina. Have large barn with several stalls,feed/tack rooms, and hay loft. Wanted to start small with livestock and wondered about pigs, chickens and goats. Initially wanted just boer goats. My father raised pigs when I was a child “the old fashion way”. Can pigs be placed on pasture with goats? I read one website that mentioned that it is not a great idea. So much talk of keeping down parasites and Bio-security.
In fact, the more I read from agriculture/extenstion websites the more confused I get. Seems all very high tech, specialized, and a bit unrealistically sterile. What are your thoughts? – Rachell
Rachel, we graze our sheep with the pigs. They get along fine and graze very complementarily such that together they do a better job on the pasture than any one species would alone as they eat different things. We also free range our chickens with the pigs. The chickens break up manure, hunt insects, graze some grass and reduce parasites. Works for us. Have fun. Cheers, -WalterJ