Pig Wranglers and a Sweet Potato Jungle

Last Friday, our big afternoon project was not out in the vegetable field, but with our young pigs.We played pig wranglers with our youngest batch for several hours-they almost made us tear our hair out! The pigs in question are twelve piglets we purchased form Warren Wilson College about 6 weeks ago. When we first get piglets we keep them in a corral because they are so small they will slip through all but the smallest gaps in a fence (several of these actually developed a habit of worming their way through the gaps in a pallet we use as part of the fence!). After about a month of eating they are big enough to learn about electric fences. We string up a double line and hold training sessions. We let them into their electric fence area and watch to make sure they don’t run through the fence. After about 3 practices they generally know what the fence is and they don’t want to have anything to do with it. Now they are ready to go to a paddock in the woods. So we trimmed back some of the brush that has grown up this spring and strung up some electric line. Now comes the fun part; moving the pigs to their new home. Usually pigs herd relatively well. We can get them all moving in one direction out of their old area and toward their new area. Not these pigs, they wanted to go in every direction except the one we wanted them to go in. To top it all of many of them confidently explored the woods alone. It took us about one and a half hours of crashing through brambles to move these little guys thirty feet to their new paddock! Every time we got them close to their paddock they would decide that that was the least interesting part of the woods and scatter in all directions around us. Boy was it frustrating!But in the end they got tired and a little more cooperative. Now they are happily rooting in the woods.

He looks innocent now!

This week we also planted sweet potatoes. Sweet potatoes are an interesting crop because you actually grow miniature plants from last year’s roots to transplant. It all starts the previous fall when you save out your best potatoes for “seed” potatoes. You then store them in a dry cool area with some airflow until about April. In April you “wake” you potatoes up by allowing them to get warmer. Once the outdoor temperatures are safely above frosting, place the sweet potatoes in a pile of mostly decomposed mulch or very loose soil. Within about a month small green sprouts will begin appearing. In about another month there is a sweet potato jungle! Each sweet potato will send out up to a dozen sprouts, called slips, from one end of the potato. Once these slips are about 6 inches tall (ideally anyway, Mine are always bigger because if you neglect them for a week they grow from 6 inches to 16!), snap them off at the potato and plant. The little slips typically have begun to send out small rootlets of their own. When placed in the soil and watered well they will establish themselves in about a week. After that, watch out, because sweet potatoes are related to morning glories and they will take over! They are a long season crop that appreciates warm weather, so after about three months of patient waiting we should be able to dig up our sweet potato treasure.

Harvesting spring onions

You can't see the forest for the dill!

Zinnias

I took a trip south on beautiful Highway 64 to the RS Central High School Farm on Saturday morning to buy young pigs at the spring FFA auction.

RS Central High has a very active agriculture program with greenhouse production, goats, chickens, pigs and much more. The RS Central High Farm has over fenced 30 acres and is a hands on classroom and laboratory for the high school students. Sadly, many high school ag programs have ended over the years- including the ag program at my old high school, Freedom High. I am very encouraged that RS Central has enthusiastic, effective agriculture teachers, a supportive school administration, a functioning community network, and dedicated high school students who spend after school hours working on the high school farm. Read more about RS Central High's accomplishments>>>

The auction was held in the RS Central High School Farm's barn, and each pig got a chance to shine in the spotlight as it passed through a middle corral and the crowd placed bids on it. The RS Central High FFA members worked hard behind the scenes to organize the auction, keep the pigs passing through the corral, and load the vigorous, wiggly 35 lb pigs into buyer's trucks.

The proceeds of the sale of each of the 40+ pigs supports the FFA program and farm at RS Central High School. Several local businesses also sponsored pigs with donations of over $100 per pig.

Later that day at Bluebird Farm... William and my 16 year old sister, Vivian, capture an heavy little wiggly pig, while Petunia, the Great Pyrenees guard dog, worries about her new pigs.

I'm very impressed with the all the hard work of high school students at RS Central!

We're the proud new owners of 5 very healthy, vigorous Red Wattle/ Hampshire and Berkshire cross pigs!

Spring?

We all enjoyed a week of warm weather and spring like conditions (although we wouldn't mind a little rain with our sun). Everyday at Bluebird Farm we are doing spring activities from preparing for our first meat chicks of the season, to preparing soil for potatoes, to starting onion transplants in the greenhouse.

Seeds arrive!

Preparing for chicks.

They're here!

Preparing the potato beds.

The pigs would like to help drive.

Potato beds.

Spring means more eggs. And new eggs! The chicks we got in October laid their first egg today!

A watchful rooster.

We're looking forward to a great year with everyone. Check the blog and our website BluebirdFarmNC.com to stay up to date on farmers market openings and other spring happenings at Bluebird Farm.

Some August news

Could it be that fall is just around the corner? We notice the mornings are darker. In fact, they are dark enough that chores can’t start until 6:15-a whole 15 minutes later! Even though it doesn’t feel any cooler in the sticky August air, it hasn’t actually broken 90 out here on the farm for the last four days or so.

In case we couldn’t tell it was fall by the weather, the calendar tells us it is. At the end of July we started out fall Swiss Chard. The hot and humid weather caused some fungus problems with the young transplants, but many survived. Today we were out in the garden planting our babies. It is great to see little rows of greens in the ground again. Its time for transplanting again!

We need to get these fall greens in now because before we know it days will be short and nights will be cold. At that point the plants really won’t do much growing. So we need them to be large enough to harvest right around the time of first frost. The trick is dealing with the late summer pests. We sprayed a cocktail of items to give them a fighting chance: fish emulsion for nutrients, Bt (bacillus thuringiensis) for caterpillar pests, and a kaolin clay to word off sucking insects and provide some “sunscreen” cooling the surface of the plants. To cap it all off we pulled out some of the white row cover you heard so much about in the spring. That will help exclude insects from the garden bed.

On the animal front I had an amusing task yesterday. We needed to estimate the weight of our hogs to see if we could take them to the butcher a month earlier. Since we have no scale we use a measuring tape much like tailors use to fit people for clothes. But this tape measures the pigs length and heart girth (the roundness just behind their front legs). With these two numbers we can estimate their weight. Our friendly pigs really enjoy attention. This usually makes the measuring easier. However, they have been spending their days totally covered in mud to cool off. Then they like to scratch on trees-or people. So as I measured around the pig’s bellies they were trying to rub on me. So I got to hug 200 lb, mud encrusted friendly pigs. Needless to say I needed a pre-rinse before coming in the house.

Today the pigs got an extra fun treat. I took down their fence and moved their paddock to the next space over. After some careful exploring to establish where I had placed the electric fence they started running around, and around, and around snorting and bucking. They thought it was great to be in a new space with fresh ground to root up. Incidentally, a new study has confirmed that pigs can express optimism and pessimism depending on their environment. Pessimistic pigs run from new stimulus while optimistic pigs move toward something new-our pigs are a bunch of sunshine!

Some Photos of the Farm

Chickens exploring

A chicken exhibiting its athleticism to catch an insect-too fast for the camera!

You know its time to be more social when buckets become your best friend

Flowers always brighten the day

Rain is nice, but it sure makes the grass grow!

Beautiful garden

More great photographs from our neighbor Leann. She captures the early morning so well!


Some of the lettuce that's in season at the farm, ready to harvest for markets this week.



Meat chickens eating grass, peas, and vetch in the pasture.

Here's Petunia doing her day job, protecting young meat chickens. Most mornings she comings running up to the meat chickens when we feed them, because they squawk so much. She gets very disturbed when her chickens make a lot of noise. In the evenings, she goes for another romp and later she wanders up to the sheep fence for her night job.


Here are the pigs clearing brush and stumps in a paddock. We cut out the overgrown trees around the pastures for firewood and the pigs love digging out around the roots; eating pieces of root and leaves.
They takes lots of breaks from digging. Pigs are always the last animals sleeping in the morning!

March Newsletter

Hello all,
Folks like to say that March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. Well, this might be true of the weather, but it sure isn't true here at Bluebird Farm where march started calm and slow and has developed into a regular stampede of activity at the end. The cool wet start lulled us into a false sense of a slow spring. Meanwhile spring sprung upon us over the course of about two days. So March came in like a friendly house cat and is headed out like a herd of elephants.

The real awakening this Spring has been in the garden. We have been trying to prepare the soil whenever it is dry for a few days. Then the fun part--planting! We have transplanted lettuce, kale, cabbage, broccoli, chinese cabbage, and spinach. We have also begun direct seeding peas, beets, radishes, salad mix, arugula, and some herbs. Unfortunately, wetness prevented us from preparing the ground in advance of seeding. When we seed directly into newly prepared ground it means that the weeds start the same time as the vegetables. This leads to our favorite activity--weeding! Ideally we would like to be able to prepare the ground, allow weeds to germinate, do a shallow cultivation to kill weeds without bringing more seeds to the surface, then plant our vegetables. No such leisure this spring.

We have also been busy seeding summer crops in the greenhouse. Our mouths were watering with thoughts of juicy tomatoes, fresh basil, and colorful peppers as we seeded over 1000 plants. We are looking forward to 21 varieties of tomatoes. Cherry tomatoes, canning tomatoes, slicers, tomatoes for drying, and of course a healthy selection flavor packed heirlooms you can't get anywhere else but your backyard or a local farm.



Burning the midnight oil seeding tomatoes


Meanwhile, the animals have done their part to keep us busy. We have broiler chickens outside on pasture. We move their pen forward whenever they run out of fresh grass. When they are young this is only once a day, now it is twice a day. They are busy eating, growing, and fertilizing our pastures. The layer flock is in full swing as well. We are using them to help fight back encroaching honeysuckle around the edges of our pastures. The pigs to are busy working for us in the woods. They are rooting out roots, grubbing up grubs, and generally enjoying being forest pigs. Their paddocks are in areas newly cleared of trees. After they have eaten most of the old tree roots and tilled up a paddock we spread some cover crop seed. They then trample this into the soil and we move them on to the next paddock. We love our pig tractors! They work all the time, don't need to be paid, don't require any diesel, and in the end they taste delicious.



Just when we thought we were busy the farmers markets have started. Scott Pyatt of Catawba Valley Brewing Company generously offered the use of his patio for an early Spring Farmers Market. You can find us there Fridays April 2nd-May 7th from 4-6 pm. Then, beginning May 8th you will find us at the Morganton market Saturday May 8th-October from 8-noon. If you live in Hickory or Conover areas you can also find us at the Hickory Market every Wednesday from 12-5:30 beginning 28th. The Conover Market starts Saturday April 24th and happens every Saturday from 8-12:30

Whenever we are busy, and sleep becomes a secondary priority, I start thinking about why we are doing what we are doing. The short answer is that there is no short answer. Our reasons begin with personal interest, but are sustained by our belief in the importance of this work for the environment, community, health, and the economy. Perhaps no one summarizes these thoughts as well as the farmer, poet, and writer Wendell Berry. If you have not read any of his work I encourage you to do so. I frequently read short pieces of his writing for inspiration and encouragement. He reminds me that what we are doing is more than just farming. By choosing to do what we do in the way we do it we place ourselves in opposition to the all to common pattern of the destruction of local communities and the environmental by large economic forces with no local interest. This story of exploitation occurs all over the world from India to our backyard. It is visible in the high suicide rates of farmers in the midwest, in the destruction of entire mountains in West Virginia, and the decline of downtowns everywhere. Unfortunately, our current economic model offers only one kind of solution-Bigness. It calls for infinite growth on our finite planet and scale far beyond that of communities. In our drive for bigness we replace correctable small-scale issues with large scale problems and we have no large scale solutions.

What we hope to contribute to is a responsible local economy. Wendell Berry reminds us that such an economy must be based on the belief that "the world is rooted in mystery and sanctity", that this is an economy of use and return. This is an economy where we undertake our work with "praise, gratitude, responsibility, good use, good care, and a proper regard for future generations." It is heartening to see that so many people are beginning to realize the folly of our current model of bigness. We are thankful to all of you who for saying enough is enough. We look forward to building on all of our early enthusiasm to maintain and build on the participatory community we believe already exists in all of us. We all know how to cooperate, we all want to help, we all want clean water, air and healthy soil, and we all want to have a say in our community, but we are told over and over again to close our eyes, ears, and mouth and open our wallet. Buy!, Spend!, Drive!, Fight!

Thank you for not listening and choosing to participate in our community.

Humbly yours,

William Lyons and Marie Williamson
Bluebird Farm
4178 Bluebird Dr.
Morganton, NC

BluebirdFarmNC.com
BluebirdFarmNC.blogspot.com

BluebirdFarmNC@gmail.com
828.584.7359

Field Preparation at our leased land


Last fall


Cover crop seeded in November, growing green in March.


Making beds

Transplanting

Exciting news! Catawba Valley Brewing Company has offered us some space for a Friday farmers market. We will be at the brewery with farm fresh food for sale starting Friday March 26th at 4pm. We will be there every Friday until May 7th with pork, eggs, and starting in April, chicken and vegetables. Bring a cooler!

Beginning Saturday May 8th you will find us at the Downtown Morganton Farmers' Market 8-noon, located behind Geppettos. Beginning in mid-April we will also be at the Downtown Hickory Farmers' Market on Wednesday from 12 to 5:30 and at the Conover Farmers' Market on Saturdays from 8 to 12:30.

We have been busy as bees in the garden. Our first round of transplants was moved from the greenhouse to their new home in the wide world of sky and soil. We planted lettuce, spinach, cabbage, kale, and broccoli. We look forward to some yummy greens in 4-8 weeks.



After planting everything we sprayed the leaves with fish emulsion. Fish emulsion is a fertilizer approved for organic production. The plants actually take in the nutrients through their leaves. This is important because they don't have very developed root systems to find nutrients in the soil. By providing a little burst of food through the leaves they get a good jump on root growth. This will allow them to begin searching out their own food and water.



We have been watching the soil temperature as well for direct seeding. The temperature in our garden at 4" depth read 48 degrees Fahrenheit today. At 2" it was slightly warmer at 49. This is on the cool end of acceptable for a wide variety of vegetables. We have planted peas, salad mix, radishes, and arugula. There is more on the list, but the rain came. Seeding is hard in the rain because you can't allow any seeds you aren't ready to plant to become damp.

The chickens enjoy their new mobile nest boxes.



The pigs got a new paddock. We seeded their old paddock to a cover crop mix before they left. This allowed them to trample it into the soil. Now they are busy working to transform a new forest edge into pasture.

Antibiotics in Meat- Part II

The meat industry in America takes so many shortcuts in raising animals. These are shortcuts that affect human health, animal health, animal welfare, and the environment. Feeding antibiotics to healthy livestock is just one of the many shortcuts that are being taken to create an illusion of inexpensive meat in the United States. Is this a shortcut that the meat industry should take? The spread of antibiotic resistant infections like methicillin resistant staph or MRSA is a human health issue that should not be ignored. The meat that seems inexpensive at the grocery store also has a price tag that we should examine: the health of Americans.
~Marie


NEW YORK, Feb. 10, 2010
Denmark's Case for Antibiotic-Free Animals
Katie Couric Reports on Denmark's Ban on Antibiotics in Livestock


By Katie Couric
(CBS) "They call it the "Danish Experiment" - a source of pride for the country's 17,000 farmers. CBS Evening News Anchor Katie Couric reports how unlike industrial farms in the U.S., which use antibiotics to promote growth and prevent disease, farmers in Denmark use antibiotics sparingly, only when animals are sick. "

Read the full story on the CBS website


Watch CBS News Videos Online

Antibiotics in Meat- Katie Couric investigates

Here's Katie Couric's report on antibiotic use in animals

Watch CBS News Videos Online

Also... read the story
NEW YORK, Feb. 9, 2010

Overuse of Antibiotics in Livestock?
Katie Couric Investigates Feeding Healthy Farm Animals Antibiotics. Is it Creating New Drug-Resistant Bacteria?
By Katie Couric

....."But the bottom line on antibiotic use in factory farming is this: no one is really monitoring it.
Joshua Sharfstein, is the deputy director of the FDA.
"We want to put in place measures to reduce inappropriate use and we want to see that those are working - in order to do that we have to have a good surveillance system," Sharfstein said. "It's very important we make progress on that. There's no question that needs to be improved."


This is a great site I just found:
Pew Campaign on Human Health and Industrial Farming www.saveantibiotics.org
Superbugs vs. antibiotics
Misuse of antibiotics breeds drug-resistant diseases

Apples, garlic, and chicks!

Our pigs got a special treat a few days ago! We were given a load of deer apples which the pigs have enjoyed immensely. Besides the taste, which they clearly enjoy, they roll the apples around with their noses.




Our garlic is growing well. The heavy morning dew has created some jewel bedecked leaves. We are all used to very uniform garlic in the store, but there are three different types and dozens of varieties of garlic all with unique growing properties
and flavors. Soft-neck garlic is the type most often sold in grocery stores. Soft-neck garlic can be braided into wonderful displays. The two other types are stiff-neck and elephant garlic. Stiff-neck varieties are more resilient to grow. Elephant garlic is not true garlic but a very strange leek. Consequently it has mild flavored large cloves. We are growing soft-neck and hard-neck varieties this fall. They have wonderful names like Chesnook red, Nootka Rose, and Music. We look forward to taste tests next year!


Our chicks have finally grown large enough to move to pasture. They were excited about the grass this morning. Our only problem with the move appeared tonight when I went to close them into the coop. The silly chicks don’t recognize the new coop as home yet, so they did not return as it grew dark. I had to collect little piles of chicks from around the pen to put them inside. They had just plopped down anywhere. Some adventurous birds were roosting on top of the coop-those were hard to reach.

November Newsletter

Hello all,
The hard frosts of mid-October brought out all the color in the trees. The crisp mornings were refreshing even if our fingers did get a little cold.

The colder weather slowed down everything in the garden, but the greens are growing well. The plants are a vibrant shade of green from the wet autumn weather.

We have been enjoying salads with buttery lettuce mixed with spicy arugula If we are looking for extra flavor and texture we can add baby stir-fry mix to our salad. The stir-fry mix consists of several types of mustards and Asian greens. When the stir-fry mix is mature, it is excellent lightly steamed and served on the side with rice or added to a rich soup. We should have all of these greens available for much of the fall. These greens are full of flavor, fresh harvested, and always chemical free.

The most exciting news on the farm is that we now have pigs! The pigs come from Wild Turkey Farm just outside China Grove, near Charlotte. It was a little bit of a drive to get them, but the high quality pigs they raise made it worth it. The pigs are a mix of Berkshire/ Tamworth, which are both heritage breeds. Heritage breeds have been bred over time for traits that made them particularly well-adapted to environmental conditions.
These breeds have hardy characteristics that allow them to flourish outdoors in pastures and have also been selected for the flavor of their meat. These heritage breed pigs will make delicious pork! Our pastured pork will be available in late February. Available in a variety of delicious cuts. Roasts, Ribs, Chops, Sausage. Please contact use to reserve your pastured pork! Sold by the pound, family packages, ¼ hogs, and ½ hogs.

We also have whole, frozen chickens and fresh eggs for sale. Chickens are sold as frozen, whole, dressed birds for $3.50/lb, and weigh approximately 3-4.5 lbs. We will be butchering some more chickens on November 10th. If you would like a fresh chicken you can let us know in advance and schedule a pick up at the farm on the 11th.

Next spring we will have a Community Supported Agriculture project or CSA. Customers join a farm’s membership group at the beginning of the growing season. Members receive a box of seasonal, fresh, healthy vegetables and other farm products like eggs, chicken, and flowers on a regular schedule throughout the growing season. This is a great way to enjoy the bounty of a farm’s crops with your family. We will let you know when we will have planning meetings and sign-ups this winter for next season.

This fall our products can be picked up at the farm or we will deliver if a group of people order $100 of farm products. Get your friends together and place a group order! Please call or email to arrange to arrange a visit or pickup at the farm at: (828) 584-7359 or bluebirdfarmNC@gmail.com . See how your chickens were raised, where the fresh eggs come from, walk through the garden, and visit our animals in the pastures. We would love for you to visit; just call or email to let arrange one.

Happy eating!