Tamworth pigs #2

So here is a current picture of Riptide, our boar.

The snow is starting to melt, and the winter pig yard is quite muddy. They love it. 

Rip is talking to his wife through the wire as she is confined on the other side.

She listens. Rip has been sleeping just on his side of the wire. He digs a body sized depression with his snout, all the while shoring up a mini-mud wall around his body hole, then lays down. When he gets up, the hole is dry, surrounded by mud-melt. Pigs are very smart!

The reason Moose is confined; she just had babies. 

This is her first litter. She is an enormous pig, and should have had more than 4, but they all lived, and she did everything exactly right. We don't have any intention of getting rid of her, so hopefully her next litter will be bigger.

Tamworth pigs

Tamworth's are our breed of choice. Although we have quite a few cross breed sows, I really love my pair of tams. I posted their baby pictures on the website about a year ago. They were cute orange things with looks of despair and fright on their little piggy faces.

Now, they are huge, porcine monsters. They roll in the mud, eat really gross things, and are as tame as can be. But watch out! They will knock you down for a bucket of feed if you aren't paying attention to what you are doing. The result?

So Much for Winter

Oh, the cold wind blows.

Hark! Grass! The cold wind is gone.

It's a sham, just wait.

Making Maple Syrup

Begin with the weather, followed by the tree.

Hook up a tube, wait and see.

In order for sap to run, the weather must be below freezing at night and 35-45 during the day. Sunny is preferred, but there have been days when it was 40 and cloudy, and the sap ran like dickens.

The ideal tree is, of course, the sugar maple, followed closely by the black maple. Other maples can be used, which we do, but the sugar content of the sap is slightly less.

Drill a hole in any maple greater in diameter than 10 inches. Very large trees can support several taps. The hole must be 1-3 inches deep and angle slightly towards the ground.  Carefully tap in a tapered spout and attach a tube, bucket, or bag. Different types of spouts support different types of containers. We simply use food grade milk hose and clean juice containers.

On an average sapping day, each tap will give about a gallon. During the last week of the season, there is usually a rush of sap and we have to collect twice a day to prevent the containers from running over.

We drill a hole in the lid, as opposed to leaving the top open. Bugs and wildlife love maple sap.

The sap must be collected daily and kept cool, or it will spoil really fast. Properly refrigerated, the sap will keep about a week.

When we have enough the sap gets poured into the evaporator pan.

The average yield is about 35 or 40 to 1. This means it takes about 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup. Thats a lot of sap!

This is a stainless evap pan. The fire box is built in underneath, accessible from the other end. We burn wood to boil down the sap.  As the sap boils down, it begins to darken in color.

This is the other end, and the finishing pan. You can see the fire box door below. The finishing pan gets the hottest and sap is added as the moisture boils away to keep it from scorching.  

As the water is boiled away, the boiling point rises. When the temperature reaches 7 degrees about the boiling point of water, the syrup is considered done. We usually pull it sooner. This gives us the opportunity to strain it and finish on a stove top for greater control.

You wouldn't believe how good boiling sap smells until you have actually smelled some. At this point in the process, I want to taste it SO bad, but I don't dare. It will melt your tongue into a useless puddle of goo.

Why do I farm.

Why do I farm.

Because I like it.

This cold, wet spring morning, I notice many things.

I see the first blades of grass poking through the mud just after sunrise.

I hear the cry of baby goats as I bring a bucket of water to their pen. They sound suspiciously like human babies.

I smell the moisture in the air as the coming rain rolls over the lake.

I taste the hay chaff floating on the wind as it blows past my face.

I feel the calm yet excited attention I am given by prancing, dancing rabbits in their cages as I pass by with their feed.

Yes, this is Spring in Wisconsin.

April Fools! Yesterday

This post should have been yesterday.

Welcome Dolly-Rock Farms April Fools!

Registered American Oberhasli doeling, born on

you guessed it! April 1st, right around noon.

2 X grand-daughter of SGCH Singing-Spruce Macaroon Spritz 8*M

and GC The LLL Hucklebery Finn +B

grand-daughter of GCH Hazelridge-Farm Alexander +*B

grand-daughter of SGCH Hazelridge-Acres Angela'Slinde 3*M

and grand-daughter of the 2007 Nationals Grand Champion

SGCH White-Haven Toblerone 4*M

Let's just say I expect a lot out of this little girl.

Here in Wisconsin..Spring doesn't mean WARM weather!

If you live in the middle, zone 5, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky and such, you should have tulips and crocuses, and other beautiful delights. In Wisconsin? hardly.

Just last week, we had a baby blizzard.  After hours of feeding and watering and shoveling, this is what you get in return. 

You KNOW its cold when you have to stand about and wait for the zippers on your coveralls to thaw enough to take them off.

The next day, beautiful, freezing and sunny!  What does that mean in Wisconsin? Danger from above!

When the sun shines bright,

Stay away from the buildings

You might lose your head

For days, we listen to the ice cascade down in thundering sheets.

The later it gets in the day, the sheets inch closer and closer to the edge, and when they go, they sound like a freight train.

Sometimes, they don't quite come off, and freeze that way over night, just to begin again the next day.