Cinco de Mayo 2021: Pork, Peaches, and Sweet Torture
This week I'm working on getting the rabbits bred. Just Blackberry and OMB because I was counting on a litter from each of them last week. Blackberry is going to Buddy Boy, and OMB to New Buddy Boy. On Tuesday, OMB wasn't receptive but Blackberry was. Today was opposite. I'm putting them in with their bucks every morning just to spread things out and make more certain that they'll get pregnant. I need a way to make sure my bucks stay stronger, they don't seem to have much endurance, and the girls are giving them a good run every morning. I wonder how that'd work...
Does this pic make my swine look fat?
The boys are getting some good weight on em now. Last night I subjected myself to some premium grade torture regarding the pigs. I was kinda hungry at work, and the podcast I've been listening to was all about making bacon. Home-raised, home-cured, home-smoked, hang-on-the-wall bacon. My mouth was watering for probably six hours straight, and I keep getting more excited about these pigs. Corn, acorns, and peanuts are supposedly excellent finishers for this breed of lard pig, and suddenly I'm remembering I have half a pound of non GMO homegrown corn seeds... The current plan is to finish on acorns, pecans, homegrown corn, and a bit of their peanut based feed. I'm convinced as well that I'm going to need to smoke a bacon with peach wood. Tell me that doesn't sound amazing. We'll see how it works out, I've got some heavy pruning to do on my peach trees anyways...
35 gallon barrel for scale...
I think I'm going to proposition and commission @bobydimitrov to write a book about how to harvest and prepare one of these things. Everyone tag him in comments below, I'll save up and put $100 towards the project if he's down to do it. This is something the world needs.
Due to a lack of focus and getshitdonitiveness, I'm bringing back the list!
THE LIST:
- Breed rabbits
- Prepare containers for growing trees
- Prepare containers for growing blackberries
- Plant winter squash
- Plant painted mountain corn
- Plant tomato starts
- Set mouse traps
- Set coon traps
- Clean out the freezer
- Acquire yeast for making wine
- Propagate more comfrey
That looks like a good start for now. I'll get on that in the morning when I get home. The planting shouldn't be hard to do, but finding containers to prep for growing things may prove difficult. Buckets are running low nowadays. I'd like a lot of blackberries so I can sell them this fall to folks, along with hosting a small blackberry class. The trees I want to start are peaches. Any seeds from our trees will be planted, and I may end up buying a lot of fresh peaches to feed to the pigs and harvest seeds to plant too... I like this idea.
Well, it's almost lunch time and I've rambled on for five hundred words. Not to bore. Just putting ideas out. I'll call this one a wrap.
Love from Texas
Nate 💚