captain jack and ianto say good bye to ginger and pepper

The boys as I call them are growing like weeds. They have been on a raw diet for quite a while. It suits them. Chicken has been their staple. They ate all of our "flatties"* during broiler raising season. We lost quite a few of this time around. They began their journey heat stressed and were overly susceptible to it from then on.

This gate is one of their boundaries they are not supposed to cross. They are pretty good about following that rule.
This is Ianto about half grown. He reminds me of Henry. I still miss Henry.

Ianto is my favorite, I admit it. I can't help it. Here they are waiting for dinner.

Once Ianto is full grown he'll stand like that but only on the top bar.

Ginger and Pepper are going to the slaughter house tomorrow.

I know I professed last time that I would never do that again. Luckily I'm allowed to change my mind. The job that they did on smoking the meat and making sausage was so great that they have won me over for at least another time.

We will save every little scrap of bone and usual waste from both pigs to freeze for the dogs. They eat less on this diet and are much healthier. Tabitha really appreciates the fact that their waste is small and turns ashen white and benign within a day or so. Our large dung beetle population makes short work of three large dogs feces this way too.

So, goodbye to Ginger and Pepper but hello to them all winter long.


They are such friendly creatures we love them on so many levels.


I don't think that I will ever put pigs in the garden again.

Their smell is a little too close to the house. But, the main reason is they only tore up certain areas of the garden a little too deeply while left other areas completely untouched. Huge craters in the garden are not what I was hoping for.

I still have a little more tear down of the butcher area. The big-top worked perfectly this time.


I am trying to complete some compost for when my parents arrive with Kassi's Daylily starts. Two of these bins were full of nitrogen rich waste bedding and cow manure.

This is how far it has composted.

It is about a third of it's original volume. I have turned it twice in the past few weeks in attempt to get high compost temperatures. The feed stock was full of weed seeds and I wanted to be sure to kill of them. My moisture content was a little high and I lost some nutrients.

Composting is easy and difficult at the same time. Predictable results are the elusive factor. Last season my compost, although complete, contained far too many weed seeds. I hope for much better this time around.



*flatties are what we call chickens that have died and are laying there extremely flat when we come to check on them.

And who will help me eat the harvest?

We have started to add to our pantry. Onions are the first harvest and I have ran through two dehydrator loads of them. This is what I have left to peel slice and load in the dehydrator.


This year has been a successful year for beets. We grew a F1 hybrid from Johnny's called Merlin. We love them. Big healthy and very tasty. Where appropriate we grow heirloom plants but beets are not something we'll attempt to save seeds from in the near future. Although we have been enjoying the thinnings for several weeks, we just got around to harvesting them in earnest. This batch is from the front yard row.

It is very weedy. Our trip to Michigan left this row in shambles. I'll cover this row with a black tarp, kill the weeds and sterilize the soil for a few weeks. After that I'll plant a cover crop. These are the littlest beets after sorting and removing the larger ones for this first batch.

Here are some of the larger ones in the queue for the cooker.

These beets are partially cooked and will cool so we can slip the skins off, slice them and stick them in jars.

As I type the last quart of fifteen is being added to this canner.

These will be pickled beets and here are the spices to be added to each jar.

Other recent additions to our pantry and freezer are two quarts of black raspberries, three quarts of black berries, fourteen quarts of green beans.

The sheep are working out nicely. We have kept them in a fifteen foot piece of snowfence and move it regularly along our fence rows. They are excellent at keeping me from having to weed eat the fence rows.

A simple piece of tarp for shelter and a bucket of water are all they need. We plan to shear them before butcher. I also hope to tan their hides. So far sheep seem to fit well into our farm. Lamb being my favorite meat affords them a little more latitude than usual.

The dogs are doing well. They are shedding their puppy coats and look a little scruffy.

Astrid is an excellent livestock guardian. She also has enveloped our house into her sphere of protection. Visitors are notified that a large dog lives here with a deep menacing bark.

The other night Tabitha went to the barn with a flashlight and Astrid did not recognize her. Astrid ran around at lightspeed to the upper paddock to surround her. Astrid and the boys closed in on her to attack from front and rear. This scared Tabitha and she yelled their "disarm" word. They immediately stood down and marched around with ruffled back fur snorting heavily. Scary but kinda makes a person feel good about personal protection.
Astrid is nine months old and will only get better at her job. She is probably 75% grown in size. The boys, Captain Jack and Ianto will be quite a bit larger than Astrid. They come from larger stock and they are boys. We feel lucky to have these dogs. They are on a raw meat diet plus table scraps. Very healthy and anxious to please.

torchwood fans get your fanfic elsewhere

we have been waiting for another puppy since we got astrid.

she is a good dog but we never ever ever want to be without a LSG dog again. we need back up and we want replacements in the future. great pyranees, in my humble opinion, are the greatest dogs ever bred. people that have had bad experiences with them haven't gotten them young enough or haven't given them an interesting job.

if you thought those kitten were cute a few post back, brace yourself..

ready?


meet ianto pronounced yanto, he is on the right. that is jack on the left.


jack for short, aka captain jack harkness.


rome is really excited.

kassi and rome are waiting for me to introduce astrid to the boys.


toly and ianto




astrid checking things out.


rome thinks they are little polar bears.

they might be.




i think that kassi looks a little like my mother in this photo


tristan trying to teach them their names.


kassi waiting her turn.


time for a nap boys