1 Week

Our piglets are one week old today and the weather was a little warmer and less rainy so we took them out for a little while this afternoon so they could enjoy the sun. They are getting much bigger and starting to venture around their pen a little more. For the first few days the stayed close to the heat lamp and where Guinevere would sleep. Over the last two days they have started to wander a bit more and tonight was the first time they were over in the food area with their mother.

We are having troubles getting our Mulefoots at the moment. We had someone going that direction that agreed to pick them up, but they ended up sick before they got there and ultimately had to turn around and come home so our Mulefoots are still sitting in Dell Rapids waiting for plan b. Either we will find someone else buying pigs from them coming in this direction or worst case is Kelly and I will drive out there in March between quarters at WWU and pick them up then.

The New Piglets Have Arrived

After a very sleepless night, we have our first litter of pigs from Guinevere. Our first litter was 3 piglets, which is a little smaller than we had hoped, but we are also glad to have the first one out of the way. Normally a large black can have a litter of 10-12, although their first litter is always smaller. So far the mom and three piglets are doing well and we should be fine as long as the mom does not lay on one of the piglets, which almost happened once while we were out there. We will provide more updates and pictures over the next few days.

It is going to be a busy couple of weeks for Heritage Lane Farm as we are adding a number of new animals in the next 2 weeks. Our Oberhasli goats are ready to be picked up and we will do that as soon as the opportunity arises. We are also getting some Mulefoot Hogs from South Dakota which should arrive in about 10 days if everything goes as planned. This will pretty much get us to full capacity, except for maybe another sheep or two and then adding poultry next spring.

Harvest Dinner

Recently we invited a few friends over for dinner and made a meal almost entirely from the harvest from our farm. It was an enjoyable evening and the food was delightful. We had:

Leg of Lamb
Roast potatoes and squash (we used Rose Finn Apple French Fingerling and Purple Peruvian potatoes and Musquee de Provence and Blue Hubbard Squash)
Cucumber Salad (using Lemon and White Wonder cucumbers)
Sweet Corn (we had Hopi Purple which is one of the rare purple colored sweet corn)
Heritage Pumpkin Pie (using a mixture of pumpkin, Musquee de Provence and Blue Hubbard Squash)

It was a very simple meal and did not take much time to cook, but well worth the effort. Our long-term goal is to be able to do these types of events on a bigger and broader scale, but it was a delicious test run.