The Oxford breed comes from Oxfordshire, England and was developed in the 1830s through the crossing of Hampshires and Cotswolds. The resulting sheep combined the hardiness, muscling and wool quality of the Cotswold with the carcass quality and grazing ability of the Hampshire.

Oxford is the largest of the English “down” breeds, developed for the lush pastures on the hills, or downs, of southern England. They are related to the Southdown sheep that we have in that both are "down" breeds from England. Oxford sheep were imported into North America in the late 1840s.

We got our Oxford ewe from a farm in Gig Harbor, WA a few months ago, but are just now getting around to posting a picture. We unexpectedly had our first lambs of the season on last Thursday with the birth of a ewe and ram. The ram was very small and weak to start with so we have been feeding it ourselves and hoping that it gains strength quickly so it can manage on its own. It is almost like the ram lamb is about a week or two behind in its development when compared to his sister. The lambs are a very cute gray color with very long legs.

The primary reason for getting the Oxford is for our two boys and the fair. The Oxford ewe and the ewe lamb will be their primary show animal in the Northwest Washington Fair in August. The size and conformity will make it tough to beat in the show ring. The Oxfords are very large (we named her Twice My Size), but very easy to work with and not nearly as jumpy as our other sheep.

The origin of the Mulefoot is unclear. The breed is most likely to have descended from the Spanish hogs brought to the Americas beginning in the 1500s. It shares some attributes with the Choctaw hog, and the two breeds likely come from the same ancestral stock, which was loosely selected and managed until the late 1800s. In the early 1900s there were two Mulefoot breed associations and over 200 herds registering purebred stock. As of a few years ago their were less than 200 registered Mulefoots and most Mulefoots can be traced back to the Holliday family in Missouri. A few years ago Arie MacFarland in South Dakota bought the Holliday herd of Mulefoots and has continued the tradition of providing breeding stock and restoring the Mulefoots to their prominence. Arie runs an impressive outfit about 20 miles north of Sioux Falls, SD. She has most of the foundation stocks for Mulefoots and Guinea Hogs in the United States. She manages as many as 200 pigs on her farm of 80 acres. She also meticulously manages the genetics to provide as much diversity as possible. She has done an amazing job.

Last Friday I left to make the 2000 mile drive to Dell Rapids, South Dakota to pick up our new herd of Mulefoots from Arie MacFarland. We purchased 3 mature sows and a junior boar from Arie, as well as 5 young pigs that we will raise for butchering in the summer. Five days later and after many hours on the road I arrived home with the newest addition to our farm. Mulefoot hogs are the only pig on the Slow Food Ark of Taste list because of their origin in the U.S. They do not get as large as the Large Blacks that we already have, but will be a nice complement to the Large Blacks. Whereas the Large Blacks are leaner and longer, the Mulefoots will have a bit more fat and bigger hams.

Mulefoots are unique for a couple of reasons, the first is as their name implies, they have a mule foot instead of a cloven hoof that all other pigs have. Second, as you can see in the pictures, they have longer, thicker hair that in some Mulefoots is fairly straight and in others is more curly. They are taller, fatter, and shorter than the Large Blacks and are jet black in color versus a dull black of the Large Blacks.

Mulefoots have a similar disposition as the Large Blacks, both are very docile and easy to handle. They eat primarily eat grass and hay, with a little grain each day to supplement their diet and the occasional pumpkin. We look forward to introducing this amazing pig to Whatcom County.

The middle picture above provides a nice contrast between the Mulefoots and Large Blacks. The three pigs in the upper right hand corner of the picture our are litter of 3 Large Blacks. The pigs in the left hand side of the picture are the Mulefoot pigs. You can see the noticeable difference in hair and color.

The Oberhasli goat is a dairy breed developed in Switzerland in the mountains around Bern and Freiburg. Oberhasli goats were first came to the United States in the early 1900s. Goats are generally brown, but can range from light tan to deep reddish brown and have black stripes down there back, on their belly, and their face. Oberhasli goats milk is the most similar to cows milk and one of the reasons that we got this breed, on top of the fact that it is about the only real dairy breed on the American Livestock Breeding Conservancy list.

Our goats came from Edelweiss Acres in Olympia, Washington. They use Oberhasli goats primarily has pack goats because of their disposition. We have two females, both of which are pregnant and expecting sometime at the end of February. We will use the milk for our own use, both to drink and to make cheese. We will get a pasteurizer sometime around the time they have their kids. This is not really a money making effort for us, but something that we thought would be fun to try, especially making cheese. We have made cheese before but it is more difficult using store bought milk that has been homogenized.

We currently have our goats with our two Southdown sheep and we got an Oxford sheep that I will talk about in our next post. The 5 animals are still trying to adjust and the Southdown sheep our exhibiting their shyness and keeping their distance from their new pen mates.

The Three Sisters

The Iroquois Indians used to plant corn, beans and squash together as companion crops. They each provide nutrients that can be utilized by the others and each draws out different nutrients from the soil. The pole beans utilize the corn stalks to grow and the squash plants help keep down weeds between rows. We ran our own experiment this last year with mixed results. We planted corn like you normally would with about 10 rows of corn and then planted the beans next to the corn and the squash between the rows. This created a couple of problems. One it was very difficult getting around as the space between corn stalks was all taken (and then some) by the squash so harvesting was difficult. I am also not sure the beans got enough sunlight, or at least for some reason we did not get great yields on the beans, although we did on the corn. The other problem I realized is that we planted summer squash in the corn as well which was very difficult to find and we had some get too large before we realized they were there.

Next year we will do things a little bit different, firstly we will plant summer squash separately to easy the harvest of zucchini and other summer squash. We will also plant the corn and beans in squares or circles and leave 3-4 feet between the squares and plant squash in the rows so there is more room to get around. We will plant the beans along the outside 1 or 2 rows to make sure they have adequate sunlight and so we can track their progress more easily. We were able to get a good harvest in a relatively small space, next year we hope to do even better.

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.