You don't like dark turkey meat?

I never liked dark turkey meat growing up, and then I didn't eat commercially raised meat for 14 years. Now I eat only our homegrown turkeys, and it took me a long time to bring myself to try the dark meat, because I remember thinking that it tasted terrible. After writing about heritage turkeys a couple weeks ago, a light bulb went on in my head. Why do we treat dark turkey meat as if it were the same as the breast meat? It's different! Not all chicken recipes work equally well with dark and white meat, so why should we expect to be able to just dig into a turkey leg or thigh as if it were a piece of breast meat?

So, Jonathan and I got crazy with the two turkey legs we had in the refrigerator. We looked for recipes that worked well with pork, beef, and chicken, thinking that they should also transfer well to the dark turkey meat. And we were right! The first thing we did was a pineapple chicken recipe using a turkey leg and thigh that had been cooked in simmering water much like we cook a stew hen. The next day we made turkey and mushrooms with gravy. As you can see from the picture of the pineapple turkey, it looks a lot like chipped beef, and I really thought that it tasted more like beef than any other type of meat. If we had added a chopped green pepper, it would have tasted like a pepper steak recipe from a Chinese cookbook.

I'm kind of embarrassed to say that I used to cringe at the thought of having to deal with the dark meat on a turkey, and most of the time, I'd stick it in left-over containers, and my husband would take it to work for his lunch. But those days are gone! Now I'm excited about trying other beef and pork recipes with my turkey legs. I'll no longer think of it as second fiddle to the breast meat. It's uniquely delicious and is just as versatile as the breast meat. In fact, I'm starting to think I might actually like the dark meat more.

For more posts on real food, check out Fight Back Friday, and for more recipes, see Foodie Friday.

Using vermicompost

To collect my vermicompost, I use a spoon to scoop a little off the top. I do this so I don't accidentally pick up any worms. After all, I want them to stay in the worm bin to continue eating and pooping.I put the vermicompost into a gallon jug. After I've added five or six spoonfuls to the jug, I add water and let it sit for a day or two. This picture was taken as soon as I mixed it up. It gets much darker with time as the vermicompost dissolves.Currently I'm using it to water my tomato and pineapple plants that had previously been on the deck during the summer. Now they're in my dining room in front of the sliding glass door. The tomato plant is scrawny, but it's alive, which is more than I can say for the tomatoes in the garden, which all succumbed to a late blight. The pineapple is doing surprisingly well. I tried growing a pineapple plant a couple years ago, and it did not grow anywhere near this big this fast. I feel confident that the vermicompost is making the difference. I never used any fertilizer or any kind of supplement with the previous pineapple plant. If you want to know how I started the pineapple plant, you can check out my post from May. It's even grown a lot since I last updated you in August.

When I start seeds in my basement in January, I'll be watering them with the vermicompost tea. Of course, I'll let you know how it goes.

I've got worms

Yes, I really do have worms. They reside in a large plastic storage container and eat my coffee grounds, tea bags, vegetable scraps, and even some junk mail or used paper towels now and then. They spend much of their time in my living room, but sometimes I move them into my basement. They stay in the living room as long as I'm feeding them, but once the feed gets too far ahead of the worms, I move them into the basement and forget about them for a couple months.

I started my worm bin in February. Most of the worms were babies, and you could hardly see them. Now they're long and wavy, and to my surprise, I kind of enjoy handling them. Every now and then some will crawl up the side of the worm bin, and although I imagine they'd find their way home if I didn't help, I worry about them. So, I pick them up and put them back down on their bed of vermicompost (worm poop) and food scraps.

Yes, the worm bin is one of those plastic storage containers that you can get at discount stores, so it's not expensive to make it. You drill six or eight holes in the sides so the worms can get air, and you put another six or eight holes in the bottom so the bin can drain if you wind up with too much moisture.

A few people have asked if it stinks, and the answer is no. It even spent two weeks in a public library this spring in celebration of Earth Day and was a huge hit, especially among kids. The vermicompost itself has no smell, but if you were to put the wrong kind of scraps in there, they could attract fruit flies or start to stink because they'd be molding and decomposing before the worms could eat them. You should never put meat or bones in a worm bin. I've also heard that too much citrus can kill your worms, so I don't put citrus in there at all. I have a regular compost bin outside my kitchen door, and I throw my citrus in there. It's a good idea to bury fruit scraps and anything else that can attract fruit flies. Since I put my coffee grounds and filter in there every day, I generally just layer everything, so this morning's coffee grounds cover yesterday's vegetable scraps. The brown stuff in the above picture is vermicompost. Since it looks so much like coffee grounds, I feed my worms on one side of the bin for several months while I'm harvesting the vermicompost from the other side.

So, what do I do with the vermicompost? I'll talk about that tomorrow. I have to run now because we're working on getting the barn and the goats ready for winter.

This post is part of Frugal Fridays, where you can find more money-saving ideas.

And the winner is . . .

Momanna98 is the winner of the soap giveaway. Drop me an email, deborah (at) Antiquity Oaks (dot) com, with your address and whether you want the animals or the Christmas soaps. Also let me know if you need unscented, or if a variety of scents is okay.

Thanks to everyone for your comments. It really helps me to figure out what to blog about. Sometimes I write about things, thinking that no one really wants to hear about this, and then I'm really surprised by the comments and the number of visitors to that post. Who knew that people were so interested in pigs and nuts or the relationship between pigs and chickens? It was especially nice hearing from those of you who don't comment often, so I have a better idea of what you like to read. Thanks again to all of you!

Our first cria: here and gone

Saturday morning I was dressed up and ready to leave for my nephew's birthday party when Jonathan walked in and said that he had found what looked like half of a dead baby llama. What? How? We only have one female llama, and she shouldn't be having a cria until next April, since llamas have an 11-month pregnancy. We bought her in May, and she was not supposed to be bred. I pulled on my farm boots and coat, hoping I had completely covered my clean clothes.

Everyone ran outside and through the barn and to the far pasture where we saw Sovalye, the livestock guardian dog, standing over something in the grass. We smelled the cria about the same time we saw it. Clearly it had been dead for quite some time. It smelled like rotten meat, and Sovalye was very interested in it. We had no idea whether it was a boy or a girl, because the back half of it was completely missing. We knew Sovalye was not to blame, because he had not been in that pasture for weeks. It was hard for us to believe the llamas would have let coyotes in the pasture to eat their young one, even if it was dead.

Only one thing now made sense to me -- now I understood why Katy looked thin when I was in the pasture a week and a half earlier. Two Wednesdays ago, I was taking pictures of all the animals with the fall foliage. When I saw Katy, I thought she looked thin, but when I compared her to the other llamas, I couldn't say why. When I downloaded the pictures to the computer, I had to say that she looked like a perfectly normal llama. Now I realize that she must have recently given birth, which was why she looked "thin" to me.

I contacted the breeder we bought her from, and she said that another llama had unexpectedly given birth two weeks earlier. She concluded that one of the boys in their mama-baby pasture had reached sexual maturity a little early and got the two pregnant. Luckily their baby survived. We will probably never know why ours died. Perhaps the mama gave birth in the rain, and the baby died from hypothermia. That's about the only thing that makes sense to me. Considering how many other animals the llamas have saved from coyote attacks, I have to believe that they would have protected their own young one.

Holidays, blogging, eating, and soap

If you live in the U.S., today isn't just Halloween, it's the beginning of the crazy holiday season. For the next two months, we'll be thinking about food and parties and food and gifts and food. Did I mention that we tend to eat a lot of food in the last two months of the year? As you know, I love food. I'm starting to think about what I want to bake for the holiday season this year. So, you'll be seeing a lot of food posts in the next couple months.

But before we bid adieu to October, I thought it would be fun to have a little give-away. If you'd like to have three bars of my goat milk soap, just leave a comment letting me know which October post was your favorite -- or what you missed and want to hear more about. And I'll try to keep that in mind and not talk too much about food in the next couple months. I'll choose the winner randomly, and you can choose either the animal soaps or the Christmas soaps. Let me know if you need unscented. Otherwise, it will be a mix of fragrances. And be sure to leave your comment by midnight U.S. central time Monday. I'll announce the winner Tuesday on the blog, so be sure to check back and see if you won.

I make square bars of soap for most of the year, but at holiday time, I make some pretty soap in molds, mostly for gifts. If you were thinking of buying some of my soap for gifts this year, and it's more than a few bars, be sure to place your order by mid-November. If I have to make more soap to fill your order, it has to dry for a month before it's good to use. You can place your order through my website, and don't hesitate to email if you have questions. There's an email link on the Ordering page.

Yes, pigs are omnivores

Trust me, you don't want pictures with today's post.

I always think that I want to know everything -- and I really mean everything! But every now and then I learn something first hand, and I think, you know, it was really okay not knowing that. Such was the case of the pigs and the chicken.

Before I ever thought about getting pigs, a neighbor said to me, "You don't want pigs. They'll kill your chickens." I didn't think much of it at the time, because I didn't want pigs. We'd been vegetarians for 14 years, and I was perfectly happy with my goat cheese and fresh eggs. But after we ate a chicken and then a steer, I started to think about bacon. Well, there's only one way to get bacon -- pigs.

So, I searched all over Illinois for Tamworth piglets that weren't vaccinated and drugged up, and I found a farmer two hours away with weaners to sell -- that's what they call feeder pigs that are weaned and ready to be "finished." Geez, it's nearly impossible to explain this without a bunch of jargon. Okay, I bought two piglets that had just been weaned from their mother. And that's how we got into hogs.

Anyway, our first pigs were practically perfect in every way -- even by human standards. Looking back on it, they weren't very piggy. They didn't root up their yard. They ate the grass. They were even so sweet tempered, I hated sending them down south. I wasn't even sure that I would ever want to raise pigs again, because it was tough at the end to send them away. But then the meat arrived, and it was delicious. The chili reminded me of the what I ate at the local Mexican food restaurant where I grew up, not too far from Mexico. So, we did pigs again.

Each batch had its challenges, but just when you think you've got something figured out, life throws you a curve ball. Of course, that was my mistake -- thinking that we had this pig thing all figured out after five years! So, two days ago, Jonathan comes in and says, "Mom, I think the pigs killed a chicken."

"What? Why?"

"One of them is running around with a chicken foot in its mouth."

Okay, as horrified as I was at the thought that they'd killed a chicken, I was even more disturbed to think that a chicken was flapping around out there with only one foot. If he'd told me he saw a dead chicken, I'd have been content to live with his report. But I didn't want some poor bird out there suffering, so I pulled on my coat and went to see what I could see. It wasn't pretty. The chicken was quite dead and not resembling any chicken that I'd ever seen before.

But, why? Why did they kill her? I've always thought that if I kept my animals happy, they wouldn't do things like that. Well, the roosters were the first to prove to me that I could not make them happy. No, the only way a rooster is happy is if he has about 15 or 20 hens all to himself. Then he's happy. If there are too many roosters -- therefore not enough hens -- the boys start killing each other. Why can't they just get along like the hens do? But I digress . . .

Okay, back to the pigs. We've raised a dozen pigs now, and not one of them has even looked at a chicken cross-eyed. The chickens, being free-range, can go into the pig pen whenever they want. Normally, they even eat corn along with the pigs. So, I just don't understand why these pigs would decide they want chicken for breakfast one day. I'm leaning more towards the idea that they did it for sport, since their feeder had plenty of food in it, and they didn't even eat most of the chicken. I hate wasting food.

Just when I was thinking that maybe we'd try raising a gilt (girl pig) again and have babies -- I'm reminded of our one and only experience with that, and it wasn't pretty. Maybe we should just stick with getting weaners every summer and finishing them in the late fall or early winter. Having pigs for six months a year is challenging enough.

Stop the insanity!

I'm borrowing today's title from a 1993 anti-weight-loss book about weight loss, an industry that has always been about extremes. I'm sad to see there is a segment of sustainability heading in that direction. According to Publisher's Lunch, we will soon be able to read

W. Hodding Carter's WITHIN OUR MEANS, in which the author and his family of six aims to live on their actual yearly income instead of the more than three times that amount they have been, growing their own food, raising chickens and goats, hunting and fishing, converting their car so that it runs on French fry oil, chopping wood to fuel a stove and giving up luxuries like coffee, wine and processed foods . . . .

Of course, we all know that we only have two choices -- a life of total excess or complete deprivation, where we can't even have a cup of coffee. Seriously . . .

Okay, in case you want to know more about the author, here is his announcement to the world from February about his great plan to spend a year living within his budget. I am not at all against living within your means, but it doesn't have to be about deprivation and killing your own supper. People living in the suburbs and cities are perfectly capable of living within their means. It actually costs us more to raise our own chicken and turkey than it would to buy it at the store, especially when they're having those loss-leader sales for 59 cent a pound turkey in November. Last time I ran the numbers several years ago, it was costing us about $3 a pound for our turkey -- but we're not doing it to be thrifty.

It is also not cheaper to have chickens for eggs. You really can't compete with factory egg production. Carter says the kids will be able to sell extra eggs and keep the profit. If he sticks with that plan, it's going to be a long time before those kids see any money. Pullets cost about $2 each X 25 = $50 + $15 shipping = $65. Feed is around $10-15 a bag, and the chickens will go through six to ten bags (depending on how much access the chickens have to the outdoors) before they even lay their first egg. And if they got their pullets in the spring, they won't get many eggs at all that first year. Again, we don't have chickens because it's cheap; we have them because I won't eat factory-farmed eggs. Even before we moved out here, we bought eggs from a small farm near us where the chickens ran around freely.

So, I've read a few of his posts. He writes well, of course. He is blogging for Gourmet. His posts are interesting. I'm just annoyed at the way this is presented. And why are so many people being presented as celebrities and experts after doing something for one year? And why does it have to be so extreme? Someone just told me about No Impact Man, the book and the movie. Colin Beavan decides to live a life of total deprivation in New York City, dragging his wife and toddler along for the ride. According to the film's website:

It means eating vegetarian, buying only local food, and turning off the refrigerator. It also means no elevators, no television, no cars, busses, or airplanes, no toxic cleaning products, no electricity, no material consumption, and no garbage.

I am completely in favor of reducing the amount of energy we use. We keep the thermostat at 63 F in the winter to save energy, not because my husband loves the feel of my icicle nose against his cheek. But a lot of these extreme actions are meaningless. Fine, he turns off his refrigerator, but I'm sure he's buying some foods that have been in someone's refrigerator. And my refrigerator is the thing that allows us to not eat out as much as most Americans. It doesn't take any additional energy to make bigger servings at dinner, and then I can save the leftovers for my husband and daughter to take to work and school the next day. If you don't have electric lights, you're using oil lamps and candles, and I have a hard time believing that's better -- especially if you're not vigilant enough to get non-toxic candles and oil.

But I digress. My point is that no one takes these things seriously, which is sad. We all lose, because people look at this type of thing as a publicity stunt. It's just a gimmick to make money, write a book, or produce a movie. It's not the way real people live. They've lost the opportunity to educate people about important issues. These two men are being paid to live an outrageous life for one year. It has nothing to do with promoting sustainability or frugality, and it has everything to do with the voyeurism to which Americans seem to be addicted. Someone in publishing once told me that books follow television, so it shouldn't be surprising that after a decade-long diet of reality TV shows, we're seeing books in the same genre. Supersize Me had some great information in it, but I knew very few people who would even consider watching it. Most people just said it was stupid and unrealistic. No doubt people will respond to these two books the same way, even though they probably have some good information hidden beneath the manure and the glitter.

Foodies have a song!

Someone once said that to have a movement, you have to have a song. Well, now we have our song! About a week ago, I heard Million Dollar Nile's, "What You Don't Know," a song that basically sums up everything people need to know about their food -- and what's behind the subversive eating movement. The song talks about corn -- how it's in pretty much every processed food in the supermarket, how it's fed to livestock that can't digest it, how sugar and fat are subsidized by the government (through corn), and how it's leading to all kinds of medical problems.

I got so excited about the song, I played it for everyone in the family, and then I thought, why stop there? And besides that, we had a few questions that I really wanted to know the answer to -- and I thought that you, my real-food-loving readers, would love the song and want to know more about the band that came up with this amazing idea!

Band members Matt Swanson, Dan Stonington, and Nicole Comforto agreed to be my guests on Antiquity Oaks today, so in addition to answering my questions below, they're graciously agreed to drop in a few times in the next 24 hours to answer your questions!

Deborah: What inspired you to write this song? Have you read Michael Pollan's books or seen "King Corn"?

Matt: During the summer of '08 my wife and I spent two weeks kayaking in Glacier Bay, Alaska. After long days of paddling through the wilderness, we would kick back on the beach, cook a leisurely dinner, and read out loud. The book of choice was Michael Pollan's “The Omnivore's Dilemma.” In packing meals for the expedition, we had of course been concerned largely with weight, bulk, and cost, and thus had ended up with a disproportionate number of dried soup and stew mixes made by Bear Creek and the like. So as Michael Pollan launched into a critique of the industrial food system, one of us would follow along on the breathtaking lists of ingredients that adorned our discarded 'food' packaging. It was a horrifying experience--there were regular shouts of disbelief as Michael revealed yet another disturbing secret of the food industry. Each progressive ‘Progresso’ meal became harder to stomach, and the unbelievable dichotomy of pristine wilderness mixed with the daily ingesting of polysyllabic corn derivatives made a deep imprint in both of our minds. The song “What You Don’t Know” shortly followed our return home from this trip.

Deborah: That's so exciting that Omnivore's Dilemma made such a difference in your life! You mention a lot of health conditions in the song that are caused by a modern diet. Did any of you have health issues that served as a wake-up call?

Matt: I think we’re all fortunate to be young and relatively healthy, but just looking around it’s hard to miss the manifestations of our national eating disorder (as Pollan coins it). Obesity is the most obvious and prevalent affliction. One line of the song goes: “We’ve got diabetes and we’re chronically obese, from all this high fructose and all this subsidized grease.” I think this gets to the heart of the matter. By subsidizing the corn and soy industries so heavily, we’re driven to astonishingly low prices on such ingredients as high fructose corn syrup and soybean oil. Soda, fast food and other such low cost/high calorie foods are a logical outgrowth of such subsidies. The people who truly depend on such cheap options are in the low-income bracket, where obesity is most rampant. Thus, this becomes an issue of social justice, and I believe that what is happening is wrong.

Deborah: You have a long list of multi-syllabic ingredients that are in food. Are they all derivatives of corn? Did it all come from a particular label, or did you just pick a few random ingredients?

Matt: They are indeed all derivatives of corn which I tracked down on a corn allergy website. On it a woman by the name of Jenny Connors has assembled an extensive list of ingredients to be avoided by those with corn allergies. From this huge list, one can assemble most of the packaged food products sold in the supermarket.

Deborah: How has the song been received? Do people know what you're talking about? Do they care?

Matt: The song has been quite well received, and we often hear people referring fondly to “the corn song”. With the explosion of farmer’s markets and local, organic producers, this has been a really hot topic, and I think people appreciate our humorous portrayal of what can be an overwhelming and disturbing issue. In fact Michael Pollan himself came across this song and featured it recently in his newsletter.

So yes, I do think people know what we’re talking about, and they care deeply. We may be preaching to the choir at this point with our progressive-minded fans, but we’re hoping to broaden our audience and extend this message to more and more folks. In fact, to expedite this process, we are donating all the proceeds from our CD to non-profits focusing on sustainability. Here’s how it works: Anyone can go to our website, buy our CD for $10, and then nominate an organization that they think should receive the money. We’re hoping to start a ripple effect with this, so that lots of people get to enjoy our music and we get to donate a sizeable sum to a good cause. It’s a win-win (especially since we all have day jobs) so help us spread the word!

Deborah: Gladly! What's your diet like? Any tips for people attempting to navigate the food jungle and eat healthier?

Dan: Grow your own! One of my favorite lines from Matt's song is "if you really like organic then don't make it transatlantic" - so true. This summer for the first time in several years, I had a housemate with an avid green thumb. Nothing quite beats the convenience, health, and deliciousness of coming home after a busy day, being hungry, and needing to only skip into the backyard for a head of lettuce, a tomato, some kale, and strawberries. Add a bit of goat cheese and dressing and you're set for a fresh dinner salad.

Matt: I second that completely. The summer after our fateful kayaking adventure, we turned every inch of our backyard into a garden, and we’re still harvesting mountains of produce from it. I like Michael Pollan’s distinction between industrial organic and small scale producers. We’re often faced with the dilemna of buying organic produce from some mega farm in California versus non-certified produce from uncle joe’s farm down the street. I’m a big fan of local. Also as you move up the food chain it gets even dicier. Terms like cage-free and free-range can be really misleading, as it really means ‘access to a tiny plot of daylight that animal never really goes to’: I say if you can find a local livestock producer and have them slaughter an animal for you, then stick it in the freezer, that’s the way to go for meat eaters. And why not get your own chickens for eggs?

Nicole: I was lucky enough to be raised by a vegetarian health-nut father. I didn't appreciate his insistence on carrots instead of candy bars until I was in college and realized one day that junk food had no appeal to me. Since then I think I've found a good balance between eating healthily while also enjoying the occasional indulgence. I think that the first step to eating well is to find a regular source of good local produce (whether it be your garden, a farmer's market, or a produce delivery service) and then start experimenting with new produce. Soon you'll find new dishes that you love and start carving healthier foods.

Deborah: What's your favorite healthy food or meal?

Nicole: There are so many to choose from! Lately if I'm in the mood for something quick and healthy I'll saute up whatever vegetables I have around with cashews, organic chicken or tofu, a little sweet chili sauce and spices, and serve them mixed in with rice noodles.

Matt: My favorite breakfast: Homegrown red potatoes, sautéed up with fresh green onion, and garlic from the garden, served with eggs from backyard hens, and topped with salsa from garden tomatoes and chilis. Okay, I’m drooling now…

I'm drooling now, too! Okay, while I'm cleaning off my keyboard, you can listen to Million Dollar Nile's song. Just click below:



And remember, if any of you have questions for Seattle's greenest bluegrass band, just give 'em a holler in the comment section.

For more posts on real food, check out Real Food Wednesday and Fight Back Friday!

Sick lambs

While we were separating the sheep into their respective pens Friday, I realized that two of the lambs had poopy butts. I was puzzled. In six years, none of my lambs has ever had diarrhea. "Usually, diarrhea in goat kids means coccidia," I explained to Mike, "but I can't imagine where the lambs would have gotten it." Then it clicked.

I am not that old, and I have absolutely no symptoms of menopause, except for this one little thing. Now if only I could remember what it was. Hmm . . . oh, yeah! My memory has been terrible the last few months! What was I talking about? Oh, right, lambs with diarrhea. I checked my records and realized I had made an incredibly huge, stupid, possibly life-threatening mistake. The sheep had just spent three days in an area where bucklings had been pastured only three weeks earlier -- bucklings who were moved to the barn to be treated for coccidia!

I thought they had been off that grass for at least a month or six weeks. I guess time flies around here. We practice rotational grazing to keep internal parasite loads down, but my stupid mistake did just the opposite. Three weeks is the absolute worst time to move animals into an area, because that's how long it takes internal parasites to hatch, so there was a brand new batch of parasites just hanging out on the grass waiting for a ruminant to come along and eat them. (They're microscopic, which is why we can't see them, and they don't get chewed up.)

In addition, coccidia is a single-cell organism that causes diarrhea and then death by dehydration, if not treated. No one has even really given me a good number on how long it takes coccidia to be eradicated from pasture, so I really should not have put any sheep or goats on that grass again until next year. How could something so simple and obvious escape me?

Mike and I picked up the two lambs, which were not hard to catch as they were laying in the shelter. Mike took the little ewe because she was older and heavier. I took the little ram, who is two months old. He didn't feel too heavy as we headed towards the barn. About 100 yards later, I leaned against a dog house to catch my breath. At least every minute the little ram seemed to feel some obligation to kick as if he were trying to escape. My panting and gasping sounded like a marathon runner at the finish line as we finally reached the barn five minutes later. I can't believe I used to carry around a wiggly, 15-pound baby all day, but the last time I did that was 16 years ago, so I guess I'm out of practice.

The good news is that we have not noticed any other sheep with poopy butts, and these two seem to be on the mend. After the first day of medication, they were pooping little logs, and yesterday they were pooping pebbles again. Today will be their last day of medication, and they can rejoin the flock.

And I just realized that little ewe needs a name. Her mother is Ophelia, so I was thinking something else from Shakespeare. Any suggestions? Life doesn't seem to be very good for her so far. In addition to getting coccidiosis, she also ripped out her ear tag, so it looks like she has a double ear.

Rams will be rams

After Mike got home from dropping off the two sheep at the processor Friday morning, we all headed back to the pasture to take care of more sheep business. First, we had to separate the rams from the ewes. Yeah, I know we're about a month late. We haven't seen any ewes in heat yet, but that doesn't mean much. To make sure we know what we don't know, we're keeping the ewes separate from the rams for at least two weeks. In other words, if any ewe gives birth five months from now or sooner, we'll know that we have no idea who sired the lambs. At least, we're hoping we can keep them separate. We had so many accidental breedings last year in spite of our best efforts. If a ram senses a ewe in heat, it sometimes feels futile to even attempt to keep them apart.

We have livestock panels as gates between the two pens, and knowing that a ram can bust through not only one, but TWO, we've added some reinforcements. We put a four-by-four post across one, and we put an old metal t-post across another. We knew just where to put it, thanks to Teddy. As soon as we locked the gate behind him, he rammed it with his head, so that's where we put the t-post. He hit it once, and I guess it didn't feel too good, or he realized it would be a losing battle. In any case, he started hitting the gate below the t-post. I don't think he'll make any progress because he can't seem to get up much steam before hitting something that low.

I am happy to report that the boys and girls are still in their respective pens, although Teddy is not a happy ram. He pretty much spends his time pacing the fenceline, looking for a weak spot. He doesn't seem to care that he has the company of two other rams. In fact, he's downright nasty to them and rebuffs their attempts to socialize. I remember clearly from last year, when we tried to keep him apart from the girls, he took out his sexual frustrations on me. After four years of being my sweet Teddy Bear, he had a go at me and gave me a couple of nasty bruises on the kneecaps, so I will not be turning my back on him again!

Hickory nuts, acorns and pigs

When Jonathan went to collect acorns from the big oak tree in the front yard earlier this week, he came back with an empty bucket. Between us and the squirrels, they are all gone. We do have other oak trees, but they're out in the pastures. We'll have to start collecting those now, but I'm amazed and impressed that the pigs have been feasting on acorns for a few weeks already. They've also been getting some corn, but the acorns have definitely cut down on the feed bill, and we have several large bags saved to ration out over the rest of the fall.

We also have a couple of hickory trees in our front yard, and I looked around the ground to see if I could find some hickory nuts for the pigs, since they are also a good source of nutrition. Unfortunately, I only found about a dozen. Shagbark hickory trees are on Slow Food's Arc of Taste, and the nuts are very tasty, although small, which is why they'll never be a big commercial product in this country. None of our hickory trees look all that healthy though, so I also wonder if they are just not very hardy.

Moment of serendipity: I'd never heard of mast-finished pork until this summer, and then a couple days ago, I received my newsletter from the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy, an organization dedicated to preserving heritage breeds of livestock that are in danger of extinction. (They're the big reason we moved out here!) Anyway, right here on page 5 is the cutest litter of piglets, and the caption says,

The characteristics of the Tamworth reflect the breed's centuries of selection for an outdoor life. Pigs of this breed were expected to find their own food, especially mast (or acorns) of oak and beech forests. Long heads and impressive snouts enable these pigs to be efficient foragers. Long, strong legs and sound feet give Tamworth pigs the ability to walk for considerable distances.

Our Tamworth pigs are pictured above, eating acorns.