'WILD' Hogs!

Colonel’s Blog, Earthdate 6 December 2024…

Hey Y’all!

Good afternoon and happy Fast-jet Friday from Air2Ground Farms! The fast jet today is the Mighty-Mighty F-15E Strike Eagle. The top pic is a pair taking off from RAF Lakenheath into the setting sun this past week. The next is an in-your-face shot flying low in the mountains of Wales. The weather is officially cold! We awoke to temps around 15 degrees this morning. This was supposed to be the coldest morning for the next couple of weeks and we have a bit of rain forecast this weekend. Things here on the farm have been busy, as usual. I’d say the majority of Shelley and my time this past week has been spent on the launch of our new YouTube channel, the Dust’er Mud Podcast channel. We have been doing the podcast for the past year and a half and it was just time to give it its own platform. We kicked off the new channel with an awesome podcast with Kevin and Sarah from Living Traditions Homestead. It was fun to record, fun to edit, and fun to watch! We also put up 3 other podcasts and I am editing the 4th that should go up today. So far, we have had a great reception to the new channel. We are trying to get to 1,000 subscribers as quickly as possible and we only need 325 more to reach that goal!! The animals are all doing very well. The top pic is of the large group of feeder pigs. We took a group of 5 hogs and 4 lambs to the processor on Monday which leaves us with 6 hogs ready to go and 29 pigs still a few months from being ready. The next pic is a wider shot of the group during feeding time. It’s a comedy show every time we feed them with squealing, running, smacking, slurping, and little pigs getting tossed in the air by bigger pigs. Feeding the pigs is always an opportunity to cheer up with a few laughs. It’s time to get Tex, our pure registered Berkshire boar, in with the 5 pure registered Berkshire sows. Their gestation is 3 months 3 weeks 3 days. If we get Tex in with them now, that puts piglets showing up at the end of March / beginning of April. We are shooting for that timing so we don’t have to worry about piglets arriving in the dead of winter since our hogs are in the forest, not in a barn. We still have 20 feeder lambs on farm that are getting ready to go to the processor. I think we are going to keep 1 for breeding, butcher 3-4 here on farm for our freezer, and take 15-16 to the processor next month--if you're local and interested in a whole lamb...now is the time to let us know. The 4 we took this week will be amazing leg-of-lamb for Christmas Dinner for a few lucky families! The following pics are of our pullets. These are the chicks we got a couple of months ago that will be part of our layer operation by spring. They are growing nicely and are voracious foragers that are going to work right into our program. There are 60 of them, which will bring our layer operation to around 135 hens. Of the 75 or so that are currently laying, we got our lowest number of eggs yesterday at 11. It’s just that time of year when egg production drops WAY off due to the cold, lack of sunlight, and they are just coming out of molt. Once the days start to get longer, production will increase again and by spring, we will be getting nearly 10 dozen a day! All of you that stop by Air2Ground Meats for eggs just to be told (again) that we are sold out, make sure to save up your egg appetite for Spring! Lastly an update on Shelley’s knee. She is going to physical therapy twice a week and things are progressing very well. She will be on crutches for at least another week until her follow-up with the surgeon. We expect him to give her a bit more freedom to walk around at that time. We expect she will be in a brace for months but she is REALLY READY to start using her hands for something besides holding crutches!

Dust’er Mud Podcast Channel--please subscribe! https://www.youtube.com/@DusterMudPodcast

Podcast with Kevin and Sarah: https://youtu.be/fEnMLNCY6Y8

Cheers!


Psycho & Shelley