Hello friend!

Isn’t this time of the year amazing? 🍂 🌾

Around our part of the world, we have falling leaves, the smells of corn and soybeans being harvested (along with a pretty much constant hum of machinery doing that), the summer greens of grasses are turning to yellow and brown….lots of wonderfulness of fall!

(Did you have heavy fog by you? We’ve had some beautiful mornings lately!)

New Piglets!

We had the 3rd to last of our fall piglets come this past week. Poor Tulip has been looking ready to give birth for some time and finally Monday she had her moment. She’s a gilt, which means that this was her first litter. Sometimes their first litters involve a nervous confused mom. But she’s so easy going and laid back. I’m super excited about how it went….she had 11, only lost 2, and she still has 9 even right now. The first 12 hours are hard for baby pigs…they could get laid on, stepped on, not able to get to milk, etc. All the other mothers lost at least 2-3 overnight the first night. 😫 But hers have done so well! 🥰 What a wonderful little mama in so many ways!

And here they are moving around yesterday afternoon!

For a funny……..I tried to get a couple still pictures of them and here’s what happened….

Maybe Cheddar is jealous? 🤣

New Berkshires arrived!

About 2 weeks ago, I added 3 news members to our pig family here on the farm. Meet Lavender, Poppy and Boris.

Not the best picture of Lavender, but she’s so lovey…it’s hard to get further away from her. I think she’s my new favorite sow. I think I say that every other day about each of the sows though. 🤣

Poppy is not quite sure yet what she thinks of living here. I can scritch her back while she’s eating, but otherwise, she doesn’t let me get too close yet. I’ll work on it. 😉

We debated on naming her Estella…because one eye lash is white and one is black. (Like the Cruella movie…? 🤣 Perhaps my one daughter who LOVED that movie will always call her Estella….😆)

Yes his name is Boris, no, it’s not the same Boris from other letters….I’m not creative with names I guess…. 🤣🤷‍♀️

Boris the 1st went to live on another farm nearby when this Boris came. (Two strong male animals together would not end well….) I’m going to miss him 😥 but this guy’s a nice boar too, so it’ll be ok.

These three new pigs are the start of some fantastic upcoming changes to breeding and the quality of pork we will have on our farm. They are registered purebred Berkshires, which, to fit into one sentence, means that their genetics are top-notch when it comes to flavor in pork. Nothing beats a purebred Berkshire on flavor. (Why? Ah…that’s another email…or maybe lots of emails….stay tuned…😉 )

The Lavender and Poppy will be mothers in mid-November. Some of their piglets will stay to become mothers, probably in late 2022 or early 2023, and some will will give us a taste of these new genetics in the form of pork chops and bacon in July or August 2022. Can’t wait to see how these new changes go! 🥰 It has been my dream for about a year to have these purebred Berkshires and I’m thrilled that the time has finally come. 🎉