When nothing goes right... go left.

Have you ever had that fleeting thought, when everything was going exactly how it was planned, that it's too good to be true?  And then, as fast as the thought entered your mind, it all goes to pot?

I've had a few moments like that this week.  Between breeding pigs, planned trips gone awry, and Grandma spending several luxurious nights in a resort called Greenbrier Valley Medical Center, I managed to scold myself for getting cocky, and thinking that for one second, just one second, things were going to go as planned.

A quote often attributed to Woody Allen goes something like, "If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans."  I really think that I've kept God in stitches this week, so much that his side is hurting, and that's probably contributing to the large amount of rain we've been having.  Sorry, all you hay farmers.  My bad.  I just hope they're tears of laughter, and not the other moisture often attributed to extreme hilarity.

With regards to the pigs, since this is a  piggy blog, not all is going well.  Diesel, that hunka gorgeous Hampshire boar that is visiting, has been doing very well.  He's really quite the stud.  And just, just when we think all is well, Porkchop develops a limp.  We check her out, and sure enough, she's got a bad infection on one of her hocks.  The culprit?  A piece of old metal fencing that she managed to kick up that we did not know was there.  Puss, naturally, was an indicator that all was not well, and a temperature of 104.something because I can't see that well, resulted in a good dose of LA200, followed with plenty of Blu-Kote. 

What's worse, Dr. Farnum says that there's a good chance that Porkchop won't take, because of the stress and fever of the injury, and we're going to have to likely breed her next go around.  I guess, in the grand scheme of things, that's not terrible, since that will give us early February pigs, but just disappointing.  I wanted to have all my piglets at the same time.  The whole having your cake and eating it too, I guess I was being greedy.

And Tiffany ordered semen for Lucy, but won't let us tell anyone who the daddy is until they're born.  It's her decision, but it's very Maury to me.  What are we going to do?  Sit the boar down in front of a live studio audience, dramatically open the envelope and say, "Cottonwood.... You are NOT the father!"  Gasps from the pigs in the seats, Lucy starts squealing and crying, and Cottonwood storms off the stage in a fit of anger.  Hussy. 

 

 

And in other piggy news, this will be the last week that Rootin' Tootin' will be with us.  Rootin' Tootin' is the product of Porkchop and Big League.  He started off very promising, winning first in his class at the County Fair, but missed weight by just a few pounds at State, and did not get the opportunity to show there.  It was very disappointing, and he was retained as Tiffany and Levi's shared Ham Bacon pig.  

 

 

 

He's probably one of the sweetest pigs we've ever known.  Of course, everyone we've talked to says barrows are like that.  A friend of mine told me that she used to tell her children when the pigs were being castrated that they were taking the 'meanness' out of them.  Clever.  I had a typing teacher in Middle School that I'd have liked to take the meanness out of, but pretty sure she lacked the equipment to perform the same surgical procedure... of course, I could be wrong.

 





 

 

For all you piggy fans, cross your fingers that Porkchop took, and that Lucy will take when bred tomorrow.  And, if she doesn't take, cross your fingers that the Chop heals up enough to try again in 21 days.  

"I'm just a gigolo, everywhere I go, people know the game I'm plaaaaying..."

At 7pm this afternoon, I kid you not, I heard a boar singing that very song as he sauntered off the trailer into his temporary home here at Honey Bee Hill Performance.  For the next week, we are extremely excited and honored to host Diesel, a registered Hampshire boar out of Real McCoy's Bush Hog, who happened to take Grand Champion Hampshire Boar at the West Virginia State Fair, currently owned and shown by Nathan Sears, and Heather and Lee Helvey. 

This handsome little beast will hopefully, if all goes right, be the sire to our next crossbred market hog litter by Porkchop. 

 

 

He's very wide, has a monstrously thick top, and quite possibly the sweetest personality I've ever seen in a pig.  He's got gigantic feet, and really, I think is a hair better than his father in his bone structure.

Are there things that could be improved on?  Certainly as with all animals, but I think he's an excellent terminal sire for Porkchop, and we'll likely be keeping a gilt from the litter and culling the Chopster.

He is such a square mover, and I like that.  I am not a fan of pigs that cross their tracks.  He's also hard headed, and plows his nose through everything. 

When we offloaded him from the trailer, Porkchop (who is a year older than him, and much bigger than him) was excited... until he tried to mount her.  She's not in season yet (any day now), and he is relentless.  While young, he knows what he wants, and he's going to get it.  I honestly would be surprised if she didn't come into season tomorrow.

Porkchop is the mostly black one.  The lighter one is Big League, who she was bred to last time.  See how much finer in bone he is when compared to Diesel?  Same with her.  I'm looking to fix that.  Several of the piglets in her last market hog litter were really light boned, which was a shame.  It's hard to keep them sound when they've got so much mass to them, and are light framed.

It may all go pear shaped, but I have high hopes, and apparently, so does Diesel, since Porkchop is much bigger than he is!

At one point, he ran across the pen and lept upon her.  She's not particularly enthused, and while he hasn't succeeded at his ultimate goal thus far, he certainly looks like he's having a good time!  And while yes, I feel like a Piggy Pimp, I have to say, I wouldn't be surprised if people fall all over themselves to get a piece of this boar first chance they get.  He's just to die for. 

We'll keep you posted!

Castrating your boars will make them less nuts!

One of the little things they don't tell you when you start out raising pigs is that pigs do not give birth to all females.  Nope.  In fact, in my particular case, my sow seems to give birth to mostly males.  Now, many of you may think to yourselves, "So?  What's wrong with mostly males?"  Well, my interested little phantom readers, males come with two things that can make the difference between succulent, juicy, flavorful pork

... and nasty, filthy, unpalatable protein-cake. 

Balls.  Nuts.  Testicles.  Frat-boy-brains.

And, naturally, pigs are nothing like any other livestock out there.  I was watching dad with his nifty little pliers and rubber bands with the calves.  It looked so simple.  When it came to the lamb, again, awesome rubber bands.  5 seconds, no pain, no blood, and in 14 days, you had effectively created a eunuch.  BUT NOT WITH PIGS!  LIES!  ALL LIES!!!

No, you see, with pigs, you have to actually make a small incision and squeeze those suckers out of there.   Well, sure, they're probably sedated right?  WRONG!  They're not sedated. They're very much aware of what's going on.  And they communicate this with their siblings.  They scream, "OMG, GET THE HELL AWAY FROM THE CRAZY LADY WITH THE KNIFE!"

They don't have any nerve endings around that area, and in fact, when you're cutting, they don't notice, move, or make a peep.  It's not until you start squeezing their balls, yes, squeezing their balls, that they notice something is NOT quite right with the fellow who is holding them on their back, and that suddenly, the woman with the donuts who has come to see them every day of their life is no better than the witch in Grimm's Hansel and Gretel!  And then all hell breaks loose.  They start screaming, I start crying, dad's shouting at me that I'm a real farmer now.  It's all very traumatic.  And then, almost as quick as it began, it ends, and a very pissed off little piglet goes running into the pen to hide amongst the lucky females that didn't have to undergo the surgery.

In the meantime, the other males are piled on top of each other, fighting to be the one on the bottom for a change, because that means you'll be less likely to be picked next.

And yes, while this all results in tasty, awesome pork, and really was only removing from the pigs something they were never going to use, and up until that point had no idea for their purpose other than they were theirs, all theirs, for a brief moment in their life, for many many days following, they gave me the stink eye.   Huddled with their sisters, they would never take their eyes off of me.  They'd run, all piling into a corner, hiding from the evil witch with a knife. 

So yeah, nothing's ever easy, and remember, unless you live in China, gender selection is simply not an option here.

You drunken pig, you!

So, last year, when we had our first pig butchered, it was a sobering experience.   We had raised 'Bacon', as he was called.  He was like one of the family, and of the two pigs, the sweetest one.  We ended up keeping his sister, 'Porkchop' to breed, and we knew one of them was going to have to bite the big one in order for Tiffany to have a ham/bacon/egg entry.

When we took him, he was so well behaved.  He walked calmly out of the trailer, and we walked down the aisle to a pen where he was placed by himself.  We gave him a little bowl of food, said our goodbyes, and then piled into the truck to leave.  We were just driving down the road when my husband frantically turned to me and said, "We have to go back! We can't leave him there!  We'll get a dummy pig to take his place!"  I held his hand and told him we had to leave him there.  That this was part of 'it'.  It, of course, being the farming experience.  The circle of life that we had opted to participate in.  It was a very quiet ride home. 

Before we took him, we had received a piece of paper in the mail asking us to select how we wanted him cut up.  We honestly didn't know what to do with most of the cuts.  We knew the hams and bacons were going to be going to the school where my daughter attends, because they were going to be salt cured and smoked for the FFA Ham/Bacon/Egg sale that would be following in March.  We knew we wanted the loin, and opted for it to be cut into 6 giant chunks so that we could the elect whether or not we wanted to reduce it to chops, or leave it whole.  But what to do with the rest of the pig?

We decided to have it all made up into sausage, because we just didn't know any better.  Breakfast sausage at that, because in addition to not knowing any better, we also weren't very adventurous.

Down the line, we decided to familiarize ourselves with the different cuts.  We had been to the supermarket and seen things like Boston Butts, Picnic Shoulders, Blade Steaks, etc.  It was overwhelming, honestly.  We knew we would grind butts up to add to our venison sausage, but naturally, we assumed they were from the posterior of the pig.  So, imagine our surprise when our children were learning the various cuts of meat for the Skill-a-thon, and they told us that it was the top of the shoulder.

As you can see, it's located probably the furthest from the butt as possible, short of situating itself on the snout of the pig.  And, to make matters worse, just when we thought we had all of the cuts down, the National Pork Board decides to change all the names to more 'beefy' names, to make it easier on people.  Well, for crying out loud, we just learned the pork names! We haven't tried to learn the beef names yet!  *sigh* *bangs head against wall*

http://www.pork.org/News/3826/PorkCutstoGetNewConsumerFriendlyNamesattheMeatCase.aspx

But, moving on.  So, speaking with local restaurateurs in an effort to drum up interest in the Ham/Bacon/Egg sale, and the overall sale at the WV State Fair, we discovered that most of the BBQ joints in the area were only interested in one cut; the Boston Butt.  They informed us that it was the best cut for pulled pork, was generally cheap, and well marbled with fat. 

Interested in this phenomenon of pulled pork, and having no desire to pay 12 dollars for a pulled pork sandwich at a local eatery, we procured for ourselves a few of these cuts.  There seemed to be two factions of pulled pork producers.  One group suggested that the best pulled pork came from smoking it.  The second group insisted that the best pulled pork was simmered in a broth.  We have not tried the smoked pork shoulder, yet.  We will be posting the results when we do.  We did, however, try the simmered pulled pork, and must say, it turned out rather well. 

The recipe was simple enough.  Take a couple of Boston Butts.  Cut the meat off the bone.  Toss in a large crock pot.  Mix together 1/2C apple cider vinegar, 1/2 C Heineken, 1/4C water, 1/2C brown sugar, 1/2C Dijon mustard, salt, pepper and 3 sliced onions.  Pour over meat, high 1 hour, low 6 hours. Couldn't have been simpler, right?  I imagine if you had a small crock pot, you could halve that recipe.

Anyway, after it was done cooking, a fork shredded it easy enough.  I topped it with a little smokey honey bbq sauce from Yoder's Country Kitchen.  Not a lot, because honestly, I'm not a huge soggy bread fan, hence the lack of the evil coleslaw.

Needless to say, it was pretty good.  I'm interested in trying to smoke the next shoulder.  I'll let you all know how it turns out.

A Pig In A Poke...

Have you ever heard the phrase, "I'm not buying a pig in a poke," and wondered what that meant?  I know I have.  The idiom 'pig in a poke' stems from the Middle Ages.  See, meat was scarce.  In fact, up until the 18th century, most meals were primarily vegetable based, with only small servings of meat.  Why was this?

Well, spoiling for one!  When animals were slaughtered for consumption, they either were consumed completely as soon as possible, smoked for preservation purposes, or cured in a salt cure.  Then, small pieces would be cut off and soaked, cooked and served.  What you and I think of as a portion of meat today is much bigger than what would have been a portion prior to the 18th century.  Soups with bread were popular, like this ox tongue (yes, tongue) soup.

Most people got their proteins from beans, and corn, potatoes, cabbage and other things grown in their gardens, coupled with bread, made up most of their meals, because secondly, animals were income.  You didn't want to go eating your year's wages!

So, when people in the middle ages would go to buy a suckling pig (a pretty cheap thing to raise at that point as you only had to feed the mom, not the piglets), they would be given a bag with the animal inside.  However, cats and dogs were plentiful at the time, so sometimes, instead of a suckling pig in the bag, you'd have a cat instead!

Hence, pig in a poke.  A poke is a sack.  Buying something unseen, or getting something else instead of a pig.  The truth was easily discovered though when the sack was opened, and the cat was literally 'let out of the bag', another popular idiom!

But, that brings me to the 'meat' of my post today.  Over the weekend, we attended the A.I. (Artificial Insemination) school at Lean Value Sires (http://www.leanvaluesires.com/) in New Carlisle, OH.  You see, we had been fortunate to have a friend A.I. our sow last year, but this year, we wanted to learn how to do it ourselves.  A friend recommended Lean Value's program which they had attended previously, and we very quickly took their advice and signed up for the 2013 session.

We own a garage, and unfortunately the night we were supposed to leave, we had a pressing job that just had to be completed.  At 1 a.m.  the day of the school, we left southern West Virginia, driving north to Ohio. 

I'll be honest, I had already decided we weren't going.  We were tired.  It's not unusual for us to plan something and then have our plans fall apart due to something going wrong at the shop.  Kevin insisted he was wide awake and wanted to go, so we piled into the car, and hit the road.  We got 2 exits down on the interstate before he was pleading with me to take over driving.

And so, I did.  I drove and drove and drove.  I  made it to Chillicothe before I was doing the math and was able to determine we could sleep for a few hours before hitting the road again to make it to New Carlisle just in time for class.  So, we paid 100 dollars for a hotel room for 3 hours of sleep.  It was the best 3 hours I've had in a long time.

And, we got there just in time for class to start, so we didn't miss anything.

The next several hours were an in depth lecture on swine reproduction, with slides and demonstrations.  They crammed a college course into a single day's instruction, so I was just taking notes like mad, as I knew I was going to be transcribing them for friends here at home that didn't get to go.  After lunch, and some more lecture time, we went into the field to do some actual practical application of artificial insemination procedures.  We were shocked at how easy it actually was.

We also tried the new Intra-uterine rods that they have been promoting, and it was surprisingly simple to use as well.

Apparently with the Intra-uterine rods, you can use half the semen for the same amount of results.  Saves money.

Then, we got to see some of the boars in house, to which I apply the 'pig in a poke' idiom.  Most stud houses distribute semen catalogues through the postal service.  You get these great books, filled with amazing pictures of the best boars these places have to offer.  Then, you can order from those books.  They all look amazing.  When LVS brought out their boars, and walked them around, I got to see things that the pictures didn't show.  Movement, carriage, soundness.  A picture may be worth 1000 words, but to see a boar move is priceless.  There were things I liked on some boars, and things I did not like on others, and I couldn't have told them from a picture.  Buying semen from a catalog is just like buying a pig in a poke.  You really don't know what you're going to get, unless you go look at that boar, or talk to someone who has seen that boar and how it moves.

Anyway, for those of you curious or interested in doing your own A.I. I highly recommend going to Lean Value's AI School next year.  We learned a lot, and they are a very honest, straight-forward group of folks that will tell you the truth about their pigs, what they like and don't like, what they're good for and what they're not.   And remember, Students get in half price! :)