Hey! Hey! Hey! You’re not going to believe this, but you are never too old to learn.
I got this morsel of education out behind the barn. I know it is not a Ripley’s advocate where education has been begotten, but that is where, on a sunny mid-September afternoon, I done gone went and done got it.
My son and I were out there watching. You may not think that watching is an integral part of farming, but that is not so. Actually, it is the most important part of the day to those in the agriculture business. It is then and there that you assess the pros and cons of your animals’ health and well-being and what their needs may be.
What we were watching were not the nursery rhyme three little pigs; we were watching the three free-roaming, pasture-fed, heritage, black Berkshire sows that weigh in the multiple hundreds.
One had farrowed a litter of eight little piglets the day previous. The second had just dropped a litter of six, seven, eight and we’re still counting. While the third restlessly wandered around upsetting her water and carrying mouthfuls of straw, which we had put in her shelter, allowing her to arrange her own nest. Judging from her near-ground swaggering belly, we could end up with the triple count totalling 30.
This of course culminated several months of wondering. We had purchased a new young boar, in order to not interbreed, as we had kept a young sow to increase our breeding stock, and it was looking at the moment with the closeness of the farrowing that he would make most young braggers perhaps a little bit jealous.
Our conversation drifted in part to the column I had written previously regarding our newly-built chicken tractor, which I knew not how it derived its name. It is called this because it does all the things related to the work of a tractor, which is a bright piece of thinking on whomever’s part.
I think there is nothing that does so much for so little. It uses no gas, can be moved by one person, and is environmentally friendly. It keeps the indoor stall clean where the chickens are not.
It keeps the grass trimmed where the chickens have pastured. It moves the chickens as a group from one place to another. It leaves the birds’ droppings where they were dropped, leaving no need for further fertilization. It cuts the feed cost by more than a third and allows the chickens to gobble the high-protein insects with no need to spray the dreaded insecticides.
There you have it, folks. I got this education from out behind the barn, and you, too, can brag about from where it came also. I’ll not tell, because they’re not going to believe you anyway.
I gotta get back to counting now – eight, nine, ten – my gawd, looks like I’m gonna have to take my shoes off!
Take care, ‘cause we care.
barrie@barriehopkins.ca
519-986-4105