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which_chickDad's house has daffodils about 1" above the ground. My house gets less sun and is a little behind his, so no daffs at my place yet.
The pigs, and it has been a winter of pigs, have now all left. The year's pigs started with Ernest and Flannery, then we got two (free) Kune kune pigs that were vicious to Ernest and Flannery and never did settle down.
After a month or so, the Kune kune pigs were rehomed as unsatisfactory (they're some weird-ass kind of pig and people like that). Two other (free!) half-grown pigs from Travis arrived because he could not keep them in his pigpen -- they were escape artists or something. These two pigs got along with Ernest and Flannery OK and they were all girls and the same size-ish and pink color as Flannery, so I didn't bother differentiating them. Ernest went to the butcher, then one of the girl pigs at the end of February, and finally this week, the other two girl pigs went to the butcher.
The three girl pigs stayed through ALL WINTER including the after-the-outside-water-froze-solid part (for about a month and a half, which was then a month and a half of schlepping water from the house to the pigs twice a day) and the "shoveling liquid shit out of the pig pen until it was below the level of the feeder so that the pigs could eat" (three guesses who got stuck doing that -- I don't know who built a pigpen without any weep drainage but, man, we're gonna fix that before there are pigs again. I have a plan.) and the "monitor feed levels and pick up more at the feed store before snow makes it way more difficult to haul feed" and all the rest of the delightful Wintertime Pig-Keeping Events that I did not mention along the way.
Look. Pigs are kind of messy and there's a lot of ick involved in raising them in an enclosed space. Not everybody is interested in hearing my struggles with pig shit, so I skipped over a lot of that. I wound up taking point on making sure the pigs were fed and watered a lot of the winter even though they were not my pigs. Lala works out of town and her mom's eighty and doesn't get around as well as she used to, but I'm there every single day to feed my horses, so... might as well look in on the pigs.
I don't mind there being pigs. I don't mind raising pigs for food and I for damn sure don't mind eating pig meat. BIG FAN of pig meat over here.
I do mind ... leaving pigs without any straw bedding when temps go below 20F. That's not fair to them. Two bales of straw is like twelve bucks and the pigs appreciate it.
I do mind ... leaving pigs without water or food for more than 8 hours. Again, not fair to them, they get peckish and start to fight with each other. They cannot leave the pigpen. It is our responsibility as the pig keepers to see to it that the pigs have food and water since they are unable to forage.
I do mind crowding pigs into too small of a space where they can't get along with each other. (The pigpen is OK for 2 pigs. It is not great for 3 pigs but if they know each other it's not terrible. The pigpen is NOT big enough for four pigs to be peaceful. It is not. (Commercial pig-keeping is way tighter than the pig pen with four pigs in it. Penn State says 8 square feet per pig and honestly no. That is not enough for peace.) There were four pigs for weeks at a time on MORE THAN ONE OCCASION this year. I was not pleased. Four pigs is too many. Two is the right number of pigs for a peaceful pigpen.)
I talk to the pigs every day so that they're not frantic or scared of people. (This is important because the horse people do not butcher their pigs at "normal" butcher weight. The horse people's pigs get Quite Large, like "over 300 lbs" large, so they need to not be frantic when they're being loaded into the trailer or unloaded at the butcher place. Frantic is bad for 300+ lb animals.)
I don't think this is an excessive amount of standards for pigs.
For what it's worth, I got thirty-five pounds of sausage for my labor this winter. :) It is reasonably-ethically raised and sourced from local pigs that I knew personally and cared for. (I was offered other things but honestly sausage is multi-functional and packs nicely in my limited-space freezer. If I want a pork shoulder or similar, I can ask Lala for one at a later date. She has a great big freezer.)
I've already had some and it is effing outstanding sausage. Good job, pigs!
I got another afghan square done (mostly-brown) and am casting on a mostly-white square this evening. Considering bringing the scarf out of timeout but I'm still having too many feelings for that. Spinning is progressing a little, too.
I've got the corporate taxes just about done, finishing that up tomorrow morning. Let me just say that I do not adore form 7203, families with s-corps who fling shares around in fits of pique, basis values and pass-through losses that are not allowed to be aggregated, and spreadsheets.
I'll give the QBI a genuflect, genuflect, genuflect tho. Thanks, QBI!
(My dad had Tom Lehrer on vinyl.)
I haven't finished my personal taxes yet but that's also on the agenda for tomorrow. I've got a first draft of 'em done, but due to the delights of Form 7203... it's only a first draft. I cannot write off all the losses on my K1 forms. The difference is not going to be huge and I may wind up in fairly reasonable shape this year on the tax front. We'll see tomorrow.
The pigs, and it has been a winter of pigs, have now all left. The year's pigs started with Ernest and Flannery, then we got two (free) Kune kune pigs that were vicious to Ernest and Flannery and never did settle down.
After a month or so, the Kune kune pigs were rehomed as unsatisfactory (they're some weird-ass kind of pig and people like that). Two other (free!) half-grown pigs from Travis arrived because he could not keep them in his pigpen -- they were escape artists or something. These two pigs got along with Ernest and Flannery OK and they were all girls and the same size-ish and pink color as Flannery, so I didn't bother differentiating them. Ernest went to the butcher, then one of the girl pigs at the end of February, and finally this week, the other two girl pigs went to the butcher.
The three girl pigs stayed through ALL WINTER including the after-the-outside-water-froze-solid part (for about a month and a half, which was then a month and a half of schlepping water from the house to the pigs twice a day) and the "shoveling liquid shit out of the pig pen until it was below the level of the feeder so that the pigs could eat" (three guesses who got stuck doing that -- I don't know who built a pigpen without any weep drainage but, man, we're gonna fix that before there are pigs again. I have a plan.) and the "monitor feed levels and pick up more at the feed store before snow makes it way more difficult to haul feed" and all the rest of the delightful Wintertime Pig-Keeping Events that I did not mention along the way.
Look. Pigs are kind of messy and there's a lot of ick involved in raising them in an enclosed space. Not everybody is interested in hearing my struggles with pig shit, so I skipped over a lot of that. I wound up taking point on making sure the pigs were fed and watered a lot of the winter even though they were not my pigs. Lala works out of town and her mom's eighty and doesn't get around as well as she used to, but I'm there every single day to feed my horses, so... might as well look in on the pigs.
I don't mind there being pigs. I don't mind raising pigs for food and I for damn sure don't mind eating pig meat. BIG FAN of pig meat over here.
I do mind ... leaving pigs without any straw bedding when temps go below 20F. That's not fair to them. Two bales of straw is like twelve bucks and the pigs appreciate it.
I do mind ... leaving pigs without water or food for more than 8 hours. Again, not fair to them, they get peckish and start to fight with each other. They cannot leave the pigpen. It is our responsibility as the pig keepers to see to it that the pigs have food and water since they are unable to forage.
I do mind crowding pigs into too small of a space where they can't get along with each other. (The pigpen is OK for 2 pigs. It is not great for 3 pigs but if they know each other it's not terrible. The pigpen is NOT big enough for four pigs to be peaceful. It is not. (Commercial pig-keeping is way tighter than the pig pen with four pigs in it. Penn State says 8 square feet per pig and honestly no. That is not enough for peace.) There were four pigs for weeks at a time on MORE THAN ONE OCCASION this year. I was not pleased. Four pigs is too many. Two is the right number of pigs for a peaceful pigpen.)
I talk to the pigs every day so that they're not frantic or scared of people. (This is important because the horse people do not butcher their pigs at "normal" butcher weight. The horse people's pigs get Quite Large, like "over 300 lbs" large, so they need to not be frantic when they're being loaded into the trailer or unloaded at the butcher place. Frantic is bad for 300+ lb animals.)
I don't think this is an excessive amount of standards for pigs.
For what it's worth, I got thirty-five pounds of sausage for my labor this winter. :) It is reasonably-ethically raised and sourced from local pigs that I knew personally and cared for. (I was offered other things but honestly sausage is multi-functional and packs nicely in my limited-space freezer. If I want a pork shoulder or similar, I can ask Lala for one at a later date. She has a great big freezer.)
I've already had some and it is effing outstanding sausage. Good job, pigs!
I got another afghan square done (mostly-brown) and am casting on a mostly-white square this evening. Considering bringing the scarf out of timeout but I'm still having too many feelings for that. Spinning is progressing a little, too.
I've got the corporate taxes just about done, finishing that up tomorrow morning. Let me just say that I do not adore form 7203, families with s-corps who fling shares around in fits of pique, basis values and pass-through losses that are not allowed to be aggregated, and spreadsheets.
I'll give the QBI a genuflect, genuflect, genuflect tho. Thanks, QBI!
(My dad had Tom Lehrer on vinyl.)
I haven't finished my personal taxes yet but that's also on the agenda for tomorrow. I've got a first draft of 'em done, but due to the delights of Form 7203... it's only a first draft. I cannot write off all the losses on my K1 forms. The difference is not going to be huge and I may wind up in fairly reasonable shape this year on the tax front. We'll see tomorrow.
