Piglets!!

This weekend, we had piglets!!

They are so small and so cute and so pink-ish.

 Mama Piggie (aka, Poomba) gave birth to two healthy, happy, squeaky little pig babies. They are just about the cutest thing ever. Well, definitely top 2.

Mama and babies are doing great.

Guinea Fowl: Take 2

This week, i got 4 free guineas:

buck-WHEAT! buck-WHEAT! 

A friend of ours got them in the spring, and they're getting into his neighbor's flowers and causing a good deal of hi-jinks, or something like that. I have them in with the pullets, where they'll stay until December. By then, I hope they're trained to stay and roost behind the shed.

HC Stats

This is my 240th post.

To date, 15,381 people who are not myself have viewed my blog. Last month, 1,043 people viewed a page. The most viewed page I have is the first installment of my chicken coop on wheels project. It has been accessed 931 times. Besides the other chicken coop post, my homage to homestead donkeys is the only page that's topped 200 views.

All the stats that's fit to print.

Today's been a big day - 77 views. That's tops for the last few weeks. I had 63 in September one day. I think it's because of the metal roof post, which sits in 6th place. In my tag cloud, the words "Catholic," "chicken," "garden," and "food" dominate (and are intentionally not tagged in this introspective). And good ol' US of A Google searches are by far my biggest pipeline of visitors.

So what does this all mean?

Well, I've (potentially) touched over 15,000 people. I have 240 distinct, written thoughts to leave for the entire created world. Most of my thinking, at least as evidence by my posting trends, has been around ,my mission of achieving holiness through the transformation on my land into a giving source of food. And at least somebody's seen it beyond Wife and David.

I haven't hit 10 posts a month. But that's OK - this blog is serving its purpose. And also, 26.

God bless,

Recap of Chicken Butchering Weekend

On Sept. 20th of this year, we took 23 meat chickens from coop to freezer. By "we," I mean myself, the wife and kids, Wife's 7 siblings, and some of the siblings' significant others.

The experience exceeded our wildest expectations.

Two chickens, mid-pluck, proudly displayed by six volunteers and led by Thing #1 (lower right).

It was a beautiful day, everyone was excited, and we accomplished our goals.

WARNING: Very graphic depictions of chicken evisceration to follow.

Catching Up: Bees

Not much to report on the bees, other than they're still thriving and being fed a dissolved sugar water syrup.

The bees with their feeder.

Greeks vs Persians: LEGO Water Battle!

I love homeschooling. For Thing #2's recent history project on the Greek empire, he did a water battle between Greece and Persia. He modeled the boats and dress after depictions in several books he read.

The Persians, left, are no match for the mighty Greek long boats!

The ships are very detailed for 3rd grade work. It even has a galley.

Nest Box Upgrades

Due in part to our apparent egg eating epidemic, and just to upgrade in general, I decided to add some extra padding and such to the nest boxes.

Right: Nest box with 2 layers of green astro-turf base.
Left: Wood shavings on top of the the turf, with dummy wooden eggs inside.

Previously, I'd been using hay on top of the wood. I upgraded this week to astro-turf under wood shavings.