Here’s another photo of the piglets with their mothers on a windy 24 Fahrenheit degree day. Cows in the background are on their second to last pasture before starting to feed hay ..read more

Had a couple of nice litters in November before it turned quite cold. The hardiness of the piglets is still amazing to me. In this photo the piglets are a week old. The temperature is below freezing. The red sow was bound and determined to join her litter up with her friend. I walked her ..read more

This 2022 born heifer is becoming a nice cow. She raised her first calf this year. The Number 75 heifer calf I posted about last year is in the left of this photo. It doesn’t always work out that your favorite heifer becomes a nice cow, but this one’s off to a good start ..read more

This is the boar I raised and plan to breed to the Landrace sired gilts from the previous post. I love his dark color, he’s almost black, even though he’s mostly Duroc ..read more

I’m officially going on record and saying Landrace are more intelligent than the other breeds I’ve worked with. I’ve long suspected it, but this latest group of half Landrace hogs confirms my suspicions. First example is the way they deal with electric fence. Most hogs, once trained to electric fence, respect it like you respect ..read more

Happy spring everyone. I have one black calf this year. Calving is going well. We’ve lost two, but with two sets of twins saved we’re still at 100%. I wanted to ask the farmers where they keep their cows in the winter time. The last two winters have been the warmest ever for Wisconsin. We dealt with a lot of mud and compacted the soil where we had the cows. In the background of the top photo, you can see where I replanted part of the pasture and the field above it. We are used to dealing with frozen ground, which kept the cows from doing much damage, but it appears I can’t count on that anymo ..read more

This week’s story is about my time in 4H showing hogs and trying to improve them with Dad. Just like any youth activity, there are a lot of ways kids can learn the wrong lessons.  But with my parents’ help, I can’t imagine my 4H experience being any better of a life lesson.  I grabbed a bale of hay and set it at the back of our truck.  It was about a three foot drop from the back of our ton truck to the ground.  We didn’t want our new Hampshire boars hurting themselves jumping out of the truck. Mom came outside to see the two young boars Dad and I picked fro ..read more

Goodbye to 2023! It was a difficult year. Lost my dad in March. 2024 looks good! We will be continuing our meat drops this winter until the first outdoor market April 13. Let us know if you’d like something. Thank you ..read more

We’ve probably had over 10 inches of rain in September and October. It’s a little late after a dry summer, but it’s nice to remember how productive our pastures can be with the best fertilizer, which is rain. We plan to wean our spring calves next week and then we’ll be able to graze everything one more time before winter. The cows, free from the burden of nursing a calf, will put on weight before winter ..read more

I’m not sure what kind of flower this is, but our out back pasture has a lot of it ..read more