I would like to start with a little bit of personal news off the farm which simply cannot be left out of this blog. On the 18th June at 3 in the morning my wonderful wife Claire gave birth to our first son, Frederick Fred. Fred joined the farm a few days later, after being released from the hospital, and ever since has ensured that every morning I am more and more tired.
What Fred doesn't realise at this stage is that Daddy has a very long memory and the more he keeps me awake the more he will have to get up at 6am and feed the pigs when he grows up, true child labour. So with the arrival of Fred and with Claire being in hospital for a few days I also became a house husband, desperately trying to keep the house looking smart whilst feeding, watering and fencing the pigs.
With Claire still in the hospital I was desperate to stay with her but pigs wait for no man and even more so neither does meat. I had delivered two pigs to the abattoir on Sunday the 15th and with Fred arriving early Wednesday morning I was in a rush to collect the cuts from the butcher on Thursday in order to get it labeled and ready for Feilding Farmers Market on the Friday. Now, I know what you are thinking, surely I should have been with my wife by now recuperating at home but meat doesn't know that and if I didn't make it too the market I would have to freeze it all before anyone got the chance to buy it fresh.
With labels stuck to every part of me and meat neatly stacked I got ready for the market and at Friday morning I fed the pigs and set off to Feilding.
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I like talking to my customers and I like the feel of the farmers market, the friendship and camaraderie so it was a pleasant change from the sterile environment of the hospital. As the market finally came to a close I received a call from Claire saying that the midwife wanted her to go back to hospital for a few more days. With a chiller trailer of meat some frozen I had no option but to drive straight past Claire, in Palmerston North hospital, and head back to the farm and the fridges and freezers. After a few trips to and from Palmy hospital Claire and Fred came out again on Monday and so the week began on a high.
Fencing is physically tough but rewarding and after a day of ramming waratahs by hand we were starting to see the paddocks taking shape. I have always wanted to be able to give customers the choice of breed for their meat and this was my first chance, the problem was it also meant I had to program the labeller with a whole set of new labels stating the Berkshire heritage breed on the label. Now, I wont be mentioning names but the labeller I have is the same brand as they have in most supermarkets, the only difference is that they have millions of dollars and teams of people to program the machines, I only have me and a frustrated old PC the software is not available on MAC.
Two long hours later I had 8 new labels programmed and started sticking them on the meat.
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A consumer choice not offered elsewhere. It was time to complete my inventory of all the meat, bacon, sausages and ham in the fridges and freezers. This has to be done at least once a week and is listed by type, location and date. It is a laborious job but one I quite enjoy as I have always been a bit of a fan of an excel spreadsheet.
After this comes the preparation for the next farmers market, the following day, coount the float, prepare the stock, wash the table cloth and pack the car. Claire and I agreed that the best course of action was for me to sleep in the spare room actually Fred's room but he seems to have taken my spot in the bedroom so that I could get a good nights sleep before the start the next day. I was a great idea, in theory.
At midnight the door opened, the light streamed in, and a war weary Claire asked me to help stop Fred from crying. Cradling Fred in my arms we went for a walk, around the coffee table, and then again and again and again At another noise woke me, this time it was Woody reminding me that I had forgotten to let him out and if I didn't open the door right now he would be leaving presents for me on the lounge rug. So much for a quiet night.
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At the feeding, loading, driving and selling cycle started again. The following day Saturday 5th started with my first taste of fame. A few days before I had received an email from Helen Jackson at Radio Live asking if I would like to do an interview on the radio to discuss our pig farm, especially in light of the horrible scenes on the TVNZ Sunday show of intensive pig farms in New Zealand.
The interview was enjoyable and as Helen and I talked about the benefits of free range farming practices I watched as 7am got closer and my deadline for leaving to get to Hill Street Market seemed dangerously at risk. The interview finished and at I hit the road. So I has been quite a busy week but as I sit here at the dining table at 11pm on Sunday night I feel a rewarding one.
Oh, and by the way the Landrover got fixed in the week and will at last be carting me around the farm, just too late for winter Date June 15 From famine to feast and back again Written by - June 15 One of the most difficult things to manage on the farm is the inventory of the stock and the produce. Our small free range farm is very new and we haven't yet been able to stagger the growth of our pigs to match the sales of our products.
What this means is that we may have a long period of feeding pigs and not having any product to take to market, a potential cash flow nightmare.
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When we started the farm in November we had just nine pigs, after 7 months we now have Each pig will eat from 0. All of that would be fine if they didn't take 6 or 7 months to get to a weight suitable for the table.
And the bigger problem is that they will all reach that weight at a similar time. So, for six months we had no produce, now we have produce and a massive feed bill. In another month we will have run out of produce and still have a massive feed bill. But all is not lost. The amazing thing about beer is that its by-products are just as valuable to me as the beer itself. We feed our pigs good quality grains full of nutrients and protein and allow them large grassy paddocks to graze on, we then supplement their feed with high quality barley from The Garage Project.
I am even more pleased to see our efforts have been rewarded by the feedback from our customers. Date May 08 Comments 1 Comment. Pork and piglets Written by - May 08 The last two weeks have been the most exciting, stressful and rewarding weeks of my short farming career. After almost seven months of happy, healthy living in the paddocks it was time to start taking the 'Wanganui 9' pigs to the abattoir.
For the week prior to the trip I had started to coax the pigs from their own paddocks up the race and into the transit paddock. My paddocks are arranged so that by leaving the gates open and carefully placing piles of food they will basically do all the hard work for me.
After just two days I woke up to find five pigs in the transit area. One of these was a pig that I had earmarked for breeding so she was to be transported separately to the breeding paddocks leaving four pigs to take to the abattoir. The trip was planned for early Monday morning and to reduce stress on the pigs before the trip we planned to feed the pigs on the trailer Sunday night and let them spend the night there. Reuben came round on the Sunday night and we laid a trail of irresistible Korker Porker, succulent pig feed, up the ramp and into the trailer.
The pigs smelt a rat and had no intention of climbing that ramp. A four hour battle ensued and having now enlisted Darren, Reuben's father from Kapiti Free Range, we used pig boards, pallets, electric fences and physical strength to slowly direct the pigs up the ramp and into the trailer. After four hours we had managed to get just three pigs onto the trailer one by one. The first was easy, the second took about and hour, the third took the full four hours and the fourth beat us completely.
We locked up the trailer, covered it for the night and my first trip to the abattoir was set to be just three pigs. The next morning I was up at 6am to feed the rest of the herd and hook up the trailer, at 7am Reuben and I left the farm for the hour and a half trip to the Abattoir in Wanganui. Most abattoirs don't take pigs for slaughter, preferring to focus on the greater numbers of cattle and sheep that most farmers bring. Because of this we are not able to use the abattoir ten minutes up the road in Levin but instead we had to search for a suitable abattoir and for us it is either Wanganui or Masterton, given that Wanganui is the shorter journey that was our destination.
Arriving at the abattoir I surprised myself by backing the trailer up to the arrivals lounge in less than twenty attempts and we opened up the back doors, the pigs looked around, looked at me and casually stepped off the trailer and trotted happily down the ramp into the abattoir. I mumbled a little 'thank you' to them as they left on the next part of their journey to help make Woody's Farm commercially viable. It's never nice to see your animals for the last time but they had an excellent life on the farm and through their food they will be remembered, a far better eulogy than the majority of intensively bred pigs would get.
It was back to the farm for Reuben and I. This was my first experience of pig farrowing and I really didn't know what to expect. I watched as she got close to farrowing time, her teats filled up with milk in the space of a day and almost hit the ground, she started to arrange the straw in her hut into a nest and her flat mate, Marigold, was clearly told to move into the other hut from now on. A few hours later I headed back to the hut for a checkup and Paula was already surrounded by nine little piglets, shortly after a tenth appeared and the night set in.
Being focused on the health and wellbeing of my pigs I don't use farrowing crates or sow stalls, the pigs give birth in their own huts and make their own nests, the downside of this is that a mother might, by accident, squash one of her babies in the night. The next morning I gingerly walked up to the pig hut to see Paula and the piglets, there she was resting with ten little piglets gently and enthusiastically sucking on their mothers milk. I breathed a sigh of relief. It was late in the evening as I watched her lay in her hut, gently grunting. The piglets began to come. After five piglets it was now dark and the rain was not letting up, fearing that I wouldn't be able to cross the river to get home I left her for the time being with the intention to come back a few hours later.
Unfortunately the rain got heavier and the Waikawa stream rose fast and furious, at 8pm I realised that I was not going to be able to cross the river till the morning. The next day at 6am I was up like a shot, it was still dark and the river still high but I crossed in the tractor and walked the rest of the way to check on Marigold. Waiting for me in the pig pen was eight little healthy piglets and one VERY tired mother. I laid some food in front of her and she slowly chewed it down, the piglets squeaking as she moved. As I looked around the hut I noticed a small black shadow and realised that my fears had been met, one little boy had not made it.
I reached across and scooped him up in my hands, cold but still perfectly formed. As I mentioned before this is one of the drawbacks of free range farming, but it is also one of the realities of nature, we had lost one but we had gained eight. And to add to all that I ferried Ruth the one pig I saved from the Wanganui 9 over the river to her new home with Hugh, a little bit of pig matchmaking. Tomorrow we go to the Farmers Markets, its been a lot of preparation, getting the pork, the labelling machine, the marketing material, the website, the packaging, the aprons, tables, fridges and even an office.
Maybe one day I will tell you all about it, but for now lets just all go gooey for this little piglet Date November 10 Welcome to Toy House, where the toys come to life at night when the moon shines. Meanwhile, when working with a family seeking asylum, Meredith makes a call that could jeopardize her career. Dean's continues to spiral, Tori makes a challenging decision, Angelo can sense something is brewing, and Tori is mortified by her daring mistake.
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