Sugar Creek Farm

Matt’s been busy hauling manure lately, I don’t know how many loads but I think several dozen like this.

Because our manure spreader is so old, it doesn’t spread things as fine as some of the new-fangled ones. Spreading after beans in the fall works best, because in the spring our neighbor will turn the soil over to plant corn. But in the years that he plants beans he “no-tills”, drilling the bean seed amongst the corn stover. Large chunks of manure can interfere with the drilling. So last year’s manure was piled and composted until it could be spread, along with last year’s manure.

Spreading manure always starts that song “spread a little sunshine every day” running through my head!

3 years ago:

Are you ready for some football?

The piglets are at that age, squeezing under gates and through fences for adventures about the farm.

But as soon as they see that they’re busted,

they’re a band on the run.

Remember last month, I mentioned that we were going to cull our sows? Not long after, Matt & Madeline took the open sow to the hog buying station. We assumed we’d get cull price, but when the check came in the mail we were pleasantly surprised to find we’d got 45 cents a pound! My dad thought that because she was over 500 pounds we got a premium, because food companies want these heavy cull sows for their frozen sausage products. If we can get that for the other sow when we cull her, we’ll have paid for our 3 replacement gilts!

3 years ago:

Pigs in the pasture

a little Halloween sneak preview…

Actually, this is part of Olivia’s costume. But Rafe gave us a good laugh with it the other night!

you’re going to get a photo essay on a manure spreader.

Rafe just now realized that our manure spreader is a (very old) John Deere.

He never realized it before because it’s so old that the John Deere green is faded out.

He is so excited. I blame my brother for this unnatural attraction to green.

I was quite intrigued by Rafe’s choice of shots here. Interesting that he took all “macro” type shots, but not one of the whole spreader.

You’ll have to go here to see it in action.

The old Deere still gets the job done, though. 24 loads hauled this past weekend.

I just may have to hand the camera over to him more often. He can take over until my blogging slump ends.

Did I say “pumpkin pictures coming tomorrow?” I guess I did, didn’t I.

Pick a peck of pumpkins

My blogging mojo seems to have gone missing. But I’ve been doing this long enough to know that it will be back at some point. You just gotta roll with it.

Rafe stands sits guard over our haul of carving pumpkins

I just feel like I’ve got nothing new to blog about. It’s another fall season, with all the same things that go on every fall. But when you think about it, that’s a good thing. Because so many times, when there’s something to blog about around here, it’s bad news.

Cousins

But everything around here is good right now. We still have a litter of 6 piglets. The stocker calves are looking like they’re going to be mighty good eating real soon. The first of the butcher hogs went to the locker yesterday.

The only bad news was the snow yesterday. As I said to my friend Ann, “Now this is just plain mean.”

3 years ago:

Beans, beans, the magical fruit

Last weekend was our annual trip to the local pumpkin farm. The traditional wagon ride was brought to us by these two:

Notice how the one on the right is Mr. Serious? But the one on the left played the part of the funny sidekick.

The more I clicked away with the camera, the more he hammed it up.

Actual pumpkin pictures coming tomorrow…

3 years ago:

It’s National Pork Month, after all

Even the weeds in the garden are pretty in autumn

There’s been a harvest of a different sort around here this week – culling of some of our breeding stock. Monday we sent Mr. Bull, Missus Hamilton, and 2 unnamed black cows to the Waverly Sale Barn.

Mr. Bull had been moving pretty slowly the past couple of months. We’re crossing our fingers that he got his job done this summer. We haven’t noticed anybody looking like they’re in heat, but we’ll have the vet out to check and be sure. Missus Hamilton was our oldest cow. This year she had a stillborn calf with physical birth defects. It was time to let her go. The 2 black cows we’ve had a couple of years and just haven’t been impressed with any of their calves.

The plan now is to keep our eye out for bred cows with calves at their side this fall, or to buy some weaned stockers this fall and buy bred cows over the winter. We’ll see how things shake out.

Then this morning Matt & Madeline took the open sow to the hog buyer. The other one will go in another month or so, after her litter is weaned. We’ve already arranged for 3 new gilts, a 3/4 Berk-1/4 Duroc cross. They’ll be bred to farrow in April. We won’t pick them up until right before farrowing so winter pig chores will be a little lighter this year, which will be nice. Ollie gets to stay 🙂

2 years ago:

Quick update

Some of the calves lounging on a beautiful fall afternoon

Our farmers market season is officially done! Charles City has another Saturday left and Mason City has three Friday’s left, but last Friday we sold out of every last scrap of beef, pork & poultry we have. That was kind of cool 🙂 I still can’t quite believe we did 600 broilers this year, and could have sold more if we’d had them.

On that note, we’ve had a lot of farmers market customers say to us, “What am I going to do for meat once the farmers market is done?” So we’ve decided to try winter deliveries to both Mason City & Charles City.

The way this will work, we will email everyone on Monday the week of the delivery letting them know when the delivery will be and what we have available. Anyone interested in ordering will need to email us back an order by 3:00 Wednesday. We will package the orders and email back a confirmation & amount due. Then we’ll have a designated meeting place and time in each town when everyone can show up & pick up their orders.

I’ll probably send out inital emails in November, polling interested people on the best meeting places & times for this. Deliveries will begin in December and continue into April. So please email sugarcreekfarm (at) osage (dot) net if you’re interested in being on our delivery information list.

This is something new for us, and I’m really excited about it. I’m hoping that this will eventually (like maybe next year) develop into a meat CSA program. We’ll see!

We are still taking orders for December beef, in either quarters or bundles. Bundles are an 1/8th of a beef – about 50 pounds packaged – in the full variety of cuts. The difference between quarters & bundles (besides the quantity of meat) is that quarters can be custom cut any way you like, and you pay the processing yourself. Bundles come in the same cuts we have done for farmers market, and the price includes the processing. Email us to reserve one (or more) of those if you’re interested.

Another new thing we’re going to try this year is the Des Moines downtown winter farmers markets. These will be on Saturday November 22 and Saturday December 20. So please look us up there if you’re in the area! We’ll be bringing a full selection of our beef & pork cuts.

I think that’s all the business I’ve got for now. We’re enjoying this brief respite between the end of farmers market and the beginning of fall butchering, which begins in just a couple of weeks!

1 year ago:

Adventures in horseback riding

The tree was calling me today, calling me to come out and take its picture before it totally drops its orangey red robe.

I happily obliged.

3 years ago:

Apple picking