Taking time to see the flowers

Black Knight butterfly bush

As the name implies, this butterfly bushes flowers are a very dark purple when they first come out.  They lighten up as they open more but the color initially is a gorgeous rich deep purple.   Today it was full of butterflies.

 Summer Snowfall Trumpet Vine

This variagated trumpet vine was planted 3 years ago and it's the first time it's bloomed.  It's still pretty sparse and spindly  but getting there.  This year it's sharing a piece of trellis with a melon plant.

Sometimes it seems we get so busy with all the chores around here seeing the beautiful parts of this endeavor goes by the wayside and what a shame that is.  I need to put on my to-do list - stop and SEE the beauty every day!

On the not so bright side of the gardens today... my goat chewed tomato.  It was getting pretty tall.  Tall enough evidently for the goat to reach over the fence and chew the top right off.   She got two of them.

Back to the good stuff...jalepeno's will be ready shortly.  Wish I had been able to find some habenaro plants but couldn't and it was way too late to start seeds.   Next year!

The zucchini's are doing well.   Of course they usually do, but this plant is in partial shade so I wasn't sure it would do well at all.   I planted it in the flower bed in front of my house.  Most of my veggies are intermingled with flowers in flower beds.   Behind the zucchini is a Bugbane - Cimicifuga Atropurpurea that does very well so it's certainly got a good bit of shade there.

A pig tilled garden

Our front yard, planted, after our American Guinea hogs tilled up the grass for us over the winter

Last fall when we got our trio of hogs we put hog panels up in the front yard where there was grass we wanted gone, added a small shelter for them inside and let them go to it.  We moved them this spring to a new pen in the back wooded area of our property and planted the front.  Right now it's rapidly filling up with pumpkins, squash and beans.  Later this month I'll put in a fall crop of turnips in to supplement the pigs and goats food this winter in any spots that are still bare.  An added benefit of has been a few volunteers we got from the scraps we gave the pigs over the winter in there.  It's like a little present each time a veggie plant pops up you didn't plant.  And you can always just pull it up and feed it to the pigs or goats if you don't want it there.  We got a pumpkin, a cantaloupe and tomoto plant as voluteers this year.

The plan is to move them back there again this winter to re-till it again as well as to clean up all the vegetation from this years garden.

A volunteer pumpkin

American Guinea Hog babies!

I love AGH's! I love that they are so easy and so smart.   2 of our new piglets, 2 days old, with their papa.

 We are still pretty new to pigs and 2 weeks ago we didn't even know piglets were coming.  I hear that's common in this breed if the females are housed with a boar.   One day you look out and see the mother pigs teats enlarging and soon after you have a litter of adorable little piglets running around.   I had thought that my 2 gilts (females that have never had piglets before) were overweight and would need to be slimmed down before they would be able to have babies.  If a gilt or sow gets overweight the fat around their ovaries can sometimes interfere with their abiity to concieve.  Not only was Rosemary able to concieve, her sister, Thyme, is expecting too.  Rosemary gave us 3 little boars and 2 little gilts.

AGH's are smaller pigs often mistaken for pot belly pigs because they too have a bit of a pot belly.   AGH's size is wonderful  for homesteads like mine without much land.  They are a favorite in many zoo's childrens petting area's because they are so friendly.  They love to graze and only root when everything they can graze is gone.  I leave them in my fenced backyard many nights to graze on my grass.  They go back in their pen in the woods behind our yard during the day.  I think it's cooler back there for them amongst the tree's and their wallow is back there too.  They spend a lot of their days in cooling off in that wallow. 

The other 3 babies sleeping in their house

We gave Rosemary plenty of space and were very resectful of her the morning we found she had had her babies. We co-house her with her sister and the boar,  Basil, but wanted to make sure she could have the house to herself in case it rained so made an quick shelter for the other 2.  It did rain that nigh, they did use it and now she's out with all the piglets in tow using it as well.  Coming from a dog backround rather than farm animals, I was surprised she was so OK with them and us being with her babies so soon.  She came out the second day followed by all her babies, laid down and rolled over to be scratched while nursing.  She clearly trusts us. 

Even more surprising to me was  how patient and gentle the boar was with the piglets when they got a bit confused and attempted to get him to nurse them.  He just rolled over and let them till they gave up.

 

Got milk????  No kids, Papa's do not have milk.

The hogs were initially purchased as weanlings because my 10 y.o. wanted pigs and since then she has been responsible for much of their day to day care.  Growing up with her as their primary care giver they've enjoyed much attention and become very people friendly.

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Momma in the foreground with Papa back by the wallow.   Our 2 females are short nosed and our boar is long nosed.  Some short nosed AGH tend to put on weight easier than the long nosed hog do so I'm told.   It's certainly true in this family.  I can already see difference in the noses of some of the piglets.

A very pregnant Thyme is enjoying getting cooled off in her wallow

We are members of the AGHA and encourage you to visit their site or the ALBCA site if your interested in more info about  American Guinea Hogs. 

American Guinea Association

The American Livestock Breeds Conservancy

The AGHA is in the process of updating their site so check back with them again too as their new site promises to be even more informative.

A broken leg waiting to happen

Baby Goats love to climb on anything and everything. This little guy and his sister are no exception to this basic baby goat rule. Actually adults like to climb too but like humans, the kids have no sense of fear. The siblings are usually together on top of this temporary shade structure made of cattle panels and a tarp.

In back of the hut are a number of goat panels (fencing) standing up against the regular fencing.   It's great to use for a moveable fence.   Today we found they had learned to climb to the top of them and walk along them....definetely a broken leg that just hasn't happened yet.   We'll be moving those tomorrow.

New Baby Goats

Tawny - a doeling

Clover - a buckling

Our French Alpine, Tina, gave us 2 beautiful little kids on Mon. but not without a little drama.  It took her all day...12 + hours before she had the doeling and then only with the help of our large animal vet. 

In the meantime our buckling was unintentionally turned into a bottle baby.   My, how fast that can happen.   I had no idea.    With his mom preoccupied all day and wanting no part of him while she was attempting to birth the next kid I attempted to give him a bottle as well as dry him off from both his birthing experience and the rain and in the process he bonded with me and yes, I with him. 

So here we are.   His mother no longer recognized him or his smell and he felt the same about her.  I left him with her and his sister that night anyway but found him hiding in the corner in the morning with a decidedly thinner tummy.   So back into the house to bottle feed again and then back out to the goats.  And so it went until I realized he was afraid of her and wasn't going to attempt to nurse and she most likely by that time wouldn't have allowed it anyway. 

So a bottle baby/future pack goat was born.