Polly and Jerry

I am so excited to announce that we have two precious new piglets.  Before you ask, no these are not pets, even though I have named them.  This is our fourth set of pigs to raise for food.  Our stash in the freezer is getting mighty low and these two pigs will be ready to be processed in December.  We got them from a fella in Portland, TN.  I was seriously relieved to find them on a nice farm in very nice conditions quite like our own... or our own dreams.  We don't have cows yet.  We initially wanted two sows but ended up with a boy and a girl so we had a teeny job to do on him before putting him in the pen.  We did not cut their tails which we have done on all our pigs in the past. 

 

I am thankful to not have to throw any scrap of food away in our house for a while.  Granny and I make this a little side hobby since neither of us like to see our hard kitchen work go to waste. 

 

I don't normally name animals that we plan to eat.  These two are just too cute to not have names.  I think I'm toughening up that I can name and eat.

 

 

Meet Pretty Miss Polly Pockets and Jerry.

 

 Miss Polly's curly tail.

 Polly on the right, Jerry on the left.  He has more black than she does and is a tad smaller.

Jerry.

 Jerry likes to wag his tail a lot.



Two New Friends

We have had a shortage of chickens for a little bit.  Miss Pepper has been the lone hen for several weeks now and I although I never heard her complain about being an only child.. chicken.. we needed more laying hens.  Pepper, after recovering from might near having her head torn off by a coon, has begun to lay eggs again... bless her heart.  She is one tough chicken y'all.  But we had lost a couple due to raccoons breaking in our coop and hopefully have that problem fixed now.  It seems like we have more critters around since Dottie has been gone, Lord rest her soul, and it has been costly to our flock not to mention our trash.

 

On Friday, our friend Jeff brought us two of his birds because he and his wife have been getting about 11 eggs a day and he figured he could spare a couple.  They are the prettiest girls.  I have named one of them Cotton because of her soft fluffy bottom and the other one Fiona mainly because she is bigger and because we have been watching a lot of Shrek at the day care and Princess Fiona is a bit bigger when she is an ogre but still pretty so she won't be offended.  Like she has seen Shrek. 

 

Yesterday, for the first time in months we got more than one egg.  And boy... did we ever get some eggs.  One of these girl, I am assuming Fiona, is laying monster eggs.  They are the biggest I have even seen.  I wonder if Jeff realizes yet that he gave us the chicken that lays the big eggs because he brought us an eighteen pack and there were a few in there so this is normal for this chicken.  Wow. 

 

Here are our new girls.  Pepper is the black and white one.

 Cotton

Fiona

See why I call her Cotton bottom?

Dang!  The carton would barely close ... I am not kidding.

Shaun's chicken magic trick.

I believe he taught her a dirty trick.