This has been a week of extreme conditions on the farm physically as well as one of the most emotionally challenging weeks of farming yet.  The vegetables have had to deal with a freeze of 28F one day and 90+ a few days later... any way you look at that, it's a challenge.  On top of the wild weather we had to navigate piglet castration when the mama wants nothing to do with humans and icing on the cake was a proven sow who has issues while farrowing and needed help delivering 8 more piglets!

While we try and keep it clean it's been exhausting and the description of farrowing a castration topics made us thing the "use caution around small children" label was appropriate for the "more sensitive" listeners.

One resource we mention in this episode is the Perdue livestock "Difficult pig farrowing" guide here - 

Anyone who ever said farming was easy should live a week like this then come back and see us :)

071 A sow in distress while farrowing on the farm, piglet castration and temperature extremes in the vegetable garden

Sharing our small farm stories and skills along our farming, gardening and homesteading journey.
Visit the farm for an informative and sometimes irreverent tour through our garden, livestock pastures, chicken coop, beehive and greenhouse as we live - pasture to plate. 
Farming topics free range around pastured heritage pigs, broiler chickens and pastured eggs, heritage breed turkeys, an heirloom vegetable CSA and garden, high tunnel / hoop house / green houses, organic and traditional gardening, farm infrastructure, tractors, sustainable energy, being self sufficient, permaculture, food preservation, bees, beekeeping and even fence mending.

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After the Thanksgiving turkey wore off we decided to get back to the farming podcast...  and we talk about the most recent pork cuts we picked up.  We then talk about some of the food we made for Thanksgiving and deer season and Farmer Andy shares the Thanksgiving morning story of his big buck!
We wrap up the episode with Farm U on E. coli O157:H7, what it is, where it comes from and Dr. Farmer Kelli shares a resource (cdc.gov) to learn more about infectious diseases and foodborne diseases.

0156 Pork cuts, a deer season story and a Farm U on E. coli O157:H7

This episode we talk about the taking of the pigs to the processor, some updates from around the farm and about deer season... and the highly anticipated tomato round up from the vegetable garden.

0155 Pigs to the processor, deer season updates and vegetable garden tomato roundup

After posting that we were taking a pig to the processor and hurting some folks feelings...  we decided we didn't really care.  Toughen up folks.  So we make fun of them.
Then we talk about the deer season to date and update people on the honey harvest from our first year of bees.
In general - it's a bunch of farm updates.

0154 Processing a pig and people's feelings, bow season, bees and honey

We return with pig, chicken, bee and vegetable garden updates.  We then talk a bit about a discovery about the stiffness of your arrow and the placement of a broadhead shot (yeah - giggle if you want) as it pertains to archery / bowhunting.  And the nwe conclude with some listener emails and a discussion about a sugar free diet.

0153 Farm updates, sugar addiction and bowhunting tips

In this episode we return to the coopcast to discuss the future of our farm and all the different enterprises we have in play.

071 A sow in distress while farrowing on the farm, piglet castration and temperature extremes in the vegetable garden

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