That's a Lot of Bacon!

Remember this post back in March? Those three cute little piggies we got for the boys to raise for 4H? Just for reference, here they were back in the beginning of April:

Well they've grown just a little...Here is a picture I took just about a week or so ago:

We haven't been able to weigh them and I'm so bad at guessing things like weights and measurements that I'm not going to even attempt to say how big they are. All I know is they pack a lot of power behind them if you get in the way of their food.

Speaking of weighing them, we made an attempt several weeks ago to do this. We were supposed to load up the pigs and take them to a butcher to have them weighed. The whole 4H group showed up but to our dismay the butcher didn't make it so no one could get in to get them weighed. This was unfortunate because it was a very hot day and we don't have an actual livestock trailer.


Whenever we have to transport the pigs, we have to use Randy's cargo trailer. We tried our best to make the pigs comfortable (pigs don't do well in heat at ALL) by opening the vent on top of the trailer and buying several blocks of ice to keep inside the trailer with them to keep them as cooled down as possible.


After the failed attempt at weigh in, Randy & the boys arrived back at home and Randy backed the trailer up to the pig pen area. We opened up the back doors of the trailer and this was the first thing we saw:

I love how he had his butt propped up on the ice block. It did kind of scare us though because he wouldn't move at all and Randy had to kind of shove him out the trailer and he basically just fell on the ground and didn't move at first. We thought for sure we had killed him. But after a short moment he got up on his feet and ran into the pen, so all was well.

Actually, looking at this picture now, it is an even better example of how big the pigs have gotten because you can see Randy's legs in the background for comparison and can see that the pigs body lays across more than half (probably about 3/4) of the trailer width. I told you they were getting big....

Tis the Season.....

...for planting & growing!

This morning I started off "prettying up the place". Randy had volunteered for security detail at a speaking engagement a couple of weeks ago and at the end of the night they gave him a bunch of the plants they had used to decorate. Yesterday I remembered that Randy had brought a large planting pot with him when he moved out here so we got some potting soil and first thing today I got it planted with some of those plants we had. When I was done we still had quite a few left so I decided to put them out in the front flower beds to add some color. I believe that in this zone these plants are considered annuals so they won't come back next year--but for now they add a nice splash to the beds and our front porch. The colors are all red, white and blue so when Fourth of July comes around we'll look very patriotic, lol.


Our garden is really finally taking off, after a few false starts. But I'm pretty happy with how it's turning out. You can't really tell in this picture but almost everything is up & growing. The five rows on the right are all corn which is growing the fastest. Throughout the rest of the garden is garlic, spinach, peppers, broccoli, green beans, cucumbers, watermelon, zucchini, carrots, leaf lettuce and iceberg lettuce. (I may be forgetting something...) We ended up not having enough room for the pumpkins so we had to spend today tilling 4 more rows for them. (You can see Randy starting that to the left of the garden in the picture.) We managed to get them all planted before the rain started this afternoon. The rain we've gotten lately has been a great help because it's cut back on the watering we've had to do this week. I'll keep you all updated on the garden progress as time goes by...