Another busy week at the farm. We took four more pigs to the butcher on Monday, and just got finished packing all the orders for the Oklahoma Food Coop delivery day tomorrow, and the process of getting ready for the market begins tonight.
In New Pork City, the pigs are packing on the pounds, and Jethro (our Spot boar) has done his duty and rebred both Geez and Myfoot. Speaking of those two gals, their pigs are really no different than us in some aspects. For instance, we have our campfires to gather around, the English have their Maypole, and the pigs their Silo of Milo:
The red clover is bloomimg in the spring grazing paddock and is absolutely beautiful. I'm going to try and get some more video before friday and post it up here, so check back in if you get a chance. Perk and Twiggy's pigs are growing mighty fine and getting rambunctious, especially at nursing time, and I'm sure Perk & Twiggs wish the pigs would drink CapriSuns like normal children:
At the market we'll have all of our products except our Andouille sausage that sold out last week. We're going to be introducing two new products in two weeks. First, we're going to have one pound rolls of Italian salami, which is a great addition to sandwiches, especially with home grown tomatoes on the horizon. Second, in line with the salami, we're going to have shaved ham in one pound packages that also makes an awesome sub or pannini.
The garden is thriving with all the recent rain, and summer vegetables will be here before you know it. Our sweet corn crop has recovered for the most part, and summer favorites are starting to take off. For instance, our red and yellow cherry tomatoes are setting fruit:
and our Kansas melons are just starting to set fruit:
Although we're growing three other varieties of melons (Hale's Best, Iroquois, and Twice As Nice) I'm partial to these Kansas melons because they're all from seed I saved from last year's crop. I saved seed from the fastest growing and largest melon producing vine in our garden, and I'm interested to see if we have a more productive crop this year.
You definitely won't have to wait until Thanksgiving to have some homemade pumpkin pie, as our crop already has pumpkins the size of large golf balls on the vines:
At the market we're getting to the "tweener" point in what's available. We'll have broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, summer squash, zucchini, red and white turnips, and a few pints of snow peas (the raccoons got almost all the seed). We may have a few heads of lettuce, but most of it went to seed with the unusually warm weather we had a while ago. Carrots are getting close, and we should have some cucumbers and yellow zucchini by the next market.
Saturday is supposed to be a beautiful, warm day and we'll have the grill fired up for cooking dawgs, so come on out to the market and see us. Thanks for reading!
Pork & Greens