Sun and snow this morning, but the bench is standing proud and saying bring me some spring.
New birds are visiting, so it gives me hope there is an end to this long strange winter. MonkeyCat drew my attention to these little gray and white birds with a red spot on their heads. It turned out (after much discussion on facebook) they are Common Redpolls, a kind of finch.
We get a lot of interesting bird species here in Upstate NY, ones which may be in South Jersey as well, but not as easily spotted in suburbia with all those manicured, sprayed and fertilized lawns. We have no shortage of weed seeds for the birdies' dining pleasure.
Another interesting adventure today—we went in search of a bred sow. My Husband The Farmer has this idea he wants a litter of piglets this year. Instead of buying piglets as "feeder pigs" and raising them to slaughter, we will get a sow who is already bred and have her deliver a litter here. Then we can sell all the piglets and make back our money, or keep one or two for us.
As I prefer "pigs of color" I vote for the Berkshires, the black pigs. At the farm we visited today, his pigs are all Berkshire/Yorkshire crosses, but if we get a black female, even if she is bred to a Yorkshire sow, she will have some color in all of her litter (we think). Very nice older gentleman, also named Tim, who moved up here from Manhattan to raise beef cattle, but settled for pigs, and a goat, a sheep, a donkey, a coupla chickens...
Who knew we moved here from South Jersey to be farmers? Who knew? Not me.
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| A litter of Yorkies mostly grown up |
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