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We had our first set of triplets on Friday.  They were very small, and it does take the mom quite a bit longer to dry off that many bodies, so they aren’t as quick to all get going as a single or even twins.  Luckily, we prepared for that!  We have some cow colostrum from Cousin Bob in the freezer, so we heated up some and gave them each a few cc’s in a syringe.  They seemed to be coming along fine by the next day.

Now triplets are not that uncommon, but it is certainly not the expected norm either, so it was a bit of a surprise Sunday morning when there were a set of quadruplets!  They too, were pretty small, but with a bit of the cows milk to give them a boost to get going, they too are up and going.

Now quadruplets are not unheard of, but they certainly aren’t expect very often, so it was a bit of a surprise Monday morning when there was another set after breakfast!  Plus another set of triplets!  By supper time, there was a set of twins to join them.  So out of 5 mom’s we have 3+4+4+3+2=16 lambs!! 

I’m getting very good at getting a little milk into a newborn lamb, and so far, they all look healthy and happy.  Now all we have to do is make sure we get enough nutrition into the ewe’s to feed all those little guys!

‘Misty’ came to our farm way back in 2002, and quickly became Grandma’s Dog.  (mostly because he wanted nothing to do with men or farm animals!)  He was a few years old when we got him, so that puts him into his teens in age. 

This fall, he had trouble with walking, and falling over and not being able to get up.  In the end we think it was a stroke, and he got worse through the month of January, before finally Just lying down last weekend, and not being able to get up, or stay standing if we got him up.  So Sunday night, we put him to sleep, and Monday morning, we dug a hole under the old poplar tree.  Lucky for us there was virtually no frost under the snow!

RIP Misty

Lot’s of lambs are a good thing!  Considering we just finished shearing them last week, now is a good time for them to start lambing in earnest.  So far we’ve only had to help a couple of them, so they are doing well, and little lambs are awful cute, at least once the goopy birth stuff is dried off…

So, if your reading this, you’ll probably notice that things on the page look a little different.  My old blog theme had an update, which seemed to mess up several things on me.  Rather than fight with it, I switched to this one.  I actually like it quite a bit, and am now happy with the whole situation, which is a far cry from how I felt at the start of all this!

I have also used a slightly altered version of the same theme for the Meaty Guys update page.  www.meatyguys.ca/whats%20new.html , so it seems pretty versatile too.

Me and one of my fellow ‘Meaty Guys’, Karen Yellowlees, (and yes there is a bit of irony there!) were on the local Roger’s’  TV show Daytime today. (it is Rogers channel 10, so if you live in Durham Region, maybe you saw us!?)  Karen whipped up some marinated kabobs of beef, pork, and lamb, and our host Christian Pritchard cooked them up on live TV.  (to bad you can’t smell through a TV set, ’cause it smelled great in there!)

Meaty Guys is an extention of my own meat selling enterprise, and it includes 5 other farmers.  Some with beef, pork or lamb of there own.  It’s kinda cool, and a neat sort of venture, and if you want to know more,  check out www.meatyguys.ca !

They would like to have us back in the new year, which sounds like fun!   (I’ll have to post the video when I get it!)

The corn harvest has been coming along incredibly well.   We are almost done at the time of year when we are usually just getting started.

The test plots we had planted for Pioneer Brand Seeds where weighed off yesterday, and the top three went 198, 199, and 200 bu/acre.   A few years ago, a yield of 150 bu/acre was a really really good yield!  This year our average will be between 170 and 180 bu/acre.

The biggest problem is what to do with it all.  Every grain elevator around has at some point stopped taking any in.  Which leads to very long lineups to unload at the ones that are still accepting some.  We are lucky to have a fair bit of storage space on farm, and have been able to sneak a few loads into Reesor’s elevator here fairly frequently, but we still have 100 tonne or so to go, and our bins are full now.

I guess it is a good problem to have, especially since the price has remained fairly strong, thanks to the U.S. not have quite as good a year as we have had here in Ontario.

As some of you may or may not know, the www.putporkonyourfork.com website had a bit of an update this year.  It is a consumer oriented resource that may be of interest to anyone who likes pork!  They have more recipes than you can shake a stick at, as well as info on cuts and stuff.  If you’re interested, check it out!

Another week later, and we tried harvesting another field of corn.  This one is down to 23% moisture, so we can go ahead and finish that field.  Finally, something dry enough to store in a bin! 

But as I was going up through the field by the road, and thinking about the snow drifts being deep enough in spots, I was passed by a snowmobile!  Some how it struck me as funny, that I was harvesting corn with a combine, in the same spot that I could have been snowmobiling.  I wonder who was having more fun!?

So, every once in a while, I got an email from someone who had trouble with the online order form not all appearing on their page.  So we set out to redo the order page on the website.

Check out the new version, now all on one page, and including pulled pork and Kolbossa.

I’m sure you could just submit a comment and Kevin would be glad to know of anything that might be improved upon.

My neighbour, Jordy, from Willowtree across the road, convinced me to come to a meat marketing course at Durham College.  So we are doing a computer lab on how to do labels.  Lots of information, and lots of regulations, and lots of interpretation on what needs to be done.  I have to say, frozen food is a whole lot safer than having to monitor a fresh product.  So much less room for error!