Busy and Cold On the Farm

It has been a super busy two weeks here on the farm!  After Dad's combine broke down right after we got in the field good, we had to search to find a combine that we could use just until we could get everything harvested for the season.  Luckily, we have a neighbor down the road who had finished with his harvesting so that we could borrow his for the rest of the season.  He has a much smaller, and slightly older, combine that we had been using, but at least it works!  It makes quite a difference going from a combine that harvests 4 rows at a time to a combine that only does 3! 
I have spent some time in the combine, but Dad has been doing the majority of the combining this year.  He and Mom went to Williamsburg for Dad to go to a Virginia Pork Industry Board meeting, so I was in charge of getting the combine up and going and shelling corn all by myself that day.  It took me about 20 minutes from the time that I could unload one load until I was back unloading another load.  I spent more time going back and forth from the truck to unload than I did in the field harvesting- that's a good and bad thing, because it meant we were getting a lot of corn, but it would have been nice to have spent more time in the field getting more corn off!
It has also been REALLY cold on the farm.  All of the animals are doing pretty well with it.  We have all the curtains up which really helps keep in the heat.  We also take bales of straw and put them in the pens in our finishing house for the pigs to break apart and snuggle down in at night time.  They love them!  Pigs will play with (and destroy) anything.  They love old tires, and pretty much anything else they can break apart.  We can put in whole bales of straw, and then the pigs will root at them and break them down, and then sleep in them.  We have to put new bales of straw in every couple of days to give them new bedding to sleep in since it is so cold.
We also got our first real snow this Thursday!  Luckily it wasn't much- especially when compared to all the snow we got the first time last winter!  We can put trucks in 4 wheel drive and still get around pretty easily.  Matt had to put out hay for all the cows since there was snow on the ground, that way they don't have to dig around to try to find grass.  Yesterday was the first "warm" day we have had in a couple of weeks!  It's amazing that after there are weeks of 20 degree temperatures and wind, suddenly 35 and no wind is fantastic! 
Today Dad and I were at the Route 3/Gordon Road Farmers Market for the last Farmers Market of the season.  Thanks to everyone who braved the cold and came out to see us!  Dad made an awesome breakfast casserole that he was sharing to some of the first customers, using cinnamon/raisin bread, sausage, and apples.  It was super tasty and would be great to use for Christmas Morning! 
I will put the recipe on Papa Weaver's Facebook page- www.facebook.com/papaweaver.

It's Cold Out There!

While everyone was trying to get out of the freezing cold today and that horrible wind, we were out there in it, still farming and taking care of all of the animals.  When it gets this cold, we just put on more clothes to try to stay warm!
I had the pig barns nice and warm today since it was so cold outside.  I got a fire started, the propane heat was already on, and kept the fire going the whole day.  It's amazing what a difference it makes when the fire is going to how warm it stays in the barn for the little pigs!
I almost ran out of feed in the tank for the hot nursery pigs today.  I told Matt so that he could grind a batch of feed for Dad to bring down tomorrow so that we will have enough food for them.  Dad was able to get in the combine last Thursday to get new corn in the tank.  We have about 1000 bushels of corn in the grain bin right now.  Dad was in the middle of combining today and I was getting ready to go combine for him, when the combine broke.  He isn't really sure what's wrong with it right now, because he had to leave to go to Harrisonburg to pick up meat to deliver in the morning. 
The corn didn't do as well as it normally does this year because of the lack of rain we got all summer.  Normally, we get between 100-120 bushels of corn per acre, and this year we are only getting about 60.  That is pretty discouraging, because it's always nice to have extra corn in the grain bin, so we are sure we don't run out before next year's harvest.  Hopefully on the other farm that we rent and down by the river we will get more bushels per acre, but I am sure it won't be close to what it was last year.
Hopefully tomorrow the wind won't blow so badly, so we can stay a little warmer.  I'm looking forward to Wednesday when the wind isn't supposed to blow!

Busy Thursday

Thursdays can be super busy days on the farm in the pig barns.  We wean pigs every two weeks- when they are about four weeks old.  That's when they are eating "big pig food", grain, and are ready to be off their mom.  On Wednesday I got most of the bigger pigs moved around in the cold nursery and hot nursery, so all I had to finish up on Thursday before I could wean them was wash up the pens and disinfect.  The disinfecting part is super important, because that helps keep our pigs much healthier.  We start them on feed a week before they are weaned so that they can eat more grain and be more used to it before they are weaned and go into the hot nursery. 
Sometimes, weaning can be a very frustrating process.  The little pigs can be very tricky.  We catch them and put them into a big wagon sort of thing so that they can be moved from one room to the other.  But those pigs do everything they can not to be caught.  It's much easier if you have two people weaning, because you can work together to catch them.  But when they see you coming from the back, they immediately run to the front of the pen to get away from you.  So most of the time it takes a LOT of patience to get all of the pigs caught! 
After that, I had to wash up the farrowing room and disinfect, and then move the sows in that are going to have babies next week.  Most of the time the sows are pretty easy to move because they have been over there before.  It gets tricky when there is a gilt, or a female pig that has not had babies before, and you have to get her in.  Sometimes when they have to walk from one barn to the next in the aisle that we have built, they get scared because of the sunlight coming into the barn.  They can be very sensitive about that, and get apprehensive about moving.  The best thing to do when that happens is just stand behind them so they can't back up, but just let them get used to it.  If you are patient, they will eventually go where they are supposed to.  They just have to have some time to adjust.
I got two moved that are due to have babies towards the beginning of the week, so I have to finish up on Monday!

Yucky Gloomy Tuesday

Today was quite a gray, gloomy day on the farm.  It drizzled outside all day, until it finally started picking up around 4.  I had a super busy day on the farm, since Dad was gone this morning making his deliveries around Northern Virginia and Fredericksburg.  He also had to stop at Miller's Farm Market in Spotsylvania to deliver some sausage because they were just about out!  They wanted to come get some last week, but after our huge orders I had to deliver we were completely out of bulk sausage as well! 
Matt and I had to get up and go move pigs this morning.  Once pigs get to be about 75-100 lbs, they are ready to move out of the cold nursery (which isn't really cold, it just doesn't have additional propane heat in it) up to the finishing barn.  We took about 25 pigs up this morning.  The road was just slick enough that Matt had a very hard time getting the trailer backed up to the barn.  Sometimes the pigs can be really hard to move around and get on the trailer, but I have found the calmer I am, and the more I just talk to them and wave my arms (I look pretty funny) they are much easier to move and stay much calmer.
Then I had to move 50 bales of hay from one field to another, with some other hay bales.  I started yesterday and did it for about 3.5 hours, and then finished it up today after another 1.5 hours.  We use the hay bales to feed all of our cows in the winter.  We start feeding hay sometime around the end of October/ early November and go all the way through March.  With 125 cows they eat a LOT of hay in those months!  We spend all summer making hay so that we will have enough to feed our cows in the winter.
I also had to spend a lot of time trying to get a fire started in our wood stove.  In our farrowing room (where the babies are born) we use a wood stove as some added heat.  When it gets really cold, and we have really little babies, we also have a huge propane heater that we use as more heat.  But right now, since we have some older pigs in the farrowing room that don't need as much additional heat, we can just use the wood stove to heat that barn.  I must have had some wet wood I was trying to burn because it took FOREVER to get a fire started!  Luckily, I must have put enough kindling in and newspaper because it finally took of and went.  When I left it was quite warm in there!
Hopefully we won't get too much rain and wind tonight! 

Happy (late) Thanksgiving!

We hope that you and your family had a fantastic Thanksgiving!  At Papa Weaver's Pork, we are very thankful for your business.  Papa Weaver's Pork is what has allowed our family to continue farming on the family farm that has been in the family since one of my great-great-great grandfathers bought it from James Madison.  I am very grateful that I can come back to the farm and hopefully keep it in the family for generations to come.

Where many people have had the last three days off, on a farm we do not have that luxury.  We do tend to take it a little easier on the holidays, and we don't work all day, but the pigs and cows still have to be fed.  We still have feed to grind, and hay to take out to all of our cows.  And of course the pigs in all the barns have to be fed everyday- we can't just take Black Friday off to go shopping all day!  Thursday was really very much like a normal day, we got up and headed down to the barn so my dad and brother could finish fixing the feed mixer, and then get the feed loaded up in the big feed truck to carry around to all the barns so that the feed tanks could be filled for the next week.  We took some time off to come home and have our big Thanksgiving lunch, but then it was back to the farm.

Yesterday, my mom, Dad, and brother got up at 3 am to head out to those fabulous Black Friday sales.  My dad has to go to Sears to get all his tools on sale.  I personally don't think it's worth it to get up that early and go shopping- I don't need anything quite that badly.  They were home by 7 am, and then my dad headed down to the barn to work on what he needed to do on the farm.  

Thank you for all your business in the past fifteen years- we hope to have many more great years to come! 

Quite an unproductive day

Today was just "one of those days" on the farm, where nothing seems to go quite right.  Dad and I had to get up early to load up meat to deliver to the other side of Richmond- almost 400 pounds for a new group we started selling to on the Eastern Shore.  I was worried about traffic on routes 64 and 288 since it's the day before Thanksgiving, but luckily traffic wasn't too bad.  Dad was off of the farm all day taking pigs to Harrisonburg to our federally inspected plant for them to be processed, and then around doing other errands that kept him away.  That always makes it hard when I'm off the farm for almost 4 hours delivering meat and Dad is away as well- that means everything is left for my brother to do.  
Matt had some problems on the farm that he had to deal with on the farm today that made it so tough.  The local co-op was delivering some local soybean meal, since soybean meal is the only thing we can't grow for our pigs since we can't process it, and they had some major problems with their feed truck.  Matt had to help them fix their truck while it was sitting on the farm.  A normal 20 minute stop took almost 3 hours out of his day.  Then, when he was grinding and mixing feed up for our pigs the mixer broke!  He almost had it fixed when it got dark and he had to stop since he couldn't see what he was doing.  
Hopefully tomorrow will be a much more productive day for us!

That much closer to combining...

We are almost ready to get into the field to start combining for this year.  At Papa Weaver's Pork, we feed our pigs all feed that we can grow, with the exception of buying local soybean meal because the soybeans that we grow can't be fed to our pigs without being processed first.  However, all the corn that we grow does go into our pig feed!  We are a little late getting our corn out of the field this year- due to my pumpkin patch pretty much taking over the month of October and trying to get fields worked to plant winter wheat, trying to get the combine ready to go has been a slow process.  Last year was my first year taking over some of the combine driving for my dad- I'm pretty excited to get back in the combine this year to harvest the corn!  Hopefully the rain will hold off some so that we can put the final touches on getting the combine ready and in the field this afternoon.

Dad was out delivering sausage this morning.  He gets up super early on Tuesday mornings to deliver pork to Capital Meats in Landover Maryland and then takes whole pigs to Huntsman Specialty Game in Springfield.  He then stopped by Fredericksburg to take care of a few more deliveries, and then made his way back home.  When he is gone my brother and I are completely in charge of the farm.  When I'm home, I'm the one in charge of the breeding stock, the mom pigs (sows) and the nurseries- where the baby pigs are.  Feeding in the morning normally takes between 1.5 and 2 hours to take care of two barns.  It's important that I go through and check all of our pigs to make sure that no one is sick, and there's nothing wrong in the barns.

This week is a breeding week, which means that we have to find sows that are in heat, and then breed them to the boars.  We always have boars on the farm, but sometimes we breed using A.I., or artificial insemination.  A.I. is a great way for us to get new genetics on the farm without having to buy expensive new boars.  It's a great way for us to be able to update our breeding stock, because on average sows only live until they are about 5 years old.

Time for me to head out and make a few pork deliveries, and then hopefully head on out to the combine! 

Welcome!

Welcome to the new Papa Weaver's Pork Blog!
I'm Sarah Weaver- the daughter of Tom and Tina Weaver of Papa Weaver's Pork.  I graduated from Virginia Tech in May and have come back home to the family farm to help out my parents with the farm and the pork business, as well as start my own business, a Pick-Your-Own Pumpkin Patch! 
We think that having the public know what happens on the farm is essential in keeping our customers happy and buying from us.  Our relationships with our customers are super important to us- you all buying our pork keeps us able to continue to farm!  We want to be as open as possible, to communicate our daily activities on the farm so that everyone can see what REALLY happens. 
Since everyone seems to be on Facebook these days and has their own blog, I thought it was about time that Papa Weaver's had a blog as well!