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!