I see the light!!!

Mid-March(the twelfth, to be exact), and spring is right around the corner. I can hardly wait! We have introduced another breed of sheep here to Veliraf Farm. Finding our original stock was quite the challenge!! Registered Roanovs are few and far between, that's for sure. After almost a year, we finally managed to bring home 5 ewe lambs!! Although it will be early 2009 before our first purebred Romanov lambs are born here at our farm- we are quite happy with our purchase. These girls are totally amazing sheep in regards to their prolificy. The regularily have litters of three, four, five, and even six lambs. They breed reliably out of season, all of our ewe lambs were born in October- and the smallest litter size of our purchased lambs was 2. Quite impressive!!! We think these girls are very pretty, and they are quite photogenic as well- even in our dark-ish barn. See how Trinity winks at the camera!!!

Mid-winter Piggy thoughts

We are now about half way through winter. This year our winter has been much busier than most. Two litters of purebred Tamworth piglets coming in frigid weather does have a tendancy to set plans back a touch!! Aren't the piglets nice though. We ended up with litters of 7 and 9 piglets. Both are nice consistant litters, and I am quite pleased with them. I have decided to keep back a gilt from Perscilla, and to add her to our growing farm!! We don't use farrowing crates here, nor do we use hormones or antibiotics. I want the animals we raise for our family to be as natural and wholesome as possible. We will soon have home-raised pork in our freezer, and I can hardly wait. It has been quite some time since we have had our own pork. These guys are smooth and have nice firm muscling, it must be from all the excercise they get running away from me! They have yet to become nice sedate pigs like their parents!! That's quite all right though- the friendlier they are, the harder it is to eat them :)