With straw prices at a low we found an economic use for our large bales. Safe in the knowledge that there are no wolves to blow the house down we erected some pig houses.
Call it Boston Butt, Coppa, Echine. It's Delicious!
11 years ago
Monday, March 16, 2009
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
New Berkshire Sow is first time mummy
Last week we took possession of two 10 month old pregnant sows and a 4 month old berkshire boar. Brother Scott undertook the 7 hour drive to Adelaide to pick them up. As with our Wessex Saddlebacks the Berkshires, or Berkies as owners of these breeds sometimes call them, are also considered Rare Breeds.
This morning Ben and I went out to feed the pigs at around 8:30 and were surprised to find one of the sows walking around with a little one that couldnt have been more than an hour old wriggling through the thin layer of hay. I was surprised that the sow was up and about and at the same time concerned as a first time mum, I wasnt sure she knew what had happened and what her responsiblities were. After tucking down some food however she went and nestled down and proceeded to pop out 8 more. There was a 10th which she had trouble producing and I tried to help every time I saw the feet come out and retract back in. After about 5 minute I caught the feet and helped bring the piglet out however it was dead on arrival.
Throughout the day all 9 remaining piglets were trying to find teats and get their first dose of mums milk.
The other sow should have her piglets in the next day or so......
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
The Wood oven finished
The final touches were put on our wood oven that we had built today. We tried out a portable wood oven over Christmas and cooked some succulent pork, lamb and beef roasts and then for New Years eve some very tasty pizzas including a desert pizza made with a base of butterscotch snaps and blueberry sauce and topped with banana and pineapple and a slither of fresh mint.
Now we have the permanently erected oven our guests who stay at Greenvale will be able to cook up their own succulent roasts (maybe from our own beef, pork or lamb) and tasty pizzas for them selves.
The cement slab bares the little hand and feet prints of Natalie, Ben and Giaan.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Greenvale Meats Launched
We are excited about todays launch of Greenvale Meats with nearly 400 flyers going out to the to the local mail boxes. We will be initially offering our customers 1/8, 1/4 or 1/2 a side of local pasture raised beef cut up, cryo packed and labled and delivered to their doorstep. Our beef will be dry aged for atleast 3 weeks to give the ultimate in tenderness and then the beef will continue to age become more tender in the cryopack also prolonging the life of the meat.
Our customers will also know exactly where their beef has come from and how it has been raised.
Our guests who come and stay at Greenvale will also be able to purchase our beef to either cook while they are here or to take home.
We hope our customers enjoy our beef as much as we do.
Our customers will also know exactly where their beef has come from and how it has been raised.
Our guests who come and stay at Greenvale will also be able to purchase our beef to either cook while they are here or to take home.
We hope our customers enjoy our beef as much as we do.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
New Piglets
Our distinguish lady of the farm Beatrice has given birth to 3 strong and healthy piglets early last week and the Bissell family was here to witness the exciting event.
At a week old we have one male at 1.4 kgs One Female at 1.6 kgs and another male nearly doubling the other two at 2.7kgs this is definitely Princes boy.
Unfortuanetly 48 hours after the birth of the 3 sadly Beatrice passed 3 more still born. Very frustrating but its part of life and apparently common in older sows.Today I tagged and documented them which involves weighing them, clipping their ears for identificational purposes, counting teats and documenting markings.
I managed to muck up the ear noticing and instead of marking the second piglet as number 5 on our farm Ive marked it as 802. I think this mistake will not cause any issues at all as its going to be several years if not decades before we will have produced our 800th pig.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Bailing Hay
A number of crops around the district and through out Victoria haven't had a great time due either to lack of rain, rain at an inappropriate time or frosts. Although we were lucky on most fronts we had a couple of paddocks that didn't have a great time due to weeds. The estimated yield of the crop on those paddocks meant that if cut at the right time it would be financially more beneficial to cut the crop for hay. And so we made hay......
Thursday, December 4, 2008
The Great Victorian Bike Ride Market
The night before the market in Lake Bolac in aid of the Great Victorian Bike Ride I had visions of our three, six month old Wessex Saddleback gilts which we were showing, escaping and causing destruction around the market stalls running around in their rapid rocking horse style run, their ears flapping all over the place and up ending stall holder tables, tipping over old ladies sipping tea and generally causing havoc.
The Great Victorian Bike ride is an 8 day non-competitive cycling event covering several hundreds of kilometres where the participants, from the age of 14 months to over 70 years old and even a unicyclist, cycle from one town to the next.
With the prospect of 4200 captive riders we decided it would be a great opportunity to set up a stall and spotlight The Rare Breeds Trust of Australia in conjunction with Greenvale Homestead.
The day before market day I made the trip to Daylesford to pick up the RBTA marketing material (in doing so allowing the real-estate where it had made its self at home for the past little while to be finally vacuumed, much to the excitement of the crew at Fernleigh Farm and gave them a little more breathing room in the office). I picked up the item which I primarily made the trip for, that being the RBTA free standing sign, only to discover after my 2 hour drive home that I’d only actually picked up the base of the sign minus the sign itself.
We decided to put the gilts in the tandem trailer the night before as (a), they were in their house and it would be simpler than chasing them around their paddock to load them up, or at least so we thought, and (b), if there were any issues getting them loaded then we would have them loaded ready for the next day and not rushing it on the day. The original plan at the site was to put them in a portable pen however considering the effort getting them into the trailer and the sheer stubbornness of the lasses, it was going to be an easier proposition to actually leave them in the trailer.
I don’t remember ever changing a tire in my life on route however that was my next challenge of the day. On the way to the market and on the same road as the cyclists, fortunately long before the first rider was due on the scene, I had a blow out. Although I consider myself very mechanically minded, and I hope not too many of my friends read this but, I had to consult the manual to work out how to get the spare off.
The cyclists had in the first few days battled consistent head winds from the start of the ride in Ballarat to the rest day in Halls Gap in the Grampians. So it was a relief that they had a very supportive tail wind from Halls Gap to Lake Bolac, fortunate of course for the riders but not for the stall holders. All day we fought a losing battle, at least I did to anchor the static displays and merchandise. Extra pegs and ropes were deployed to stop the tent collapsing. The surplus pegs I had I used to pin down music stands for the girls playing their wind instruments, which was short lived as the direction of the wind meant that very few people could actually hear them and they relocated.
The pigs however were in heaven, comfortable in the hay and the wind to keep the flies off and adored by the visitors who fed them the near fresh rolls from the locally famous Willaura bakery. Two of our gilts had been given names however the third, as yet had not, so we decided to have a competition to “Name that Pig” the winner of which would receive a family membership the RBTA sponsored by Greenvale Homestead. The winning name was Maisey with an honorary mention to Boudicca however the latter wasn’t probably a name our young guests at Greenvale Homestead could relate to, that being the name of an English woman who commanded an army to rebel against the Roman Empire. There were also the few unimaginative entries such as dinner, bacon and crackling.
Most people couldn’t get over how big the pigs were for their age, Malcolm Cowan a fellow RBTA member who was participating in the bike ride and who deals with Wessex Saddlebacks in Tasmania estimated them to be between 55 and 60 kgs, and suggested in not exactly these words that they may nearly be ready for dinner.
Our other breed as part of the Greenvale Homestead RBTA exhibit was my one and only Transylvanian Naked Neck Chicken. I can appreciate exactly why they are a rare breed after being sent two dozen supposedly fertile eggs and only hatching one from the incubator. It found comfort at in the straw bedding in the enclosed section of the hutch and only rarely making an appearance. So every now and then I coaxed it out by lifting the lid slightly and giving it a gentle hand. While my visions of the pigs escaping did not materialize, the Naked neck literally jumped at the chance to fulfil my premonition and burst out of the hutch forcing the lid open and fleeing to freedom. The numbers of volunteers grew as entrapment continued to elude us. Then I saw a chance to capture the escapee and dove horizontally at the chickens legs as if the move was taken straight from a road runner cartoon, and as part of the cartoon stunt, my hands crossed and the chicken slipped free once again. Finally a spare sheet was used as a throw net and the squawking chicken was at last in custody.
There was one other interesting farm animal exhibit that we were honoured to have as our market neighbour and that was a local sheep called Lucky, a sheep born on Anzac day in 1986 and is supposed to be the oldest recorded sheep in the world. Looking, I must say very good for its age.
After a big day I drove back to Greenvale with the Pigs and as I was struggling getting the pigs off the trailer, the Vic Roads bike riders who were staying at the homestead looked on with refreshments in hand from the homestead verandah. I joined them a little later and in jest said “you could have come to my aid to get the pigs off the trailer” only to be informed, and to the amusement of the rest of the guests, that in addition to the Vic Roads crew our presence was graced by a number of off duty police officers also participating in the bike ride.
The Great Victorian Bike ride is an 8 day non-competitive cycling event covering several hundreds of kilometres where the participants, from the age of 14 months to over 70 years old and even a unicyclist, cycle from one town to the next.
With the prospect of 4200 captive riders we decided it would be a great opportunity to set up a stall and spotlight The Rare Breeds Trust of Australia in conjunction with Greenvale Homestead.
The day before market day I made the trip to Daylesford to pick up the RBTA marketing material (in doing so allowing the real-estate where it had made its self at home for the past little while to be finally vacuumed, much to the excitement of the crew at Fernleigh Farm and gave them a little more breathing room in the office). I picked up the item which I primarily made the trip for, that being the RBTA free standing sign, only to discover after my 2 hour drive home that I’d only actually picked up the base of the sign minus the sign itself.
We decided to put the gilts in the tandem trailer the night before as (a), they were in their house and it would be simpler than chasing them around their paddock to load them up, or at least so we thought, and (b), if there were any issues getting them loaded then we would have them loaded ready for the next day and not rushing it on the day. The original plan at the site was to put them in a portable pen however considering the effort getting them into the trailer and the sheer stubbornness of the lasses, it was going to be an easier proposition to actually leave them in the trailer.
I don’t remember ever changing a tire in my life on route however that was my next challenge of the day. On the way to the market and on the same road as the cyclists, fortunately long before the first rider was due on the scene, I had a blow out. Although I consider myself very mechanically minded, and I hope not too many of my friends read this but, I had to consult the manual to work out how to get the spare off.
The cyclists had in the first few days battled consistent head winds from the start of the ride in Ballarat to the rest day in Halls Gap in the Grampians. So it was a relief that they had a very supportive tail wind from Halls Gap to Lake Bolac, fortunate of course for the riders but not for the stall holders. All day we fought a losing battle, at least I did to anchor the static displays and merchandise. Extra pegs and ropes were deployed to stop the tent collapsing. The surplus pegs I had I used to pin down music stands for the girls playing their wind instruments, which was short lived as the direction of the wind meant that very few people could actually hear them and they relocated.
The pigs however were in heaven, comfortable in the hay and the wind to keep the flies off and adored by the visitors who fed them the near fresh rolls from the locally famous Willaura bakery. Two of our gilts had been given names however the third, as yet had not, so we decided to have a competition to “Name that Pig” the winner of which would receive a family membership the RBTA sponsored by Greenvale Homestead. The winning name was Maisey with an honorary mention to Boudicca however the latter wasn’t probably a name our young guests at Greenvale Homestead could relate to, that being the name of an English woman who commanded an army to rebel against the Roman Empire. There were also the few unimaginative entries such as dinner, bacon and crackling.
Most people couldn’t get over how big the pigs were for their age, Malcolm Cowan a fellow RBTA member who was participating in the bike ride and who deals with Wessex Saddlebacks in Tasmania estimated them to be between 55 and 60 kgs, and suggested in not exactly these words that they may nearly be ready for dinner.
Our other breed as part of the Greenvale Homestead RBTA exhibit was my one and only Transylvanian Naked Neck Chicken. I can appreciate exactly why they are a rare breed after being sent two dozen supposedly fertile eggs and only hatching one from the incubator. It found comfort at in the straw bedding in the enclosed section of the hutch and only rarely making an appearance. So every now and then I coaxed it out by lifting the lid slightly and giving it a gentle hand. While my visions of the pigs escaping did not materialize, the Naked neck literally jumped at the chance to fulfil my premonition and burst out of the hutch forcing the lid open and fleeing to freedom. The numbers of volunteers grew as entrapment continued to elude us. Then I saw a chance to capture the escapee and dove horizontally at the chickens legs as if the move was taken straight from a road runner cartoon, and as part of the cartoon stunt, my hands crossed and the chicken slipped free once again. Finally a spare sheet was used as a throw net and the squawking chicken was at last in custody.
There was one other interesting farm animal exhibit that we were honoured to have as our market neighbour and that was a local sheep called Lucky, a sheep born on Anzac day in 1986 and is supposed to be the oldest recorded sheep in the world. Looking, I must say very good for its age.
After a big day I drove back to Greenvale with the Pigs and as I was struggling getting the pigs off the trailer, the Vic Roads bike riders who were staying at the homestead looked on with refreshments in hand from the homestead verandah. I joined them a little later and in jest said “you could have come to my aid to get the pigs off the trailer” only to be informed, and to the amusement of the rest of the guests, that in addition to the Vic Roads crew our presence was graced by a number of off duty police officers also participating in the bike ride.
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