Recombobulated

The boys are excited about our move.  They’ve all been talking with me about what we might do with our ten acres.  Here is a conversation Nathan and I had today by text. It started innocently.  I was just wondering how trash gets handled in the middle of nowhere.  Do we have barrels?  Do we have to take them a quarter mile down to the end of the driveway?  We quickly got distracted and I still don’t know what happens with our trash.  But, we did decide we probably shouldn’t start a pork empire.

Nathan:  I think you need to get a pig or something… or a compost pile.

Me: I totally need a pig.  And chickens. And a compost pile.

Nathan:  We could totally do compost.

Me:  I thought we could set up a little family farm at our house.  We could build a family garden, compost, have chickens and a pig and all work it together.  Justin is totally down.

Nathan:  That would be fun.

Me:  Josephine thinks we’re mean because we’re planning to raise a pig for food.  We asked her where she thinks her sausage comes from.

Nathan:  We could have Harrison do 4H.  Lol.

Me:  Awesome!  But, I need to not turn into the 4H leader.

Nathan:  Good luck!

Me:  Haha.  You too!

Nathan:  We need like 4 pigs if we are going to raise them for food.

Me:  If we get seriously good at it, we could have a sow and breed piglets.

Nathan:  It can’t be that hard.  Sarah could coach us.

Me:  We may have to build a real barn.

Nathan:  We could make that happen.

Me:  And Erika can be our chicken and garden coach.

Nathan:  Nice.  Oh… And we can have bees!

Me: Oh, yes!

Nathan:  Lol.  This is going to get out of hand quickly.

Me:  Ya.  I think that’s going to be the real challenge.  Keeping it manageable so we don’t both end up quitting our jobs to become pig farmers.

Nathan:  Oh, well… That wouldn’t be the worse thing.  Except we’d both work 90 hours a week being pig farmers.

Me:  Exactly.  And, Hannah thinks the guys you work with bug you too much?  Wait until we’re up delivering pigs in the middle of the night.

Nathan:  You have to be zoned for all this, right?

Me:  I think I’m zoned for whatever I want.  So long as I’m not polluting the lake, my neighbors shouldn’t mind.  They’re like 10 acres away.  What is that in miles?

Me:  Okay.  We’ll start small.  Maybe just start composting and then start a garden and get a dozen chickens in the spring.

Nathan:  One or two pigs is small…

Me:  That sounds perfectly reasonable to me.  Haha.

Nathan:  Pork empire would be out of hand, though.

Me:  We need to make sure we don’t scare dad back to California.

Nathan:  We can make him mead or something.  And, really, come on … bacon.

Me:  Yes.  I want apple trees, so I can make homemade cider.  But, cider is a big project.  #chemistry.  I may start small and just drink it down at the Viking pub.

Nathan:  It’s only like a once a year type of job.

Me:  Okay.  I can probably handle that.

Nathan:  I’ve got a friend that brews a lot of his own beer so we can get some help with that part if it’s similar.

Me: I think it’s very similar.  Same process.  Different ingredients.  Maybe we should just go take a tour of his beer set up.

Nathan:  It’s pretty simple.  I think it’s like $500 worth of stuff and you can buy it all online.  Supposedly bottling is a pain in the ass and we should learn to keg everything as soon as possible.  Most beginner processes have you start with bottling.

Me:  I am happy to skip bottling and go straight to kegs.  Bottling is a pain because you have to make sure your glassware is sterile.  The cider people all use gallon sized glass jugs.  A little better than bottling, but not as good as kegs.

Nathan: Cool.  I’m in.

Me:  I found my zoning district and laws.  I’m in zoning district RH-3.  I can have 1 livestock animal unit per acre, so 10 “animal units.”  An animal unit = 1 cow, 4 hogs, 10 sheep or goats, 100 poultry or rabbits, 1 horse, pony, or mule or any combination.  Ummm… don’t tell dad.

Nathan:  Nice.  So, way more than we need. 🙂

Me:  Totally!

Nathan sends this article from “Modern Farmer” called “5 Things I Learned the Hard Way While Raising Pigs.”

Nathan:  This article is pretty good.  This person tried to raise a pig family and it went badly.  Let’s just get one smallish one to start with.

Me:  I think one pig is the right number.  That’s what my dad raised every year.  And, when we were buying homegrown meat, we never bought more than one pig at a time.  We normally bought just half.  So, one pig is a good start.

Nathan:  That should be plenty.

Me:  I’m thinking we should lay low and try not to attract too much attention from anyone, especially dad.

Nathan:  Good plan.