So, what does a pastured pork & poultry operation do during the winter?  Basically, we catch up on all of the things that we should have taken care of earlier in the year!

Thankfully, we butchered our last group of chickens out of the field about 3 weeks ago.  When the temperatures drop below freezing, it gets kind of hard to keep water running to the pasture pens.  We’ve been pretty fortunate in that, up until this week, we haven’t gotten any prolonged periods of below freezing temperatures.  The black plastic water pipe that we run across the ground is all hooked up so that Greg can unhook it at night before it freezes and it will drain and not break the pipe or the waterers.  During the day, the black pipe does a good job of absorbing some BTU’s from the sun and keeping the water flowing.

We still have ducks outside, but, aside from putting on a thick layer of down that is hard to pluck, they don’t have any problems dealing with the cold weather.  They still look for any opportunity they can get to find a puddle of water to splash around in (and when you put a couple hundred ducks on snow, you end up with quite a few puddles, no matter how cold it gets!)

The pigs don’t mind the cold weather at all.  Their water lines are all buried deep enough that they don’t freeze, and their waterers came from a company in Minnesota or somewhere that is used to dealing with cold temperatures.  Of course, they all have well bedded shelters to sleep in, but during the day they spend most of their time out playing in the snow.  They have a big self-feeder in each pen, so as long as Greg can get a tractor out there at least once a week to fill the feeders, they are good to go! 

Our biggest challenges now seem to be mechanical.  Our most used tractor won’t start with a key, and either has to roll down a hill or be pulled to start the engine.  When there is snow on the ground, on the lane, in the driveway, and down the road, it’s hard to find a place to pull the tractor where it can get enough traction to make the engine turn over.  It’s not fun!  To make it even more interesting, 2 days ago while pulling the aforementioned tractor, Greg took 1st gear out of our only 4-wheel drive vehicle.  Granted, it’s 14 years old and has over 150,000 miles on it, but still! 

Until next time…….Stay Warm!

~Lei