Piglets for Sale!

Only four piglets left to sell: two uncut males and two females. (All the rest have been spoken for and we are keeping two for ourselves.) These are from our fourth generation of Natural Farmed hogs, born-and-bred right here on our farm, and of the highest quality. They already weigh between 35-40 pounds apiece! Any of them would make excellent breed pigs, or of course, they'd be great for meat.

More information on these not-so-little piggies here on my farm blog.

News... and Piglets!

Our beautiful "Protein Field" of leafy trees & shrubs: moringa, cassava, & mulberry. Also, you may note hibiscus at the front of some rows - because flowers are food for the soul.

I am still recovering from that car crash that happened at the beginning of September.  This whole episode has really thrown me for a loop.  But finally, finally, I feel like some progress is being made and I'm able to do a few of the everyday things that I simply couldn't for so long.  Things like making dinner now and then, or putting up a batch of marmalade, or visiting with friends for a couple hours.  Believe me, it makes a huge difference to feel like part of the world again.

On the other hand, I've gotten a lot of reading done during these past two months, which has been nice.  I've read a book about North Korean defectors, a love story told through letters, a cute ghost story-mystery, a marvelously well-done sci-fi told through a 12-year-old's eyes, and a revealing take on young widowhood.  In between each book, I'm taking a pause with a chapter from Isabella Bird's Six Months in the Sandwich Islands.  And I managed to get my own book into a .pdf format for those who prefer reading on their e-gadgets, as well as for the international customers who have requested it that way (easier than shipping an actual book through customs sometimes).  [See the sidebar on the left for a link if you're interested.]

 

What else?  Oh yes, there was a documentary film crew here at our farm a couple weeks ago, conducting interviews, getting information, gathering footage.  It was a fun time!  If/when anything comes of it, I will be sure to let you know.  Kerry also posted about it on her photo-blog: exploretheshiningstars

Everything's growing really well: piggies and plants.  We've been harvesting an abundance of kabocha, papaya, sweet potatoes, sugarcane, guava, and cassava... and have traded with friends and neighbors for avocados, tangerines, and breadfruit (our 'ulu is not yet producing - soon though!).  With the rains comes transplanting season, and it is a real pain to not be able to get some of the potted plants into the ground, but it would be, quite literally, even more of a pain if I tried at this point.

Meanwhile, Mike is harvesting, cleaning, and pressing sugarcane into juice on a twice-weekly basis.  We have several customers, including an all-organic restaurant, who are buying the cane juice, and of course, we enjoy this super healthful drink too, fresh from our own fields.  The cane in the bucket below is for planting - too small for juice - and the kabocha shown is only a small portion of what we've harvested so far this autumn. 

Egg production has slowed only a little with the shorter daylight hours.  The oldest hens have given up entirely, hence sealing their fate: the stewpot.  But the youngest flock is just starting to lay - we got the first egg yesterday! - so we will soon be able to resume regular deliveries to the local "localvore" store in Pahoa.  These lovely eggs are just about flying off the shelves as word gets around that there are local non-gmo-verified eggs to be had at a reasonable cost.  Supply and demand would dictate that we should raise our prices, but we're going to hold off on that for the time being and ride out this slow time and see how it goes when the young'uns come into full production.

Instead of rewriting the post I just did on the farm blog, I'm going to cheat and link it here.  So go on over to Hubbell's Hog Heaven and read all about the newest litter of piglets.
Oh, okay, here's a sneak preview:

Cute, aren't they?  Only one day old in this photo. Spot's litter is due next week, and with the six being raised for meat, we have quite a barn-full!

My First Official Book Review!

Word is starting to spread about the farm book. Yay! We took a boxful to the local Natural Farm meeting last month, and online orders have been trickling in. And of course, folks who come to our farm for the tour have been snapping them up!

My friend Sonia Martinez, Big Island food writer and blogger, wrote a great review of my book for Hawai'i Homegrown Food Network. It was published in this month's issue.

Go ahead and take a moment to read the book review HERE. (No worries; link will open a new window.) And then, order your own copy if you haven't already! ;-)

My farm book is here!

What a process it's been... a steep learning curve!  I never realized just how much extra work is involved in getting a book published, far more than the writing and editing bits.  But never mind: it is printed and bound and is now being distributed!  See links at the right for ordering.  Or, if you're on-island, come see me and save on shipping, and maybe even get a farm tour while you're at it.

Here's the back cover blurb:

The Table of Contents will give you an idea of what's inside:

You can read the first bits on the Amazon page using their "click to look inside" feature.  It doesn't get you to the juicy bits though. (And no, I didn't have any say in that set up, but it is pretty cool.)

It felt like Christmas when this big carton of books arrived, never mind that we already knew what was inside!

In other news:
I have 50 more little chicks (because I wasn't busy enough already, I guess) to add to the flocks.  They will begin laying sometime in December which will help keep our egg supply steady through winter, or maybe even increase it a little.  We are now supplying a local all-organic restaurant as well as my regular customers who come to the farm to pick up their eggs, and any surplus still goes to the big Hilo Farmer's Market (though less now with the restaurant buying up as many as I can supply).

Piggies are all doing well.  Spot had 15 (!!) piglets but that was soon reduced to 10.  (These things happen.)  Those ten are all thriving, almost ready to be weaned in fact.  They are the cutest litter so far with all the multi-colored speckles and spots!

Most of Big Mama's piglets have been sold off already; only two are still with us now.  Getting some loves from Kerry:

The new feed arrived in fine shape and the second shipment is already on its way.  I was a little worried that our egg customers might balk at the higher cost of eggs (since organic non-gmo feed costs more), but only one said it wasn't worth it to him.  All the others thought it was great and many even upped their orders!  And the chickens love this stuff!

 

 

So, it's still busy-busy around here, as usual.  I haven't even mentioned the new coop being built, or the kabocha that's taking over one whole side of the growing field, or the hale being booked almost continuously, or the crops all growing like mad, or the pineapples all getting ripe at once, or...

Meet the Piggies...

On a farm, most working animals are female.  They are the ones to give birth, produce the milk, lay the eggs.  So I thought it was about time to properly introduce the working girls of Hubbell's Hog Heaven.

First, we have Big Mama (aka Big Girl).  She had her first litter in May: 7 girls & 1 boy.  Big Mama lives up to her name, being the largest sow in the piggery at 420 lbs!

Spot is a sister of Big Mama.  She's such a friendly girl!  They were both born last year on Independence Day, so are a little over a year old now.  Spot weighs 400 lbs.  Her first litter was born in June: 1 girl & 7 boys.  Both these sows have been bred again, and are due to farrow in December.

Penelope is Big Mama's daughter.  She weighs in at 110 lbs.  (All these weights were taken about 3 weeks ago, so they actually weigh more by now.)  She's a bit skittish still; we'll need to handle her a lot more to help calm down her nervous personality.

Then there's Freckles, or Frecklebutt - so called due to freckles guess where.  Well, we needed a way to tell all those squirmy piglets apart!  She's from Spot, and is a little cutie at 50 lbs.  Both Penelope & Freckles will be raised up to increase our breedstock.  They're keepers.

And here we have Hammy, Freckles' brother and the lone boy of the group.  His dark coloration, and Freckles' freckles are from their Landrace-Hampshire-Yorkshire cross heritage.  Hammie is mellow and so soft.  He will fill our freezer at a later date, once he's big enough for the hams and bacon we all crave.  Right now, he's about 60 lbs.


Huli-girl was Penelope's sister.  I say "was" because, well, her name describes her fate.  She was well cared for, and met her end in the most humanely possible way.  She never felt any pain.  Yes, I cried when I said my goodbyes and thank you to her.

Huli-girl became the star of our recent lu'au and was much appreciated by everyone present.  She weighed over 100 lbs and dressed out at 80 lbs.  I must say this was the most delicious pig I ever tasted, spit-roasted to perfection by Chris Hara.  If you're on-island and need someone to do the pig for your next lu'au, he's the guy to get.

In related news:  We recently hosted what may have been our most important farm tour yet, as part of the Swine Seminar held in Hilo last month.  Ours was one of three piggeries chosen for the field trip portion of the two-day seminar.  Among the participants were several officials from various State and Federal agencies, including the guy who's in charge of rewriting and updating the laws regarding the housing aspects of swine production on a national level.  He was very pleased with what he saw here, and will be recommending Korean Natural Farming method of raising pigs as one of the "best practice methods" soon to be okayed for the entire US!! This is HUGE!!! And this is what we've been working towards with our 'crazy' barn with pens 3 feet above ground level... utilizing micro-organisms to do the work for us... no waste treatment necessary... and all the rest.  Mission accomplished!

Hubbell's Hog Heaven!

 I'm sitting here at my desk, windows wide open to let in the warm breezes... and finally, I have a chance to catch you all up with all the doings on our little farmlet. Those of you on Facebook have been seeing the progress as it happens, or pretty close anyway, but for the rest of you, I know what you're thinking: It's about time!!

We've had more of our 'lot next door' cleared, but left a buffer of jungly growth along the street for now.  
There is now a perimeter fence of woven wire enclosing everything that wasn't already behind the chainlink fence that came with the house when we bought the place. Enormously big, huge thank-yous to our friends who came to help with that project!








Every single post hole had to be drilled with a rock drill, then the metal post pounded in place. With all the help, it only took a few hours to do what would have taken Mike and I a week, at least.

   









Since putting up the fence, no roaming dogs have gotten in (as they had twice before), and the wild pigs have left their mark on the outside of the fence, where they belong. So far, so good.










Our driveway has been regraded, and graveled this time, as opposed to cindered. Makes a nice hard surface that the rains can still soak through, so no slippy mud puddles any more. The new driveway gate is something we're still getting used to.



Next up: The piggery, which has been named Hubbell's Hog Heaven, which was built over the past few months...

and the first pen was completed and filled just last week.











Some of our fellow Natural Farmers came to help with that. It took some preparation and arranging to get all the inputs needed for this Korean Natural Farm method of creating the 3-foot deep bedding, but it's worth it since this is the only way to raise pigs without any odor and almost no flies! And of course, it had a Hawaiian twist since we utilized the different materials available here.

A layer of logs sets over 6 inches of soil.

Palm fronds, shredded coconut husks, and wood chips cover the logs.

Layers of sawdust and cinder soil fill up the pen...

... and get spread around.

Various inputs are spread over each layer: IMO4, sea salt, biochar. This is what makes the Natural Farm method work!

The finished pen with its fencing installed. Mike's adding the door.

A large area behind the piggery was also cleared and cindered deeply to create an area to grow food crops for the pigs, chickens, and ourselves. We already have cassava starts, moringa tree seedlings, kalo (taro), kabocha squash, and pineapples planted back there.










Soon to go in the ground are sugar cane, bananas, sweetpotato, papaya, and another ulu (breadfruit) tree or two. This combination will give the animals a complete feed and we won't have to buy the pelleted variety from the feed store any more... but it'll take a while to get to that point.




The biggest news is: we now have pigs!! Lola and Suey arrived on our farm just a few days ago. Both are 5-6 month old Chester White cross, just about ready to be bred. They had been raised on a concrete slab in their own poop, not quite the industrial farm thing but not far enough from it. Mike and I felt like we were doing an animal rescue in bringing these two gilts out of that environment.


They had never been on dirt before and as soon as we could coax them out of the travel cage and into their new home, they were indeed in hog heaven. Dirt to root in! And to roll in! And to just bury one's snout in!! Their curly piggy tails wag with happiness! And I swear I can see them smile.








They are still both pretty skittish, but are calming down considerably already. Both will now come over to the fence when I talk to them, will take treats of sweet potato vines, and let me touch their ears and noses.

Mike has been doing their morning feeding, and this morning he was able to give them a few pets and do some raking inside the pen while they ate. It takes time, but gentle ways work wonders. We hear their happy grunts and soft snuffling snorts all day long, so I know we are on the right path.

Aloha!

PS: (Please excuse the crazy configuration of this post... I've been working on it for hours. That's what happens when they go and 'improve' the blog site. arrgh)