5 Days Till Pig Harvest Day!

Okay, so I haven't written in a bit and have been itching to update y'all on our activities. Our big pigs have less than five days left until pig harvest day and we are quite excited to try out our big ol' backyard piggies! It goes without saying that Steve and I are still one hundred percent okay with butchering the pigs. Let me explain why.

Since April, we have gone outside every single day and took care of our pigs. We constantly made sure they were healthy and well taken care of and had a continuous amount of boiled eggs and barley. This daily action, everyday, for 7 months has resulted in us wanting to see this through to the end. We took care of the pigs and now they will take care and sustain us through the means of delicious bacon and meat. Our three year old son has been asking lately too when Speckles and Curly will become bacon. So it's safe to say their time is almost up.

Speckles and Curly lived a good life doing what pigs do best. They helped uproot the ground in our pasture area and, in return, that will help us plant clover in the spring for the potential new piggies. Are we going to do pigs again next year you ask? Well, I feel like we have a pretty good idea of what to expect now and how much food is required to keep pigs happy. Space wise I think we could handle up to 5 pigs before I would want to expand our pasture size. The reality of all this is that we want to be able to start this side business of selling pig meat, and one day, cow meat. But, that's another story for another day.

Side note: here's a cute reminder of how little the pigs once were! 😁

Thankfully, the pigs have not eaten any more ducks either since our... uh... incident. The ducks have stayed nice and far away from the pigs to which I don't blame them one bit. We should start getting duck eggs here soon to eat, but every time I look outside, I don't see any. I figure if we start getting way too many duck eggs, we'll end up selling those as well. Eventually, we will start breeding Muscovy ducks too and potentially selling baby ducklings (they are the cutest!).

Soap wise, I'm extremely excited to have more lard for making soap. I'm gonna be that weirdo when we get out pig meat back that makes sure all the fat from the pig was kept. That stuff is like gold to me and these pigs should have quite a bit of fat on em! I'm also launching a new line of soap here soon that is curing and will be revealed at the end of November. I have slowed down a bit on soap making and that is mainly due to spending more time with my boys and that I need to sell my current inventory! Soap is like wine though, and gets better with age so I'm not too stressed about keeping this much soap on hand. You really outta try out some home made soap if you haven't already. There's so many skin loving benefits to handmade soap and soap products. My laundry soap is awesome and I'm loving using it to wash my clothes and get stains out. And by stains, I mean greasy-hamburger-bacon loving stains that my normal laundry detergent couldn't get out of clothing. The secret is taking my laundry butter, putting a dab on the stain, and letting it fully dry. After that, I throw it in the wash and bazinga! I also have a face scrub that might debut here around Christmas time (still in testing phase). If there is anything natural and homemade that you would like me to make, I'm always up to hearing suggestions.

Steve and I have also upped our morning game by changing up our routines and disciplines. I started to tackle the habit of eating sugar and then I thought, why not add more discipline to that?! Ha! But, I am starting to take life a bit more seriously and honing in on our goals/dreams. I refuse to look back at my life and wonder what happened or why didn't I try this or that. So far it's going great and I look forward to seeing results in the future. But, I'll have a more explained post about that later.

For now, life is great, God is good and we'll soon have lots of BACON! :)

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"Hard work pays off in the future but requires discomfort now. Laziness pays off now but guarantees discomfort in the future." Hal Elrod