Well, ever since we brought Mario home to stay on the farm he has needed his feet trimmed. His back feet were not that bad but his front toes were starting to get long enough to start curling. Over the course of the muddy winter they rapidly got worse. The right front one was curling up into the air and his foot was starting to roll to the side as well. I finally found a local farrier and called him Thursday. He was here the next day (yesterday) to trim him up. The farrier, Mark Pastircak, said he has seen worse but he was still bad. Mario wasn't too keen on the whole deal but didn't fight too awful much and Mark did a great job. It will take two more trimmings to get his toes to where they need to be but he is walking much better already and his feet should start to feel much better over the next few day from being able to stand on them correctly.
Mark and his wife did a great job and also gave me some more information on Mario while they were here. They told me he is between 12 and 15 years old and is in good health. Mark said he can live up to 45+ years and that he is pretty nice compared to some donkeys he works with.
After finishing, Mark was checking out our piglets and said he would be interested in a couple to fatten out for himself to eat. After talking about it we decided to trade his services for a couple of piglets. After the awesome trim job he did I was happy to make a trade and look forward to his next visit, and hopefully Mario does as well! If you are looking for a farrier look up Mark or just contact me and I can get you his information.
After Mark and his wife left for home Steven and I let the sows and piglets out of their birthing pens to run and play with the rest of the pigs. It only took a minute for them to all be running around crazy everywhere checking out everything! You don't really realize how many piglets 24 piglets is till they are spread out all over the shed jumping and running simultaneously!
This is one of the white pigs meeting his half brothers and sisters for the first time. Later on in the evening the sows all laid down to feed the babies and the piglets thought they just found the worlds largest buffet! They went from pig to pig trying to eat from every nipple at the same time! After a while they ended up back with their mothers but it took a little while.
Steven was worried that Red Balls would be upset with loosing his women and would put up a fight when we put him back in his own lot. Red Balls didn't waste long in taking advantage of the quite time and quickly went into his nest and within minutes was sound asleep! I think this is how a lot of men like to deal with newborns, or at least would like to!
Next order of business for the night was feeding Legacy. He is still sharing a pen with the feeder pigs and the new Berkshire gilts. I have the pen set up to limit the pigs so only the little ones can get in to eat and sleep in this pen. That way the sows don't bully them out of the feeder. The first couple of days Legacy stayed away from them but now he doesn't seem to care at all and even sleeps with them! He is like a big furry warm blanket so if I were the pigs I would cuddle with him also!
Apparently I wasn't getting to the part where I give him his milk fast enough as he was giving me the "look"!
Next I wanted to share a couple of pics from work. As I have stated before I went to college for horticulture, landscaping, and nursery, and I work full time for Enviroscapes in Louisville Ohio. I am a project manager there and work on mostly large jobs. However, there are times when some specialty work comes up that needs my attention and I am always happy to help out. This time the specialty work was about 30 - 30' tall white pines that have been sheared every other year since they were planted. The salesman asked me to try to clean them up and reshape them again with the power shears. I tried this with the first couple and didn't like the results so I decided to hand prune them an give them a more natural look. If you look at the picture below you will see the one right behind the lift is done. I was working on the one to the left of that one and you can see how misshapen the rest are. Due to the large size of the trees we brought in a lift to speed up the process and allow us unlimited access to the tops.
Due to the wet conditions, and the fact that it never got cold enough this winter to freeze the ground, we needed to bring in the dozer to pull the lift through the wet spots. Also, you will notice my helper and trainee for the day standing amongst the trees for a size reference. Below is a picture of me in the lift above the trees.
To some the above task may not seem like a big deal, however, I am quite scared of heights. I always have been. So going up in the lift at first was a little scary but by the end of the day I was able to move it around without any trouble. I am not saying I could work on a sky scraper, but I can at least run and work from a lift without any problems now.
I also want to show a couple of before and after pics of a couple of other trees I trimmed up.
First was a weeping norway spruce.
It had a lot of dead in it and was touching the ground. So I cleaned it up and lifted it a little.
Below is all the stuff that came out of it. You can see it is mostly all dead material. Until removed the dead material will continue to build and will keep the tree from growing well.
Next was a crab apple at the entrance to the home. It has been pruned in the past but was pruned incorrectly. In the past someone was simply trimming of the long shoots across the top and not thinning or looking for problem branches.
Plants bring many forms of interest to the landscape/garden. Some of these are smell, texture, color, flowers, shapes, branching structures, etc. A crap apple of this form brings all of these. However, if incorrectly maintained you will lose or lessen many of them. If you compare the photos you will notice that you can see the elaborate branching structure in the after pic but not in the before pic. Also, by removing the excess unproductive and dead branches you will add extra root system support to the remaining portions of the plant increasing the smell and color during blooming!
I have a corral burst crab apply in front of my house that I am training to be a flat disc. I will take photos of some of my specialty plants around the house this spring to show how I trim and maintain them.
Lastly I would like to leave you with a very great sign of the early onset of spring. I was walking from the house back to the barn this afternoon and noticed a noise that I haven't heard in several months. It was the chirping and chattering of red winged black birds! After quickly looking around I found there was a large flock of them gathering in the hickory trees down by the pasture. They are early this year as I usually don't see them till end of march or into April. We also have cardinals back already. I expect to see a robin any day now. Once they arrive you know it is gonna get warm soon!
The last guest to arrive is usually the Mocking Bird. We have one that has claimed our TV antenna as the center of his area and he spends every summer day singing to us! I can't wait to hear him again.
Sorry this post was so long but hopefully I gave everyone some knowledge they didn't have before and brightened everyone's day!
Goodnight!
Kenny
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