After taking a week off for a trip to Empire Farm Days, we return with an update from the farm show.  We also share the story of a sick pig on the farm who contracted weaning swine meningitis and what we did to get Mr Green Beans back to health.

We tour the Veggie Patch to talk about all the harvested and put up foods Kelli has been making / freezing / canning as she's enjoying a greate vegetable garden season this year.  The homestead is certainly going to be prepared for the polar vortex this winter!

There's also a bit of fun discussions around the farm this week too!

This episode won't go down as one of the most exciting or passionate - but we do talk about the status of things mid-summer around the farm.  We continue to prep the pasture for the piglet weaning, the layers are laying and the vegetable garden and green house is producing LOTS of fresh produce this time of year.

In the We Eat Good segment Farmer Kelli talks about some of her favorite recipes for the fresh veggies that are piled on the counters this time of year.  They are all paper printed recipes so no links - but pay attention and she tells you where to find them or what to Google.

You might find some things here:

http://www.chickenthistlefarm.com/blog/tag/recipe

or here

http://www.chickenthistlefarm.com/blog/category/recipes

This weeks farming updatesinclude our experience this week processing chickens on anotehr farm as helpers.  We also moved the pigs to fresh pasture and are getting ready for weaning.  Finally the vegetable garden and the greenhouse are producing all sorts of fresh veggies...  so Farmer Kelli takes us through what they are and what she has been doing with them.

In the Coopcast Community segment we catch up on the listener backlog of emails, posts, tweets and all sorts of other forms of questions.  From a solider in Afgahanastan to listeners in Europe to the ever popular Doctor Who and Star Trek questions - we try and answer them all.

In a Coopcast produced and directed by Farmer Andy...  things in this episode don't follow any stinkin agenda! 

This episode discusses the setup and work that goes into chicken processng BEFORE the actual chicken processing event.  There's a lot more than just catching and plucking involved on a well run chicken processing event and we thought it might be worth while sharing those stories and preps as well.

We then share a bit of a retrospective on the actual events of the chicken rocessing day and how we run the event.

Finally we have a Farmers Choice segment that answers so many of the continual questions and misinformation out there about the Cornish Cross chickens we raise.

After a week of on farm vacation and frozen fresh fruit libations enjoyed on the deck, we are back with a bunch of updates around the pastured chickens, a recent hoophouse project and the vegetable gardens.  We also talk about the pigs and some general happenigns around the farm.

In the Veggie Patch we talk a lot about the success of the peas, the success we have had training and pruning the tomato plants this year and an update on our mulching.

This week on Close Encounters with Free Ranging Farmers on the Front Porch - we talk about a seemingly non-farm thing...  The recent firing of "shock jock" (what a stupid title) Anthony Cumia from Sirius XM's Opie and Anthony show and why EVERYONE should be outraged.  Not at his tweets and not at his show...  but becasue it appears anyone, anytime, can be fired for their opinions when not at work if they are unpopular, unaccepted, not politically correct or whatever.  Think this has no impact on you - what if there's "outrage" becasue people don't like you promoting an "unsafe" food - something, maybe, like raw milk?

This weeks updates are pretty simple.  We talk about piglets and names, the chickens in the pasture and some a la carte CSA shares.

Then we jump into the Farmers Choice that Kelli sprung on Andy - "are you a part-time farmer". What does that phrase mean, if anything. What decisions are impacted when you are "part-time" or not deriving all your income off the farm.  There's a bit of debate and some good conversations around this topic.

The updates this week start with the farming weather - and the fact it's been unusually "normal".  We have moved the chickens to pasture on a solid growth of clover andthey are loving it.  The pigs are gowing well and weaning is a few weeks away. In the vegetable garden the peas and eveything else is growing and healthy.  Even the weeds are under control with the mulching effort we have undertaken this year.

In the CoopCast Community we wanted to take a bit to thank all the listeners and farmers who shared their thougths and good wishes with us following episode 110.  We talk a little about some of the questions people asked and share some of our thoughts about raising pigs going forward in the future.

This weeks updates include the latest on the 7 surviving piglets and the status of their name selection.  We talk about the pastured broilers in the brooder and how they are doing as well. We also check in on the laying hens and the egg eating issues.

In the Veggie Patch we talk about the status of the garden and fencing.  We talk about a great find at a local garden center to help with the soil quality and quantity in the green house and we also talk about this years potato patch plans.

This week we are just doing a bunch of updates (since there's a lot to share).  We talk about how the piglets are doing well even after the traumatic events covered in episode 0110. 

Then we tell a story of how great and helpful the United States Postal Service </sarcasm> was when they seemed to have lost our box of broiler chickens. But have no fear, we found them and we share how they are doing in the brooder.

In the Veggie Patch we talk about the progress and planting of the vegetable garden now that the official growing season has begun. We got in the tomatoes, peppers, eggplant and a bunch more over the long weekend.  We also talk about a listener inspired mulching session around the asparagus and rhubarb in the garden.

This episode is a frank and honest retelling of the harrowing farrowing experiences of 2014 on our small farm.  From the highs of hand delivering piglets to the lows of losing a breeding sow, this is as honest of a farming story as you may ever hear.