I love the piglets.  Thirteen arrived last night.   Most are pink, a few are black or spotted.   They're very tactile when they are first born; almost connected; they much prefer to sleep touching each other. 

Of course, what's even better than touching the other piglets when you sleep is sleeping against mom. 

Each delicate little nose works.   They are 8 hours old.   They see me moving around and their eyes follow me but they know that they're safe with mom and don't move.  Mom is one of my oldest sows; an old hand at this, and she grunts at me when I come and check on her and the piglets.  The sow is really a sweet natured girl; I much prefer that to a sow that barks at me.  She grunts softly and then closes her eyes, trusting that I won't hurt her piglets.  I'm an old hand at this, too.  Everyone snug and warm and ok. 

they've formed 3 pig piles, all around mom.  Dozing and suckling, suckling and dozing.  The first couple of days of a piglets life are pretty simple. 

Rain and hope

It's been a rainy winter and spring.  Today the rain was falling so hard that little geysers would leap up when each drop fell.   I watched sheets of rain sweep across my fields, pooling on my driveway.  Slowly trickling down the cows back.  Rain. 

But out of every dark cloud there is a silver liner.  Ducks love the rain.  They'll stand in it for hours.  Puddles are little sanctuaries for the ducks; they'll duck their heads and quack and generally enjoy every one they run across.  They love it when the puddles are big, and deep isn't a problem when you can float.  The ducks LOVE this weather. 

I love the thought of the rain ending.  When it rains this hard it doesn't last long; and it's nice to see the sun peek through the black clouds.  Spring is coming. 

Buckets

Ran across a recycling place nearby that had a bunch of surplus food from a local chain of mega marts, and I was up at their facility grabbing a few tons of food when I noticed that they had pallets of plastic buckets.  Hundreds of them.   So I asked. 

"Well, those buckets are covered in cake frosting and sour cream.  So our regular recycler won't take them.  "  So what are you going to do with them?  "Well, we've been stockpiling them hoping to find a use for them". 

As a farmer, I cannot have enough plastic buckets.  As food dishes, water dishes, to hold commodities, to carry things, to store things... buckets are the glue that holds my farm chores together.  A little cake frosting and sour cream?  I've got a whole herd of animals that would like nothing better than clean each bucket with their tongues!

So yesterday I picked up about 400 plastic buckets for free. 

The  other item that they had in quantity that they couldn't get rid of were pallets.  These are pretty sturdy. 

They're constructed with chunks of 4x6, to standard pallet dimensions.  I use them under my baled hay to keep the bottom layers off the ground; for temporary storage of items out in the weather, and in my barn I have a pallet jack where I actually use them as pallets! 

Heck, worst comes to worst, there's a fair bit of firewood there. 

All in all a happy day.