Pig Gave birth to just One piglet? Could have been 12.

The boys have come and got me this morning. Our pig has given birth. Apparently there's one. Hey, how's she doing with it?

Well, she's eating.

She's eating. She's not eating it, is she? Okay, but there's only one. Hey, one is all right. This is her very first pig birth. They don't give— they don't necessarily give a lot on their first. What you want to see is that they can keep one, at least one, alive. And if they can't, we have to think seriously about eating her and replacing the mama. So if she's only given one— oh my goodness, she's gonna keep it alive! I can't wait to get over there. Going as fast as I can. Oh. Oh, little thing, little thing. Has she been, uh, nursing it?

I don't think I haven't been down here for it.

Why are you laying down over here? We've given her normal ration plus all she can eat now that she's going to be lactating. I want to get a close-up shot of the baby, but I don't want to go in there because I can't move very fast right now because she gets aggressive. I'm gonna put you guys on this tripod and try to hang it over. Oh, maybe if you could stand on that board, you could hang it down with the tripod. Pigs, because they can give birth every little less than 4 months and give so many, they aren't quite as careful with them as a— as an animal like a human who gives a birth, uh, just gives one and it you know, they're pregnant 9 months. Other animals like cows, they're a little more nurturing because they just give one and it's about every year. But Cheesecake, we need you to at least care for one. Will you please? Will you please do it? This was our first shot at a breeding sow, and we have another one coming up and growing up. We're gonna leave you guys here on time-lapse to supervise. Maybe she's gonna have more. Hopefully she'll take care of this one. Has anybody seen her taking care of it?

Oh, I've seen her.

Oh, you have?

Yes.

So she's not completely ignoring it. The piglet's up and about walking. Mom, you're gonna come over and care, or are you still in birth? Well, she's eating. She's been eating the whole time we've been down here, pretty much. She's letting her nurse. You have no idea how happy that makes me. Look, look, she's taking care of her wine babies. That one's dry. I don't know, have enough pig experience to know if they have them really quick back to back, because it's been a while since she's had that one. I mean, all morning there hasn't been another one. She didn't lay down and kill that one, which they can do. They can be careless like that. We gotta go, we gotta go move the other— the Three Little Pigs. Picking Sally this morning. I ran out of fuel out there with Willie, so we got some fuel. Hopefully he'll start. Diesel's gonna be a little tricky starting after running out of fuel. Willy started right up. Mom called, she came and checked on the pigs, and it had fallen through. I mean, we fixed it since. I think that will hold it. We moved the water. That was— the water was bulging this out. And it caused a crack and the little piglet fell out. But she's a good mom. I picked up the piglet, it squealed, uh, and she was upset about it, which is a good sign. I guess that's gonna be it. We didn't expect a big litter first time. Kind of would have liked to seen 3 in case she lays on that one. We've had a few detours. It's actually milking time. I think it'll be okay because Phyllis is used to being milked second and we don't have We're done milking Flossy, so I think we got a little bit of time. Look at this, look at this till job. First thing we got to do is get the water over so it starts to fill. Okay, try to pour it out more than— that's a little trickier. Whoa, I'm super excited about this. This is a weaker part of the pasture. We're going to be able to seed this. They've brought up some seeds, I'm sure. They fertilized up there in the corner past where Jonah is. We're a little bit rusty at this. We should have given them a little bit of feed, not all of it, but let's just get them distracted. There you go. They brought nets, but they're not the exact same kind, so we don't know if it'll be a nice square the same size as this. Then might not be as long. So they're, they're telling me let's feed them over here. Let's get them over here, and then let's hustle and let's leapfrog this net. Let's pick up that net. We can leave this wall, and then we can put the rest of the net right there. These pigs have to move today. It is the 12th day. You do not want your pigs to be in one spot more than 12 days. You're talking about parasite pressures, uh, you're talking about tearing up the ground too much. Okay, drag that feeder through. Nice, they went up. One didn't go, guys. There you go, it went. All right, put that back. Come grab this one real quick. Oh, this is not— maybe not— this is maybe not gonna work. All right, if they're not gonna stay over there, they're gonna stay here. I would have much rather just brought another net, set it up, but maybe that's because I'm crippled right now and they're, they're, they're, they're feeling pretty good. When she gets over, let's put the fence back and then there'll be no backtracking. Good. Now set that up and run and help Rune so they don't go past him before he puts the net up. He's almost got it, man. These are the wanderinest pigs. They eat, wander around, and they don't follow a bucket. They're very calm. They don't, they don't come in They don't test this fence. They have one 2 feet away from the fence, which is good. Put the end one in, Arun, right there, and we'll just go higher up the hill. There you go. And we'll just pull it— we'll pull that corner different. Yeah, we could go up more right here, but that's okay. We got the net around them. Now we can adjust it. They're getting the mineral— minerals over— kelp, NutriBalancer, and charcoal. I don't think they need the shed in this paddock because they have these nice walnuts, but I will put it in there just so they can have choices. Mucho manure. This is going to come back so rich. Again, you want to fill in our holes? One there, one here. It's all down there. We have a source fence. Oh, be careful, the electric is down there. Go ahead. And that's just a straight fence that goes way out through there, and then we just build we just built off of that and it makes it super easy. We don't have to, uh, move our energizer. We already have the wall, one wall, and so then one net makes a bigger paddock. We figured these things out over time, and then moving them is not really a big deal. It's going to take us like 10 minutes. Sock it to them, Maroon! Let's pull their feeders up though, they're going to probably knock them into this fence. We got the fence hot. I'm real happy about this spot for the pigs because they got a couple of trees here. They only had their shed, but I'd rather them have trees. We are in the gnarliest pasture. I think this is 35, 35-degree slope. It's crazy. I mean, look how she has to stand there. I'm wondering where level is, probably about right there. It's crazy. All right, we've got stuck on this hill before, but it was raining. I think we'll do it, no problem. Rebecca, what should we do on the meat saw today? Just the legs, or you want to do the legs and the wheels?

Just the legs.

You want to be daring? Well, hey there, did you just get up from a nap? It's almost 10. Let's just go out and work there till 10:30. Whatever we get done is what we get done. Something is better than nothing. That's the 1% rule. 1% change every day, you've doubled in 72 days. With 30 minutes, we'll definitely get the back legs on. We might be able to get the back wheels on. As much as I want to keep going, it's quitting time. Just gotta pace ourselves. Got other stuff to do. What we got done— we got further than I thought. Maybe we got the legs on. We made a, um, let's just call it an axle. Now we'll mount the wheels to the bottom of that, and then all we'll have to do is recreate these legs up here. There's legs holding this up. We'll have to take those off and remeasure. So really at this rate, 1, 2 more sessions. I talked to Rebecca though, you know, her tomatoes are coming on, she's wanting to make sauce, so that's gonna have to— that's gonna have to get on our list. Took a little break there. I didn't get my bath this morning for my reactive arthritis because, uh, well, we were messing with the newborn pig, and I'm feeling good. I I only had to run one heater today, Rebecca.

Oh, that's good.

So I'm having a good day. I'm not going to take my pain medicine again for lunch, and I might even try not taking it tomorrow morning. What do you think? I don't know about that. Look at all this too, Rebecca, right here. The professional market gardeners like Casey Oswitch say harvesting is half the work.

It's half.

It's a lot. That means we got a lot of work coming on. Yeah, but I'm starting to feel better. I really am. I've had 2 good days in a row. I'm keeping up. Look who made it through the night! Oh, rats, eat your heart out. Well, duck, ducks make mess. We, we cleaned it out this morning, believe it or not. You can turn it over and let it refresh. Just pour it into the bedding. It'll help break the bedding down.

Yeah, the water.

Yeah, we cover it up in the morning and they get fresh dry bedding. And all that's dry, so they had Dressed places, that's what's important. A little wet by the water. That's ducks for you, babe. I know what some of y'all are saying— I've never seen Justin without his hat. Well, uh, I guess I left it at the bath. I have the shaved head. I shaved my head on a zero with a— with clippers, and my beard on a two because that's the easiest. Plus I'm balding up here a little bit.

Did Cuppy make it?

Cuppy made it. Cuppy the duck that made it to the cup.

We don't even know which one.

That sounds like a children's book. Cuppy the duck that went into the cup.

Why is he so tiny?

They're so little because usually there's, there's a bunch. I mean, look how many teeth she's got. She's got 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, like 7. She's got 14. Is it a boy or a girl, Lily? How can you tell? Oh, I think it's a girl. I kind of would hope it's a boy because it's a solo. That means we can't take the offspring and put them alone somewhere. She's gonna have to stay with maybe the, the mom.

Is it a girl or a boy?

Which means when she goes back in the boar, get bred early. We don't want that. Is it a girl? Yeah, it's a little bit more of a management issue, but we'll work it out because we have the other sow. Look how able that pig is already, day one, just climbed that mound. It's definitely nursing and healthy. A day-old pig that's not healthy cannot do that.

Look, look at that.

And there was some thought that maybe she— if since she only had one, she could have eaten other pigs.

Oh, the other babies.

Yeah, but I don't think so because she was She has pigged out on grain. Yeah, I mean, obviously she just gave birth, she needs to, but we're giving her all the grain she can eat now that she's—

we've rationed her, but now that she's lactating, we sock it to her. Henry's asleep, we've got the monitor. Uh, Josiah's in there. Ooh, romance! Ooh, I like it.

A whole, uh, the whole walk around the farm, see what's going on, see what needs our attention next.

I know. What, what, what is the biggest problem? That's what we're looking at here. What has to be highest on the problem-solving list? What would you have done if this whole row would have been successful? Oh, I would have— this is like 8 feet, 9 feet tall.

I would have picked and frozen a ton, and then I would have given the rest to, um, because you are going to have the problem with, with peppers.

You're going to have way more than we can eat fresh.

I want to cut them up too though and freeze them for cooking.

Look at these tomatoes, Rebecca. Look how big.

And that one's really big.

You're on it. And we will have enough. Look at this row. This row's jamming though.

Look at this.

The green tomatoes.

Wow, look how beautiful. Nice.

Smells so good.

I thought you were gonna kiss it. Kiss the tomato.

Yeah, you want to kiss it?

Kiss the tomato. What's going on?

It's been dripping all night.

What has?

The drip irrigation.

The drip? The water's on?

Yeah, sorry.

Oh, she came to right here and was like, gasped. Yeah, the water's been on all night. Whoops. That's why we come out and check. It needed our attention. The water needed to be turned off. Thankfully it's drip and it's not like crazy. Taking pictures of her taking pictures. Thank you guys so much for hanging with us. Thank you, thank you, thank you. We love and appreciate you. For watching our show out of all the things you could be doing. We love and appreciate that from the bottom of our heart. There is one more call to action for Abundance Plus, our new series on there with Roots and Refuge, Jess and Jeremiah Sowards. It's called Wilder Still. They're setting up a whole new homestead starting from scratch. It's going to be a great adventure. Right now Episode 1 is already there. You can get that and all the other goodies in Abundance Plus, our show Rooted. And we've got bonuses. We've got a Wild There Still sticker, we've got a PDF on fall gardening from Jessica, and we have early access to their podcast. But what's so special about this, guys, is Abundance Plus is a network. It's not the Justin Rhodes Show over on Abundance Plus. We've brought in the Sowards. We've brought in Bo and Kelly Brotherton, Dan Oman, Jason and Lorraine from Sow the Land. All kinds of contributors in there. So I encourage you to just get it. We doubled them. We've doubled membership in 2 months just from launching the streaming app. We would love— and people are keeping it and loving it and hanging on. To give you an example, If 4 people sign up for the free trial when that's available, uh, 3 stay. So that's saying something. 75% of the people stay. So I would encourage you to check that out at abundanceplus.com. Use offer code JUSTIN through August 15th and you get 15 or 10% off.