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In May of 2012 we purchased 2 wiener pigs from a local Craigslist ad for $80 each. They were a couple of castrated males. One was a pink pig, the other was black and pink.

Pigs in their dog run on their first day home.

We kept them in a 7′ x 12′ dog run for a few days until we bought 6 16′ x 3′ hog panels and 12 5′ T-Posts.

The pigs main job was to clear one of our pastures that had become overgrown with salmon berries and blackberries. Using the hog panels and T-posts I assembled a 16′ x 32′ run for them to live in. I made a 3 walled shelter from 3 pallets that had plywood tops. This wasn’t the best shelter for them but it did keep them dry.

Pigs in their run.

The two pigs immediately began rooting up all of the grass in search of yummy roots and grubs. When they were little it took them a couple of weeks to almost completely plow up the 16′ x 32′ run. They also didn’t seem to do a very good job at clearing the salmon berries or the blackberries by the root. Rather they did a better job of eating all the foliage and loosening up the ground. I later had to remove the bulk of the salmon berries by hand.

After a couple of weeks, all rooted up.

After they had removed most of the vegetation and uprooted most of the rocks (we have very rocky ground) I would move their pen and they would begin all over again. After a month or two, as they began to grow in size and strength, I would have to move their pen about once a week. When they were about 4 months old, they would finally start doing a better job of removing most of the salmon berries and black berries by the root, making my job of removing the rest a lot easier.

It wasn’t long before they learned that they could push their way under the hog panels. I then had to string a hot wire around the inside of the pen about a foot or so from the ground. This worked really well at keeping them in.

My freezer stocked with 300lbs of pork

One day I didn’t hook up the hot wire after moving them and the pigs escaped. When I came home from work I found their pen empty and they were nowhere to be found on our property. I started to freak our a little and began to search all over looking for them. After about 30 min of searching, I found the pigs hanging out in one of my neighbors yard with the neighbors. Luckily they were happy to see me and followed me home. After that incident I made sure their hot wire was always on.

We finally slaughtered the pigs In January 2013.  Mike Erickson from Erickson’s Mobile Slaughtering came over with his truck and did a very professional and humane slaughtering of my two pigs. Mike has been slaughtering animals for nearly all of his life and was very proficient at dressing them out. He charged me $120 for the both of them which included dropping them off at Stewart’s Meats in Yelm.

My two pigs weighed in at 300lbs fully dressed.

I’ve taken the 13 skills challenge at www.13skills.com

I will be posting my progress here.

For now the skills I have chosen are:

• Animal Husbandry
• Beekeeping
• Permaculture Design
• Hunting
• Aquaponics
• Fermenting
• Gardening
• Plant Identification
• Fruit Orchard
• Knots
• Bartering
• Canning
• Wood Working

Find out more at http://13skills.com/member/43/kolomona

I just bought a tea plant from Rock Ridge Orchards in Enumclaw.

Judy Bennett the owner of Rock Ridge was extremely helpful helping me to learn about my new Camellia Sinensis Sochi plant.

I was pretty excited to find out that there was a variety of tea plant the can tolerate the freezing of the Pacific NW. This variety of tea plant comes from the Russian area of Sochi.

I planted it on a gentle sloped hillside among the protection of several young alder trees.

I dug a very large hole and put plenty of compost, watered it thoroughly and used plenty of bark mulch on top. Hopefully in a year or so I’ll have lots of tea!

If you would like to learn everything there is to know about tea check out the Steeping Around Podcast by Manish Shah of The Maya Tea Company.

Here are some pictures of the tea plant.

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Season 2 Episode

This episode of the Kolomona Show is about my garden and my now dead hard drive.

This show isn’t all that exciting, I’m hoping to start cranking out more shows with actual content. I’m just starting to get familiar with talking in front of a mic again.

Links mentioned in show

www.permies.com

So I’ve been doing some gardening recently.

Here’s what I have planted.

• Bush beans
• Bush peas
• Pole peas
• Broccoli
• Radishes
• Zucchini
• Cucumbers
• Bell peppers
• Jalapenos
• Thyme
• Rosemary
• Oregano
• Mint
• Green onions
• Garlic
• Onion

My garden is located on an old chicken run and the soil seems to be pretty good. Although there is a fir tree nearby that drops a lot of needles in my garden area.

Slugs have tried to murder my jalapeno and bell pepper plants. I’m not a big fan of using chemicals to kill them. I tried the beer thing for a while but that seems like such a waste. After reading the slugs thread at permies.com I learned that the slugs do not like to slither over copper. I had some scrap wiring lying around. I fashioned a couple of copper rings around the base of my plants and hoped for the best. When I went out in the garden the next day I noticed that the plants were untouched and there was a slug in the middle of a U-turn heading away from my bell pepper plant. I tried to take a picture but the batteries in my camera wouldn’t let me. So I think I’ve solved the slug problem for these two plants. My other plants for now seem to be a little more slug resilient, but I am keeping an eye on them.

Hopefully, I’ll have a good harvest. I’ll have to figure out how to preserve my excess produce. I expect to have a crap load of zucchini. I’d love to learn how to make pickled beans.

Here are some pics of my garden so far.

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In The Morning Everybody!

Welcome to the all new Kolomona Show.

I’ve been away from the podcast mic for a couple of years now. A lot has changed. My life is completely different than it was 2 years ago. In some ways better and in others worse.

Now I am concentrating each and every single day to make my life better and better.

These podcasts are just a venue for me to ramble into a microphone. They have no real meaning or direction at this time. Maybe they will morph into something great, maybe not. For the most part it’s just a way for me to vent a little and talk about the things that I am interested in.

If you like them, great, if not then just don’t listen.

Feel free to comment about them or not.

Hi I’m reviving the Kolomona Show Podcast.

I lost the original show notes for the first 4 shows, sorry

This is Season 1 Episode 4

Kolomona Show s1e3

Hi I’m reviving the Kolomona Show Podcast.

I lost the original show notes for the first 4 shows, sorry

This is Season 1 Episode 3

Hi I’m reviving the Kolomona Show Podcast.

I lost the original show notes for the first 4 shows, sorry

This is Season 1 Episode 2