Bethune Catholic

Last week I returned to my old Men's Prayer Group at my former parish after some 5 years absence. We pray the Liturgy of the Hours, discuss something (scripture, the sacraments, etc.) and then go to Mass. I think I'll try to make it from now on when I am in the city. It is very valuable for men to pray together. I have missed it unknowingly.

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We finally made some peanut butter from our fall harvest. I also made some 'diabetic' peanut butter. Both seem to be hits. We have a bunch more to make. We haven't decided whether to plant peanuts again - it may depend on whether the land made available to us again. The peanut hay proved very valuable as a supplement for our cows (still getting almost 4 gallons a day from Mabel). In truth, besides some peanut brittle at Christmas, we haven't really used the peanuts as much as the hay. But this is changing.

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Our litter of 13 piglets is coming along very nicely. I will start weaning them in another week or so. I think we are going to hold a few of these back to sell as bbq pigs around July 4th. But we'll see.

In the meantime, we have litters due April 15th, April 18th, and May 17th. We have a gamecock hen setting on a clutch of eggs in one of our farrowing houses. Fortunately, those eggs should hatch a few days before I need to move a sow into the farrowing house.

I mentioned we are raising some Cornish/Rock broilers .... but in the meantime, we had eaten one of the gamecocks hatched in October. Boy, now that was a delicious chicken-maybe the best I've ever had. Methinks that I won't do C/R broilers again. We are going to build our gamecock flock.

I looked yesterday and some radishes, swiss chard, and peas are poking their heads out of the ground. I spread some more manure yesterday and tilled some more garden plot.

Oremus pro invicem!