Saturday 24 April 2010

pigs in space

We've finally moved the pigs from their hovel


to heaven.........



It was funny watching Rick struggle to catch them, mud everywhere, pigs flying, rick sweating and swearing, one moment he had them, the next they'd leapt out of his arms, trying to walk them on their hind legs faired no better, nor did trying to get them into a sack, it was all like something out of a rodeo. Finally, he resorted to lassoing them with a dog lead and carrying them.



The dogs were locked in to the other side of the chicken coop and Fred went absolutely ballistic as he's grown rather fond of the pigs and was distressed that they were being harmed or worse! You can imagine the din, huge whining, howling dog and ear piercing shrieks from the pigs.

A bucket of food soon restored the pigs humor, and they settled in nicely, in fact a little too nicely........

About an hour later, the male took a bath in the too small water bucket, tipped it over, and the two of them got cosy in their wallow......



After getting down and dirty (literally), the male started behaving like a hooligan, kicking and dragging the water bucket around and tearing up and down the campo. It was all rather lovely, we thought they must be very happy. Well they were, what was really going on was a lot of foreplay. They played bite chase, then pin the tail on the donkey, to coin a phrase.

They were at it all afternoon, and every so often the male would take a lap of honour.



He seemed to have grown a few inches, well in his and perhaps his partner's eyes anyway.

Tuesday 20 April 2010

a taste of things to come


We've picked our first forced rhubarb today

first peas in flower

Over-wintered onions and garlic

Over-wintered chard

Over-wintered broad beans

We've already planted over 1000 potatoes!!, broadcast various seeds all over the remaining pig meadow,( incidentally everything is coming up, albeit in clumps, but that's fine). I also threw millions of sunflower seeds on to the pig meadow, I'd saved them thinking the chickens would like them, they didn't. So i'll have another massive crop this year.

I've sown parsnip (three varieties), spring onion (white lisbon), 3 varieties of carrots and 2 of beetroot. All the plants on the veranda are now awaiting transportation to the farm, hardening off and planting out. I can't wait!!!!!