shiny happy piggies

I read that we needed to be grooming the pigs with a dandy brush, well I don't happen to have one of those to hand, so when I went riding at Sophie's on monday I had a look at a dandy brush and bought a much cheaper equivalent from a local builders yard (€0.95 actually). The pigs loved being groomed and it was quite satisfying as all the mud and flaky stuff flew off them, it also gave me a chance to check them over and discovered that the hooligan male had cut his face in several places, more about that in a minute.After grooming you're supposed to cover them in neetsfoot oil, well I don't have any of that either so I used linseed oil, which Rick assures me is just as good. Needless to say they now look filthy again, but we'll go through the ritual of this grroming malarky cause it's quite nice and a bit like having two tiny ponies!!!



The reason the hooligan pig had cut his face is because he insists on tearing around the campo and charging into the house that rick built them, which, as it's made out of corrugated tin, has sharp edges.



I came up with what I thought was a genius plan to use some old hose, cut it and wrap around the edge of the tin and stick it all on with gaffer tape. This I did. Feeling rather proud of myself for not just coming up with a cunning plan but also implementing it (obviously with some fuss thrown in for good princess farmer measure!).
I was mighty pissed off to discover that hooligan was slowly and not quietly ripping off the tape and chewing up the hose. GRRRRRR





His cuts healed overnight, I will slowly be less precious about their welfare, not neglecting their well-being just treating them more like livestock rather than pets. Otherwise I am never going to be able to eat them.

Now about that broody hen, I'll tell you about her later

a long whey to go....

pig food is expensive and they eat a lot of it, we supplement them with all sorts of kitchen vegetable waste and i've now persuaded one of the local caterers to give me all their veg scraps, which is great. What we really wanted was some whey, first find the word in the dictionary, mmm doesn't exist, hunt around on the internet, found a word, no-one knew what it was. Imagine the conversation, "you know, the liquid after make cheese", cos that's probably what my portuguese sounds like to a portuguese person. We happened to pass a sign on the road the other day pointing to a farm, the sign had a big cheese on it, ooohh, lets go there and ask them for, oh christ what's that word again, anyway had to have the whole, "you know, the liquid after make cheese" conversation again and lo and behold we have been granted as much as we want whenever we want!!!!! hurrah.


Soro de leite coalhado (which actually translates as serum from clotted milk, no wonder we couldn't remember what it was called, or that anyone knew what we were talking about).
I went today to get our first load and decided to count how many bends there were between us and them. What am I doing counting bends when i should be concentrating on driving, well, becoming more portuguese I guess, not really paying attention, using all of the road instead of my half and generally not paying attention (did I say that already!). 94 in all, some of them the kind that you have to change gear on, (down,not up!!) and various obstacles to veer around, including animals, people and rubbish and and the occasional fallen tree.

buckets of beans

The garden is coming along nicely, apart from having lost most of the brassicas I put in, cabbages and swedes, not too bothered about the swede as we didn't eat that many last year and ended up giving most away to english friends. The days I put them in where fruit days and ordinarily would have been fine, but the temperature suddenly shot up into the 30's which finished them off, I tried shading them etc. but it looks like they are dead.



The beans and peas are going great guns and we've harvested tonnes of broad beans. I have tried to get some of our neighbours and friends to eat broad beans raw, trying to explain that they are delicious when eaten raw, young and small, anyone would think that we were trying to get them to eat dog poo or something. Tonight our friend who is always trying to ply us with rice pudding and making us eat all sorts of portuguese delicacies, literally spat out a broad bean in front of me, suggesting that it was the most appalling thing she had ever tasted. I said I felt rather insulted as i was constantly having to taste her food and feign deliciousness, purely out of politeness. Obviously doesn't work the other way round.

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.

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!!!!!

Easter fun

pigging out on pumpkin

Pet destruction

I have spent the whole of my "growing" life having to deal with Lulu (my cat that Rick hates) eating the tops off sweetcorn and bean seedlings. Here in the flat in Portugal I have a veranda that has double closing doors, so I can propogate everything we need and keep the cat out. Great.
I had literally turned my back for a second whilst wandering in and out potting on and this is what I came back to.



Living in a village has some advantages and quite a lot of disadvantages, I think I freaked out the local council workers screaming and throwing my cat down the stairs...she's alright and we've kissed and made up

Trench warfare

Traditionally (in UK) you put your spuds in on Good Friday, but that doesn't fit with my bio-dynamic planting.
We have three full root days, today, tomorrow and Wednesday. Rick ( like most of us) has eyes bigger than his stomach and is always worried that we won't have enough potatoes to see us through. (he's usually right!).
I explained, in a much earlier entry about crop rotation, so I won't go into it again, anyway we will always grow more crops in the "A" category than any other, so this year we've had to rob some of the newly rotavated pig meadow. We are also experimenting with the Portuguese way of planting, keeping some chitted potatoes from last years crop, cutting in half or thirds and placing in a hole. Rick has dug 360 holes!!!



and 12 trenches.

Parsnip chips

We did wonder whether we talked too much about food and had almost decided to stop posting entries about it, but on reflection, seeing as mostly what we are about is growing food to eat, we shall carry on.




Home-grown parsnips, chipped and cooked in our own olive oil, dipped in home-made chilli jam and mayonaise

Ugly Betty bites the bullet

Both the new black chickens had started laying, Black Betty first, Ugly laid her first the other day, when I say lay I use the term loosely, she was wondering around with it half hanging out of her vent, I helped it out, it wasn't a properly formed egg, which is not unusual for the first couple, however, she had also managed to prolapse her vent in the process. On closer inspection and some chin rubbing we decided to give her some time to recover. She did. I did some research meanwhilst on the internet and although not common it can happen that chickens vents prolapse. You can manage it by separating them to prevent caniballism (which would eventually lead to death), pushing the prolapse back in and restrict their diet to prevent them from laying, all of that takes space, time and knowledge. Time I have, the other two I don't. I arrived at the coop this morning to discover that she had laid another perfect egg but with another not perfect egg attached to it, her prolapse was even worse and she wasn't eating.

It's an awful day when you have to make the decision to cull livestock and I know I wouldn't be human to dislike it immensely. Sorry Betty

pigs; pencils and pines

Thankfully the weather has turned and we are now having glorious sunny days. Rick has been busy cutting posts (that look like giant pencils) for the pig pen, I have been burning alot of pine brashings and other rubbish and watching the pigs alot

here piggy piggy

Today, at 8.30 this morning, to be precise, the pigs arrived. Both of them. Black and hairy. They are not being named, for obvious reasons, but will be mentioned in dispatches, and all being well, will be eaten, sometime a year or so from now. Currently, they are being fed a complete food, with any additional food scraps from the kitchen. Later when they are big enough to live out, they will be foraging as well, in the part of the meadow set aside for them, then on the root crops grown for them, and hopefully tethered in the forest, after chestnuts and acorns.

With any luck, a year from now, they should be heading toward the dreamed of 200kg of a top baconer, the smoke house, the freezer, and the kitchen. It may take a bit longer, more or less, we've never kept pigs before, and they are supposed to be a slow growing breed. It has been mentioned, that they are some of the finest ham makers on the planet, we are hoping sausage and bacon too.

Day of first egg, part two

Ugly Betty has laid her first egg, terrible racket she made too....

Welcome to meadow 3

Finally the locals are taking us seriously. Last year we asked our neigbour to rotavate meadow 3 for us, "oh, it's too wet", "oh, it's too dry", "oh' it's too hot" etc. etc.
Last year we asked the local butchers to get us some livestock, ok, it was goats not pigs, the goats turned up dead, not much use to us.
You could put it down to mis-communication or total lack of communication. But it seems that we can now speak enough Portuguese to make ourselves understood, or they are finally taking us seriously or both.
We asked the local butchers to get us two black pigs from the Alentejo area. We want to keep them outside and they cope better with the hot weather due to being hairy. Most locals keep pigs but inside in caves, they never see the light of day. That's not how we want to rear our animals.
"Oh, no too difficult to find", "oh, not available", "oh, very expensive". Three days later Carlos shouted up to me from the bottom of the steps where we live and announced that the pigs are coming!!!! on Sunday.
We will keep them on meadow three, split into 3 to follow a three year rotation. 1/3rd for them to live on and fertilize, rotatvate and clean. 1/3rd planted with root crops, for them to move on to in the final months and 1/3rd with green manure and then root crops again and first 1/3rd.
Our neighnbour, after pleading with him came and rotavated the 2/3rd's yesterday, it's not how I like to do things and all the weeds have been chopped up into a million pieces, but the pigs can eat all of that. All that's left is for Rick to build a coral and a house for them. In the meanwhilst they will live in the exisiting house with access to a little bit of outdoors.