Growing problem

Our strange weather took another turn towards winter this morning so nothing got done outdoors until a full cooked and several cuppas. Finally the sleet stopped and the sun came out allowing some progress to be made in addressing a growing problem, the pigs.

These chubsters are now 20 days old and taking more room each day. We need an ark to house them and mum, not the floaty type but a bomb proof wooden house that stays dry and has room for a large quantity of pork. Based around two pallets which refused to be the same size in any way except in height, this construction will keep them off the floor, a rubber mat will cover the pallet slats, and out of the wind, rain and sun. Sections are ready to be moved to the new pig pen (where the fish farm was) in the morning when we hope to rehouse mum and piglets with minimum of fuss. This is likely to be quite entertaining as seven piglets unleashed on the smallholding will no doubt have their own sense of direction. I had a lot of help making the ark, the pocket rocket felt he had to inspect every aspect of construction.

Good news on the lamb chop front, Izzy, the small creature taken from death's threshold yesterday, was alive and well this morning and reunited with Springtime and her brother, Audi, in the sheep pen. Hourly checks have been in place to make sure they continue to thrive, Audi has no sense of direction and needs help finding the milkbar.

Miracle Grow

Its been a long Good Friday here at HQ, a good mix of fun and hard work spread out from dawn til dusk. Major job completed was the bas of the aviary, obviously we are expecting any finches or chicks to be massively heavy hence the six inch concrete base. This was the fault of the local builders merchant who dropped off six inch shuttering rather than the four inch requested but it was either delay the project further or cut two inches off the ones sent or just get on with it. The latter was chosen and despite having to wheel every barrow load from the runway, up the steep slope of "the lawn" (some of which can be seen in all its lush verdant goodness above) and having run the gauntlet of the assortment of animals who all thought wheelbarrow loads of concrete were worthy of inspection the majority of the mix ended up in more or less the right place and more or less level. Piglets aplenty here, Guinevere is acting funny, or perhaps it was last nights full moon, but she was staring into space and refusing to go to bed, perhaps she is an alien and wanting to phone home, anyway she got a new bed today on the just in case she drops a litter of piglets overnight principle. Iggle is nesting, she is in the berth inbetween Piggle and Morgana so is surrounded by trainee sausage.

Meanwhile Morgana's litter, the pig club recruits, are expanding rapidly. Here's one extremely good looking Berkalitza day one

and here's the same Berkalitza piglet day 12. A right chubster, talking of which Misty the explosive shitland looks a bit on the wide side thanks to Trevor ravishing her some 10 months ago, she should be due around the 28th of this month give or take a week.

The poor girl is feeling the weight

and needs a wide load sign from this angle.

Micro pigs...its a crock!

I was going to write about how my interfering with the water supply once again caused a slight problem as Steve the ever so patient electrician called while we were out and found the reservoir wasn't full. Thinking that I would have followed his strict instructions of "Don't touch" to the letter, he carefully checked his work, checked the switches, fuses, and finding the pump working but no water coming out he disconnected the power supply, waited patiently in the cold damp foggy air perched on a muddy slope and when he judged a suitable time had passed he "energised" the pump again and to his relief water then came out, but in a location some thirty metres from where he was expecting it as yours truly had diverted the supply, temporarily, and then compounded the crime by leaving everyone to guess what I had done. Problem solved, again, he left a note on the door in capitols, "PUMPS FIXED DO NOT TOUCH!" I think he is trying to tell me something.

No, I'm not going to write about that as I am going to have a rant about T Cup Pigs or Micro Pigs, two pictured here, honest guv, yours for only £650 quid, make a real nice pet, so cute, every ones getting one, get one, or two while you can. The prompt for this rant is yet again the TV, which is sometimes on and often shouted at (I'm of that age now, I shout at the TV, sometimes the radio, and can be found muttering when reading a newspaper article) and the presenter of a prime time chat show has just had pig shoved in his jacket telling the audience what a good idea it is to have a mini pig. Now the audience ooooed and aaahed, and the little pig did what piglets worldwide do, looked cute, and no doubt the gullible will no trot off, search the internet and buy a micro pig, T cup pig or mini pig for extortionate prices and all will be well in their world.
But it wont be, because there is no such thing, its a con.
The micro pig is so small as its a baby, a few days, weeks old. It might be a small breed but its still a baby pig and will, in less than 12 months, be a huge big adult pig, perhaps weighing a 500 kg and depending on how its feeling, that's a lot of angry pork stood in the hallway trying to get out of your front door to terrorise the neighbours West Highland White Terrier. It will dig, chew, pooh, sweat, push things over, run through things, like doors, patio windows, sit in ponds and generally do exactly as it wants, as its a pig, and that's what they do. A tale we heard a while back was of two boars who did not want to go in a trailer so put their snouts under the 4by4 waiting to tow it and tipped the vehicle over. And if you have a pig, you need more than a pig, you need two, as they get lonely, and if you have a boar they slobber and dribble when they come over all Barry White and get in the mood for luuuurve. You also need to be registered to keep the pig, and don't even get me started on what you are allowed/not allowed to feed them, any of you out there with your half grown piggie in the kitchen waiting to be hand fed choice items from the fridge will face a £2000 fine and prison if caught.
So, as only sensible people read these pages you will know that the "micro pig" above is a piglet, a few days old, which we hope will join us if here at Rock HQ as Morgana2, to be our breeding sow, alongside Guinevere. You will also be well aware that the cute bundle in my beautiful and oh so patient wife's arms will grow, quite quickly, to be the size of its mum, pictured below. T Cup Pig? You might be lucky and get half of its left rear trotter in a large T Cup.

I want that one!

First catch you piglet. Easier said than done a they wriggle like demented snakes and squeal like air raid sirens. Luckily for us we had Safe Hands Stable Sprite on the case who showboated his technique, giving us a lesson in biology, er that ones a boy, and than picking up the specimen piglet we want to bring back to Rock HQ to be the start of our next what could possible go wrong enterprise, rearing pigs. This will probably translate into lets chase piglets across the common at midnight, but where we let our selves down in experience we will make up for in enthusiasm, and if we have any problems we can always give Safe Hands a call.

Pig Surprise

We were lucky enough to have another gloriously hot sunny day, most unlike the usual Welsh Summer weather we have endured the last two years, and whilst the job list is almost as big as a disgraced MP's relocation allowance we took time out from doing stuff to doing nothing but sitting and chatting to friends who came over to visit.

First to arrive was Mr 20% and his lovely wife, swiftly followed by The Stable Sprite, his apprentice Gremlin and Chocolate Lab called Minnie. Whilst we sweltered in the sun, eating a sample of Rock HQ's sausage and a slice of the newly created Bacon there was a rustle in the hedgerow, but we weren't alarmed, it wasn't as first thought a spring clean for the May Queen (sorry inadvertently had a Zeppelin flashback) no it was Blodwin, one of the piglets.

The Berner pups rallied to our defence and whilst we hid the evidence of pig consumption they held her at bay until bored, Blodwin had a quick swim in the pond and then set off to tell the other piglets her version of Tales From The Rock, or Narrations From The Stone as they say in Germany.

Time wasters!

I had forgotten how much time having piglets wastes!

Berkshire pigs are great for the smallholder, they are generally placid, easy going pigs and respond well to handling. The meat is fantastic and the crackling is the best in the world.

But before they get to the plate they are so much fun to watch, but you waste so much time as you lean over the pig pen door and watch their antics.

That was the week that was...

It has been a great week at Rock HQ. We have made so much progress and done so many interesting things it’s hard to imagine how we crammed it all into just seven days.

The week started with us taking cover from the appalling weather and fretting about getting the garden fenced to stop the goat et al getting in. Yesterday the final piece of the puzzle was put in place in the shape of a six by three gate we built. We can now plant out the seedlings and plants that are taking over the greenhouses and we should get a lot of veggies later in the year. This year we have focused on staple stuff like potato, onions, courgettes, squash, and greens like cabbage, cauliflowers, and sprouts and so on. Last year we went a bit mad and planted eight types of melon and four types of cucumber and didn’t get anything worth eating. Mind you the garden project was hampered by rampaging goats that ate anything that looked remotely edible and then gardening stopped 24-9-08 when I had my fall.

The fence and gate even look good, mostly; there is a patch behind the stable that looks a bit dodgy but as long as it does the job its fine by me.

The sheep have all been tagged; a major job involving lots of paperwork, each sheep must have two tags, one in each ear, with our flock number and a unique identity number for the sheep. So Crispen our pedigree Ryeland Ram is obviously number one, whereas April the nutter Suffolk is tagged thirteen. The actual tagging didn’t take too long and the sheep are now all legal, able to travel without fear of arrest for no I.D.

The sheep have been released onto the common land now to eat the new grass and give our fields a rest, so hopefully they wont get into too much mischief, but you might have seen already Meg got herself into a spot of bother late yesterday evening on the cliff, more of that in a separate post, I need counselling to get over the post traumatic stress before I write that episode of smallholding up.

The lambs are tagged and on the garden, the grassy bits anyway. We are trying to get Katy and Daffodil to realise they are sheep and mix with their own kind but they have a panic attack if they cant see Tracey or a Berner and insist on pushing past anyone entering the cottage and jumping onto the sofas in the conservatory where they stay until a heartless cruel owner kicks them out.

We have also had a week where visitors have made the hazardous journey along our track and spend time with us. Three extra Bernese Mountain Dogs came to stay for half of the week. Most surprising though was a visit from Peter and Jane who travelled from Rugby to visit Rock HQ.

Now I have known Peter for years through the Navy, we both do our bit for the Queen every year and mess about on the water around Portsmouth teaching Cadets to sail. Well he teaches. We are very different in many ways, not least of which our sailing styles, he is more of a Russell Crowe in a Master and Commander role, whereas I am more of the Mickey Mouse in The Sorcerers Apprentice in my attempt to navigate the sea lanes. Now I am a fantastic rescue coxswain, give me a boat with a motor in it and I can perform manoeuvres James Bond would be proud of, but give me something with sails and I am in trouble unless Peter is around. My introduction to sailing was not entirely without incident, the Navy discovered one of its officers had no boat time so sent me on a variety of courses one summer. The sailing course had to be passed to get onto the rescue boat course. Getting off the train at Plymouth and finding I should be in Portsmouth was not the best start and I managed to make it to the ship just as the briefing was ending for the instructors and crew. As I had missed the introductions I didn’t know what the level of experience was of those seated in the room, when asked to tell the group what sailing I had done I gave a completely fictitious answer. The fact that I had only done four hours sailing on a windsurfer was glossed over and the room nodded approvingly as I dropped in a few nautical terms to talk myself up.

Probably went a bit far as next morning I was the only crew member given their boat in a box and told to assemble it. I then sailed the thing around a course and was relieved to be towed back to harbour without capsizing it. The rescue crew were wetting themselves laughing as I was summonsed to the commandant’s office. Apparently I had been sat in the boat facing the wrong way and sailed it for three hours backwards. The Navy is not keen on its best racing boats being abused in such a manner and I was lucky not to be kicked off the course, but as the commander said after yelling at me about never having sailed before “Sailing that backwards shows some talent, you can stay, but don’t expect to pass the course”

So for the last twelve or so years Peter and I have met up on HMS Bristol and messed around in boats, and despite our different personalities we get on really well. Whenever we go on the water I pay close attention to what Peter’s boat is doing and point mine in the same direction and pray I don’t sink it. So as I was not going to be there this year they came to see us at the Rock.

Jane and Peter loved Rock HQ, and most of the inhabitants. Trevor, the shitland pony, disgraced himself again by deciding that Peter was inedible therefore he had to try and shag him. This surprised Peter as he was trying to take a photo of Rock HQ at the time and Trevor managed to sneak up on him.

After a guided tour and tea and cakes they left, leaving me with a model sailing boat as reminder of what Peter will be doing without his shadow this year.

I have also had my operation which went well and some of the metal has gone from my arm. We worked at our paid jobs, finally did some gardening and last night relaxed and had a bar b queue. So a very full, varied and busy week, even by our standards.

And today is going to be a good day.

How do I know?

Our piglets arrive today! The barns been cleared and made ready for its new inhabitants and as I type this Steve the Stable Sprite is manfully wrestling pigs into his van to deliver them to their new home.

I love smallholding at Rock HQ.