Piggin play pen

When we moved here there was a plan to do everything the old fashioned way, man power and horse power. No quad bikes, tractors or other such machinery, no, we would do it the old way using old skills taught to us by old timers keen to pass on their font of agricultural knowledge.

The plan was sound except for the lack of old timers with enough patience to tutor yours truly in the ways of the countryside. The old timers that were available all rode about on quad bikes anyway and always began their worldly wisdom talks by stating that if that was what I wanted to do (whatever it was, say cider making, walking to market, any activity) they wouldn't have started like that, or from there or with that, and so on. The plan also ignored the cumulative effect of 16 pigs on one small pig pen.

Now our pigs loved the pig pen, the old rotten barn to play in, the car tyres stuffed with goodies to root about, the huge Sycamore tree to lie under, dig up and scratch on. But their favourite activity was tunnelling. The pig pen started with a sturdy fence with a strand of barbed wire at ground level. By pig 5, 6, 7 and 8 ground level had dropped considerably requiring a second strand of barbed wire a foot below the first. Pigs 9 and 10 changed the landscape enough to have the fence posts just suspended in the air, the points of the stakes just about touching the dirt. Solution, corrugated steel sheets behind the posts, this kept the fence upright and the pigs inside. Pigs 11 and 12 tunnelled out a different route and spent a lot of their time either chasing goats around the garden or sitting up on the cliff debating the aerodynamic properties needed to fly.

Pigs 13 t0 16 just thought the fence was a guideline rather than a barrier and routinely ignored it spending a lot of their time up on the common or sat on the sofa waiting to be fed. Something needed to be done. Especially as they had moved tons of dirt and rock which you can see behind the digger. As they are too big for one man and a lazy pony to move the modern age was allowed to tackle the job. Soon the tunnels were destroyed, the rocks moved and with the help of a MkII post bodger the pig proof fence is well under way. Tomorrow it will be finished. Hurrah for the modern age!