Movement Orders

Its been one of those massive days at Rock HQ, one where, on reflection over a well earned cuppa, we wonder how did we fit it all in, and do paid work and look after the apprentice smallholder. First light saw all hands pressed to service, including Hazel who was used as a beef barrier. Hetty, seven days in solitary for her own good, was being allowed freedom of the "garden" while we waited for the next delivery of hayledge. Once the white gate was open it was quite an obstacle to love sick bovines and a clear indicator that she should go through the portal and graze, not leg it. Belt and Braces approach today, with no time to waste chasing naughty cows, she was halter led towards breakfast. Now she is no Ferrari, not built for speed, no 0-60mph in 2.9 seconds. However several tons of willful beef can suddenly, if it wants to, take off sharpish, tearing halter rope from hand and race towards the above obstacle. For a moment the day was on a knife edge, fall one side of the blade all is well, no canter across the fields, just shut gate behind hungry cow and move on to next part of day, but as is so often here Hetty chose the wrong route, leaped from the garden wall and skipped merrily towards 500 acres of open ground. Thankfully my stalking skills have improved and despite Rocky alerting mad cow to my presence thus adding half a mile to the adventure Hetty turned tail and fled back the sanctuary of the garden and escaped my wrath.

Next on the agenda was sorting the pork out. This was ever so easy, in comparison to beef, as Bridget the Mangalitza followed me up the lane, into the recently vacated cow pen and tucked into the super feed. See below, the pics are out of sequence, so with Bridget where she should be I fetched her piglets. Well in the time it took to catch and carry her weapons grade piglets (ear defenders are compulsory wear when handling piglets as they have a sonic attack ability that melts the human brain) Bridget had got bored and jumped the fence and was where she shouldnt be trying to make friends with the horses. Much tooing and froing ensued and eventually the piglets were in the right pen with Bridget and the horses were persuaded to come down from the trees after being traumatised by a sheep/pig.

The real pigs, Berkshires, Morgana and Guinevere were moved from the big pig pen to the smaller one, for the simple reason that they have moved so much rock and debris against the gate of the big pig pen as to render it inoperable. They have had free run of both pens via a massive hole they created in the almost barn's wall. This was hastily repaired with steel mesh and rock, bike wheels, chain mail, bed steads, in fact anything heavy that was near to hand. Reason being was that Iggle and Piggle, our new Oxford Sandy Black weaners were arriving (after we collected them) and it would be easier to lift weaners over the fence, thus ignoring inoperable gate, and so they, by default, got the large pig pen.

As can be seen Iggle is a mighty weaner, so mighty in fact that given the bargain price I wish I had bought four Iggles, but we stayed rational and stuck with the two. In a very short time they will be sausages. And bacon.

Meantime they have luxury accommodation and some very strange looking tri colour pigs to make friends with.