The next Warnie??

The weekend started off with an exhausting morning of cricket for Felix, who has to be repeatedly reminded that when fielding, tackling his fellow team members for the ball is not appropriate. He has only got 2 weeks left, however we are now being asked whether to sign him up for the soccer team, or the rugby team - his behaviour on the cricket pitch probably points to the latter, however he is working through the pro's and con's of each one himself...this mostly consists of which of his friends are going to be at each one and going with the group that he prefers at that particular moment in time.

James went into feed Kimmy and Maureen and as a very pregnant Kimmy (or Maureen...lets just clear this up right now and say the pregnant one is Kimmy) heaved herself up quite a lot of milk poured out of her teats. We now know from experience that this means that farrowing is imminent, so James had the fun task of trying to separate her off from her absolute best friend from whom she has never been apart. This done he then got her down to the farrowing pen where she went straight inside and promptly had 6 piglets - well, when I say promptly it took a couple of hours but the she must have had her legs crossed in there waiting for someone to come and take her somewhere with a bed she decided was appropriate for the situation.

We then had to rush the kids into the car for the very hyped up camping trip. Ninety minutes and 4 stops to clean the vomit off Emily later we got to Hill End....it was a very windy road. We followed the directions to the 'Bridle Track', which I thought would be a small dirt road down to a river where I would see lots of tents and people camping along the edge side. The road started innocently enough (although looking back there was a large sign at the beginning giving about 10 warnings of various dangers that awaited you on the road and said 4WD only) but pretty soon was just a track big enough for one car and a sheer drop off the other side. Emily was too sick to care, Felix was utterly terrified...I tried to be brave for about 5 minutes, then I thought 'bugger this we ARE going to die' and so buried my face in the pillow and clutched Felix for the whole 9 km trip down the mountain to the bottom. Once we were there, wondering the whole way whether we were on the right track, we quickly found everybody and had a fantastic night. Both the kids loved it and joined the child and dog pack running around in the dirt and generally having a great time. They both slept without so much as a peep out of them and although i found a spider in the tent the next morning, I am quite taken with camping and have decided that we should invest in a tent - after buying the ute it is surely the next step before the swag and the horse??

Kimmy and Maureen

These two found the chocolate cake in my absence!

Certified Free Range

Three cheers for James and his fencing skills and the rest. We got everything done in time for our farm inspection yesterday which went without problem. This is very lucky because in order to move pigs in NSW you need to be part of a quality assurance program of which there are not very many...you can be intensive, free range or organic from the looks of things, but nothing in between. Once you have your number you are able to apply for your pigpass and can then have them processed for consumption. As always we were probably cutting it a little fine, considering we have 2 MORE WEEKS (just typed that in a panic) before the first lot go. Today I opened the 'striker brand' in great excitement, only to find that an entire bottle of tatoo ink had spilled throughout the postbag covering me, the kitchen and the new brand with thick, black ink. The kids found this very amusing.


Our new girls, Kimmy and Maureen have settled in well...Kimmy (or Maureen, we are not really sure who is who) is days off farrowing and is wadding around looking very uncomfortable. James moved her to the maternity wing this morning...unfortunately we initially put them in with the weaners, who are obviously approaching maturity because some of the young boars are showing a little too much sexual attention towards them for our liking. As we don't castrate here there is always the chance of 'boar taint' in the meat from the boys - this is apparently more likely the more they have the chance to awaken their testosterone driven instincts. We are moving the girls out today and hope that they won't turn their attention on their sisters instead.

We are taking the kids camping tonight so there is high excitement here - they have been sleeping in their sleeping bags all week in readiness. I am also declaring war on the blackberries, and after watching a show on permaculture decided that getting the goats to eat them down properly is as good a reason as any to keep our two instead of having to make any hard decisions. Yesterday Bam Ram was caught and collared (he is very wary of handling after being castrated) and Flora is also wearing a little red number. I have bought portable electric fencing and am going to fence of the blackberry patches and leave them to eat them down for as long as it takes. If this is effective I think they will have earned their tickets to stay here for as long as they like.

We are off to move the sows and boar into their new huge lovely green paddock with some maize on for extra forage... more photos soon.

Are we giving our children enough attention??

Need I say more - a play room/toys/a 2 acre garden and yet still the kitchen cupboard is where I find them (playing ninja turtles in case anyone wondered)..

Weighing In

Exactly like a weightwatchers meeting in reverse, our pigs hopped on the scales today for the second week running. We decided to hold off on the morning feed so that they would follow James without question and would wait until about 9.30 to start. This left the possibility of a bit of a lie in for James, who was then called out to see a dog at 6.00am in the morning instead. As predicted, all 46 were noisily squealing at the gate, and although they required a bit of driving they basically came out and followed James down to the cattle yards as planned. About halfway through the process we looked around for Lillian, who had craftily waited out of sight and then taken herself on a little tour around the farm.... slight worry that she was high tailing it over the hills and far away was averted when we spotted her happily guzzling down apples in the feed shed (above). I think she went through a bag and I bet she is in her paddock with a tummy ache for her troubles. All the others went through the scales without too much stress this time - we cheered the bigger ones on (as in "58 kilos YAY, 3 kilos since last week... and your prize is..."). We also spent lots of time handling them - which they are all very used to now - they all like a back scratch and a shoulder rub and are very inquisitive. This is good in some ways, however it makes them very hard to drive as their response to shouting and waving is pretty much "alright, alright - in a minute you impatient human".

Two days until our Free Range Pork Farmers Association inspection, we have checked everything off the list and are looking forward to the arrival of the 2 new sows to the herd at the same time.

You Beaut

Well, put some spot lights on the front and give James a large gun and we have become a piggin' family by god - even Woody looks the part (except if you look closely he has a little divot in his bum where a real pig dog showed him how it was really done). That's right, we are a 2 car family with enough 4 wheel drives to give a London greenie a stroke. In negotiations that rivalled anything that has ever contribued to world peace James held his cool (while I played 'good cop' and looked frustrated), until finally they caved in. Our choice of ute was based solely on a series of Top Gear where Jeremy and the team attempted to break a Toyota Hilux without success, even after dropping it off the top of a building. This we felt was good enough for us. Emily and I drove the 'truck' (her words) home and on the way stopped and bought a potting table (that's right...I'm getting serious - well okay, I'm trying hard and that involves looking the part surely) to practice throwing it in the back and driving off rattling and banging around like everyone else does.

Woody has taken to being in the back like a duck to water as you can see, Felix quite likes it too, however for obvious reasons we are not encouraging it. Coco, who is of a somewhat more sensitive disposition, managed within 2 minutes to completely entangle herself in her lead and was lying on the bottom of the tray looking very put out. We have decided that she can stay in the cabin for her own safety.

Day 3 of Dora watch continues to be painful - yesterday I tried tethering her out of sight of the kids, which kind of worked for them, but she pitifully called for the entire day and wouldn't eat. Today I have left her in with food and them on the other side of the fence. They have gone 3 days without a feed from her. My latest thinking is that if I can take all the milk off her in the morning they won't get anything from her once her evening milk dries off and we can run them together again.

In the lead up to the launch yesterday we invited a house full of volunteers to trial our sausage recipes. We have managed to stop giggling while making the sausages by now and can undertake the process with maturity and only a little bit of innuendo. All were eaten, as was my fig chutney, and the reactions seemed good. A little bit of over-enthusiasm with the pestle and mortar meant that the pepper spiced them up more than we would have chosen but nevertheless it seemed to be a success. I think the recipe is almost completed, but obviously it is back to the taste test again - I just hope I am not sick of sausages by the time we have finalised this recipe, as I guess after that it is on to the next one.

Thank God I didn't give them names..

In a photo that is slightly reminicent of a scene from "Babe" (i.e. the duck crying "Christmas is carnage") here is our first home grown meat. I thought out of respect for the duck it would just be bad taste to have a before picture of them all swimming happily on the dam, so its another food shot I'm afraid. Anyway, I felt very guilty about it all day and can only console myself with the fact that he had a very nice life and probably lived longer than his supermarket bought counterpart, who probably didn't get to run about on five dams and generally have a lovely time. The meat admittedly was beautiful and so it is onward and upward - with another 3 to go - when they have finished moulting. This appeared to be the most traumatic part of the process for the unlucky dispatchers, who didn't mind doing the actual deed but seemed most affected by the fact that they needed tweezers and probably a tub of leg wax to get the little moulting feathers out of them...I think they resorted to a blow torch when all else failed.

James has cut me a running path around 2 of our fields because (and I dread to type this because then it actually becomes something I have to do) I am considering running a half marathon in August. Unbeknown to me Mudgee is somewhat of a triathalon/marathon running town (apparently a lot of iron men began their lives here). Anyway, I went for my first run with the dogs last night. The grass is very long at the moment and even on the cut path it would still come up to my ankles. I am not sure if this made the experience better or worse for me; better because scanning for snakes took the up the part of my brain that was saying walk now please, worse because if the exercise alone wasn't enough to give me a heart attack, seeing a stick concealed in the grass on my path was almost enough. There are also large orb spiders that spin webs across from the grass to the trees so as well as scanning at my feet it was necessary to look where I was going as I almost ran into the webs. Luckily the large spiders sitting in what seemed to be thin air in front of my face tipped me off. They say that snakes orient to their prey because they can feel the vibrations in the ground (I think) - I am not sure why I was even worried as they all must of thought there was an earthquake as I came thundering up their path, screaming every now and then for good measure - they must have fled like flies.

It was a sad day yesterday with our lovely farmhands Fiona and Vanessa hauling up the anchor and setting sail.... their empty campsite looks all wrong without the van there (are you reading this you two). Nevertheless I had one last lesson in seed planting the night before and feel like I am taking the reins of a runaway horse...I am spraying the vegies with the organic pest controller tonight (after carefully looking at the weather patterns and testing the soil moisture) and am drawing pictures of the veggie patch in an effort to decide which beds the winter veg is going to go into.

Andrea was weaned off her piglets earlier this week and is having a horrible time up in the big field with the other sows. As she came by herself she didn't have a bonded friend and is getting bullied by Debra and Harriet... I wish very much that Gloria could be spared and that those two could be the sausage providers as they are my least favourite pigs. This weekend we are fencing off a new field in readiness to rest the old one and also because we have two more ladies arriving this week to join the herd. We will put Andrea and the new gilt Lillian in with them to form a little unit before we put the bullies back in. I vow that if they don't give us decent litters this time they are both off for the chop and I won't feel a bit guilty about it.

I have somehow become one of those mothers who spends each day ferrying her children to and from social events - School on Monday, dancing Tuesday, School/Book club on Wednesday, playgroup Thursday, swimming Friday and cricket Saturday. How did this happen to me? Anyway, the kids are enjoying themselves and as I spend the rest of the day making them play unsupervised while I try and keep on top of everything around here I guess it isn't so bad. Felix was very excited this morning because we went to the local cafe for some breakfast and Merv Hughes was there for some Mudgee promotion or another. I thought he was very impressed at seeing such a famous cricketer but I think it was just his huge moustache.

Lastly I am attempting to wean Dora from her kids as they are now much bigger than she is and feeding them means they practically lie on the ground beneath her to suckle. After wondering why she is skin and bone despite the mountains of food that go into her and reading a few books it appears I was meant to take the kids of her about 3 months ago...oops. They are very unimpressed and are making a racket as I type. I am not exactly sure how long it will be before they scale the fence to get to her - if this happens I will have to resort to plan b, which is sell Flora and eat Bam Ram so I am really hoping that this doesn't materialise.

Sausage Making for Beginners...

My first announcement this posting is that I am surely almost a proper farmer in that I can now drive our ancient tractor. After a lesson with James that had me glibbering with the fear that once false move and the whole thing would tip up and kill me (and that was only one of the probable scenarios) I turned the key with a very white face and a shaking hand. Attempting to push the clutch in required me to grip the steering wheel and stand up in order to put enough weight on it to make it shift, and then screaming many obscenities and hoping the kids didn't hear we lurched into motion. As I trundled up the drive at about 5 miles an hour I didn't feel like I was on the machine of death, however I continue to have a healthy respect for it after my lessons in reversing and going through gateposts (which are luckily still standing). On a similar upbeat note my cheese starter actually worked this week, and I am off to look at a new goat on the weekend to join the dairy.. although I haven't actually attempted any more cheese at this point.

Although I don't have the photos to prove it - as we were sweating/swearing and running too much to even think about it - yesterday was the first weaner weigh day. After finishing the fencing we decided to drive them through the laneway and into the cattle yards for a quick hop on the scales as a bit of a practice (because obviously it would be that easy). Woody and Coco watched eagerly from outside the fence and we managed to get some of the weaners into the laneway with food (I think next week they need to be starved a little first as some were just too smart). At some point Woody got through the fence and although he doesn't know any commands actually was surprisingly helpful. He had absolutely no fear of the pigs (and at one point shared a touching nose to nose with one that was thinking about charging him). He heeled behind and seemed to just know to stay a fair way back to push them on without them breaking up and panicking - happily, he also responds well to shouting. When we got down to the cattle yards one tried to make a break for it but he managed to eye it back in. We were feeling very proud of him so proceeded to bark incessantly outside the yards just to let us know that he should have been in there making a nuisance of himself.

These photos are back to front because in fact initially James had the unpleasant task of flushing water through the natural sausage skins (i.e. sheep gut), and then Fiona and James were able to go through the, frankly slighly pornographic motions, of making the sausage (I have put the least embarassing photos on in case they both kill me).

There has been a long lead up to this moment, which started on Saturday night when the recipe search started. It was a true team effort - Fiona and James had done their research, Fiona and Vanessa managed to get the mincer to work when a sick dog required James to hurry off at the critical moment, and I (and possibly Vanessa) marvelled at the repressed homesickness that must have been residing in James and Fiona when their excitement at seeing a 'proper sausage' for the first time since leaving the grey shores of home reached a critical level.

Although I thought at some point James might suggest we should be blindfolded, in actual fact we just had four different types to taste which looked so similar we couldn't really tell them apart anyway. A fair bit of red wine had been consumed at this point so it all got quite confusing, however with my parents joining us to add their opinion, we were all able to agree on the same one as our favourite.

Three meters of natural sausage skins and 48 hours later and the final recipe was finely tuned and churned out into sausage skins, expertly stuffed by James and twisted by Fiona (with all of us exclaiming at intervals "Oh my god, they really are sausages"). Much debate followed, again aided by a fair amount of wine, and we have almost arrived at our final recipe - which I cannot tell you as it is obviously top secret information : )

Luckily tonight we are having a break from sausages as Vanessa felt up for a spot of poultry slaughter before they make a break for it and try and escape from Ormiston to face the wide open spaces (I have tried everything to convince them to stay but may attempt altering the driveway posts today). I am about to take the kids out for the morning as I believe some of the ducks are meeting their maker. I won't write about it on the blog as I am feeling a little ill at the thought, but I had better sign off or I won't get away in time.

Getting closer to launch

Well things seem to be going full steam ahead here, James has concreted in the weighing scales for the little weaners to run through every week and show us how much they have been eating. This is good because we spend much time trying to encourage them to grow more quickly now we seem to have more demand for our product before even we know whether it will be any good. 'Sure, we can supply you with pork loin and belly for your dinner with Sydney Food Critics' we merrily said to a local well known chef.... 'where is the loin' I then asked James. There are a lot of crossed fingers here. Sadly it seems that the lovely Gloria, who is one of my favourite gilts, simply refuses to get pregnant (not sure if she wants a career and frankly she spends a little more time canoodling with Debra and Harriet than we would expect her to). It seems wrong to me however due to the fact that she can't give us piglets she unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look at it) is at the perfect size to provide lots of ham/sausages and the other bits. If she wasn't eating us out of house and home I would try and keep her as a large pet, but sadly our bank balance is telling me she has to go.

My cheese making has ground to a bit of a halt. I can't seem to get the starter to set...which means I can't actually even start making the cheese. I think I may have to go back for more lessons. I am looking for another goat to join Dora as the kids escaped and ate a couple of our new trees last week, and they seem to have figured out how to break the wire around the chicken pen and can crawl through it and out to freedom.

We are off to pick apples at a local orchard, who have offered us windfalls for the pigs, and I am up to my ears in figs from our tree down the back. Yesterday Vanessa and I looked as though we had been smoking something illicit after an hour in the kitchen with bubbling vinegar...I am pretty sure I have burnt all nose hairs and probably not done my eyesight any good. Fig chutney, fig jam, fig everything.

This weekend look out for photos of pigs and figs - we have decided to attempt a photo shoot with one of the sows down foraging under the fig tree by the creek... I suspect this sounds easier than it will actually be... we may only get photos of a retreating end of a pig as it merrily runs off into the bush.