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.