Sunday, June 1, 2008

This week's ponderings...










Some of our latest dilemmas and ponderings for you:

- what is eating our olive trees.... probably rabbits but there is so much grass around I really can't believe it. James returned from mulching the trees with Felix to put priority 1 on putting piping around them before we lose them all. This has had the unforseen effect of taking away all the sympathy I held for the bunnies leading up to James' gun licence coming through. I am looking up recipes right now.

- Is Dora pregnant, falsely pregnant or am I feeding her too much... like me, I am hoping that even in early pregnancy her stomach muscles drop and falsely give the impression that she is about to give birth when actually she is only 2 months in.

- will the new goat ever be tamed? I stood with Maggie while she was eating today, she is very confident now and no problem to catch or touch... she is more jumpy around Dora's horns that around me. New goat will let me stay in her pen whilst she eats as of today.

Actually it feels like it has been a relaxing weekend. Yesterday we were selling hot pork rolls at one of the local wineries. The combination of a band, beautiful weather, lovely location and a nice stream of people rather than queues that we can't keep up with made it feel like a day off for us too. The kids soon tired of it all and the video below shows how our tent becomes a gypsy style childrens play area... after having faces painted and eating as much crackling as possible they soon tired of the novelty.

This morning we weaned Lucy, she positively ran out on her piglets up to the dry field and Maguire very quickly tried to jump on her. She told him to sod off in no uncertain terms and re-established herself as top pig before getting a little confused and trying to feed Harriets ferals. We also moved little Dennis into his field, where he spent the day playing with the little piglets that ran under the fence to say hello. Everyone had some fresh hay in their beds and paddocks cleaned and I finished with an hour in the vegie garden weeding and planting. Emi has given up trying to be girly and when asked what she would like for going a night without her dummy she chose a 'light saver', Rodney the rooster had better watch himself. James managed to vaccinate almost all our sows today. Armed with his new vaccinator gun he has perfected his technique - feed in a mass so they are all jammed together, jab in gun and run with pig. It did seem to work very well.