It has been a while since I last wrote, of course this week is one in which we have lots of news, however little time in which to update everyone. Firstly this may have to be short because I decided today to use the strimmer (or whipper snipper as it is called here). Either I am a total wimp (very possible) or men are much stronger than women, no matter what the feminists say. I got halfway down the driveway and the arm holding the stupid thing up was so sore I was completely unable to make it do anything. Slight hyperchondria arose but a few minutes later and it started to respond, suffice to say that James finished it off for me. I will go back to making jam I think...which brings me nicely to our plum tree down the back. Vanessa has taken up running of an evening, something which we are all deeply impressed by considering that the weather is so hot that eating a meal seems to bring us all out in a sweat at the effort. On her way around the place she has discovered both wild plum trees and a fig tree loaded with fruit. Much picking has ensued by all and sundry and whilst I really wanted to make jam in my trusty breadmaker, James insisted it was to be done on the stove in the proper way. Six jars of jam and a very dirty floor later (where I forgot about it and it boiled over pretty much a quarter of the kitchen) my jam was done. As it won't set for me I have now turned it into plum sauce and am pretending that was what was intended all along (for the crispy duck that we will no doubt eat in abundance if we can ever bring ourselves to turn our lovely ducks into meat as planned) .We also took delivery of our first 500 litres of whey from the local cheese producer. The idea is that we will supplement the growers with it, it will save us some feed costs, is supposed to improve the meat and is a waste product for them so best of all is free. The pigs took one look and initially decided that they preferred their windfall peaches provided by Susie on her nearby farm. Luckily 24 hours later they happily lap it up (as evidenced above) and it seems to be working really well.
Archie was sent back to mum and siblings as promised. Initially I was a bit worried about Andrea, however she adopted him back beautifully. At a quarter of the size of his brothers and sisters he has no hope of getting a look in on the milk side of things, however he is eating solids and I still go up and give him some milk each day. He is proving very popular with farm visitors of all ages as he is so tiny and friendly and runs straight out of the paddock to greet whoever is around and will give him some attention. I am thinking he is worth keeping for the comedic value. The rest of the time he sleeps with the other babies and you can usually see his tiny little face sticking out of a pile of piglets.
I have left it till last and won't dwell on it much - but poor Woody was in town with the farm vets (i.e Fiona and James), myself and two friends, Maddie and Nina, staying the weekend. We had been to the markets and Woody and Coco were behaving beautifully. We were just discussing aggressive behaviour in dogs when Woody's sleep was rudely interrupted by a 50 kilos mastiff/great dane that did it's very best to kill him. Whilst under the table asleep it came over (we thought to sniff him or have a look) and picked him up by the neck. All hell broke loose, I decided he was most certainly dead and am fairly certain was just noisily rocking in a corner, Fiona attempted to kick the dog off him and has been unable to use her foot since the day it happened, our friend Maddie has a large bruise on her hand from punching it and James got off lightly with scraped knees as he knelt on the floor and wrestled with the head end to get him out. This almost worked and then it grabbed Woody by the back end. I am sure it was all over relatively quickly but it felt like a long time. James was close to work and ran the pup up - I was pretty much carried up there by Maddie. There is a happy ending to all of this because on arriving into the clinic where we were sure that terrible news awaited we found Woody on the table, looking quite shocked but wagging his tail as if to say 'what the bloody hell just happened to me?'. To our disbelief he seems to be absolutely fine, apart from a puncture wound which was stitched on his rump, which you can see in the photo above if you look quite hard. Some intravenous diazepam seems to have had a memory blocking effect and so far (fingers crossed) he is not showing any terrible side effects behaviourally or physically. In contrast, Coco is quite jittery and I am pretty sure that it is her that will develop some sort of neuroses as a consequence.
To end on a happier note I am madly milking away every morning with Dora who mostly complies. I am getting about a litre a day, and I can't lie today I was truly excited as I managed to milk her with two hands instead of just one. I am pretty sure that this is quite sad and I really should get out more...