Its been a lovely couple of weeks on the farm with the arrival of two more sets of autumn piglets... despite James and I daily meaning to move a very pregnant Harriet down to the maternity wing she couldn't keep her legs crossed and had 11 piglets in the middle of our largest field on the windiest and coldest night Mudgee has seen in April for a long time. James and Fiona struggled to build a makeshift pen from straw bales by the light of the ute with a boar, 5 sows and an irate mother..they both lived to tell the tale as did all the piglets. We have since put a pen in there and they are often seen playing around the bigger pigs who are surprisingly very gentle and tolerant of them gambolling about. Meanwhile Debra had a litter of leapord piglets (see pic) the next day and we got her to her pen in time. Despite our worries as she wasn't the best mother last time (remember Dale, Dorothy and Delores the handraised piglets), she is doing brilliantly and has only trodden on (and killed) one so far. This means that we have suddenly got another 50 piglets in the space of one week. They are a lovely bunch and Bev's are particularly nice - I have of course got my favourite and have named her Beatrice.. unlike the other piglets, who are curious but don't like to be touched too much, Beatrice follows me around, loves being stroked and will roll over for a tummy rub - she is only 2 weeks old so it is all ridiculously cute. I am sure that she is of super intelligence and realises that the quickest way to ensure a long and happy life is to worm her way into my affections. She is of course quite right, and you can see her above making friends with Coco...she will make a nice breeding sow.
Woody's ears have decided to both stick up the right way for almost a whole week now and the search for his sheep continues.
We have had a few events, the first of which was an airshow called Wings Wine and Wheels. Expecting about 1,000 we thought we had over ordered on the food and had 8 loins of pork and about 400 sausages to sell. James got called away to a colicking horse quite early and left myself, Fiona and Vanessa getting the stall ready... although slow to start with things soon became utterly hectic with queues of people seemingly 100's long and not enough equipment or people to cook enough food. Poor Fiona inhaled smoke bent over the barbeque for most of the day - the hot pork rolls ran out within 15 minutes of being served, leaving sometimes fed up and irate customers. It seems that there were closer to 4,000 people and the feedback was once again positive - we are finding that the sausages are starting to get a reputation of their own.
Buoyed up on the success of WWW, we took four pigs off to the butcher for the Dubbo markets - again it is a large farmers market with around 4,000 people coming through and although we hadn't done any advertising we were hoping we wouln't be left with too much to take home. The market is indeed fantastic, with a huge range of produce as well as beef and saltbush lamb to choose from - I did all our meat and vegie shopping whilst we were there too. Being unable to have tastings due to tight Food and Safety regulations made it a little difficult for us, and although we sold about 2 and a half pigs worth of meat it was much slower going. In some ways it made it much more relaxing, we were able to spend a lot of time talking to the locals and they seemed a very loyal bunch of customers, however our freezer is now full to bursting and we have a lot of pork to get through that didn't sell. Luckily for us we are trying to invent our next sausage - a small chipolata that can be used for kids (or for canapes - there could be a sales line in there somewhere). Much deliberation is happening over the name, so far we have had 'baby bangers' and 'banglets' - suggestions very welcome please. Our first tastings were pretty awful, with a strange rice flour that seemed to turn it into a paste like sausage. Felix summed it up well when he exclaimed that they 'were yuk'. The second lot we were happier with - almost all pork with a light seasoning they were brilliant in the initial patties (we fry up a little from the mix before we commit to casings) but disappointingly dry when cooked. It is difficult because they are so small to get them right. We are now playing around with the fat content and the mincing size to see what works.
Meanwhile we have just put our name against a new boar, who is on one of the free range farms and growing nicely whilst waiting for us to come and get him. Dennis will join Maguire as our Large White boar - meaning that the daughters of Maguire that we are keeping as breeding stock will be able to start entering into the breeding program. Yesterday was spent planning the next lot of fencing to decide where the new nursery paddocks, boar paddocks and weaner paddocks could go. We still have huge amounts of land doing nothing.
It is a beautiful time to be on the farm at the moment, the weather is cool and the flies are almost non-existent (when working). I went for a walk last night with the dogs, the sky was blue as the sun was setting and the kangaroos were out in force - they watched us from a distance and then hopped away as Coco bounced around the long grass trying to see where they were. Last weekend was spent cleaning up a very neglected vegetable patch and finally accepting that sporadic rainfall means daily watering a necessity - accordingly we have installed an irrigation system in there and sod's law says that it will probably now chuck it down with rain - it was looking promisingly cloudy today but we are heading into at least our second month of no rain.
Felix is very excited because tomorrow he starts rugby after pre-school...he even has a cute little pair of football boots which he hasn't actually taken off in excitement. Although hazy on the actual game, he says his friends have told him that it is great fun because you can be a) really rough and b) huddle together to try and push the ball away - he gets a bit confused with c) you can't touch the ball with your hands. As he tried to tackle the kids who were fielding with him in cricket for the ball I think rugby might be a good choice for him...