Winters latest..

It has been a disappointing month for piglets really. With Kimmy and Lillian only having 4 and Andrea having 6 (of which two died of some kind of infection - unfortunately despite all our best efforts Aiden came through the operation well but even the handknitted jumper didn't help once he got sick). All hopes were on Beccie who copes with life with with a very sweet and laid back way. She was absolutely huge but decided to farrow outside while we were away - this wouldnt have been a problem but 3 of her littlies decided to wander off at 1 day old, and another 2 died the next day. This leaves her with 7 strapping little piglets. She moved them inside and James built a doorway on her hut, she repaid him by chasing him down and scaring the *&^% out of him. With numbers low we have bought in 11 six week old weaners from a Berkshire breeder not far from us. Little Leanne looks as though she is having her first litter, although we are not sure if the father is Maguire or if one of the males in the weaner paddock got in there first. The next lot of fencing has been planned which will mean we have 4 large weaner fields, a boar paddock, a nursery paddock and we can winter the sows in the large field at the front, but bring them into the woods for the summer shade. Winter has meant that we have planted our asparagus crowns, mandarin trees and raspberries. We said goodbye to Joker who went back to his owners, much to the disappointment of the kids (and me) so I guess we are on the lookout now for a pony, maybe a bit bigger so that I can ride it as well.

Emi's cat, re-named Cassie (her choice) outdid herself by catching her first mouse at her young and tender age. The other day as I walked into the toilet one ran out and disappeared into the kids room. It think it is safe to say that rather than coming from the shed we obviously have a family of them living happily somewhere in the house. Coco has become very adept at catching them so we brought her inside and told her to 'find' the mice. She became very busy and excited and looked to be doing the job...but came back with a tennis ball. I have started shaking my shoes out before putting them on and the cats are keeping busy at night hopefully getting rid of them. There are rabbits everywhere, which is kind of scary for mid winter...can't imagine what spring will be like. James still strides around taking pot shots of an evening but it seems the rabbits are pretty safe. At the recent Small Farm Field Days Show we found someone with a company called 'Bunny Blasters' which looks to be an effective and humane way of quickly destroying warrens and what is in them. It may come to it as there are scrapings and holes all over the place. Jessie is still yet to have an outing and just grows fatter and happier in her cage.

On the animal front Dora is so round she looks as though she is going to pop, however still has 6 weeks to go I am looking forward to seeing how a goat manages to waddle...Maggie also seems to be looking pregnant, however goats are notorious for being difficult to predict so we will have to wait until September and keep guessing. We have a new Gander, named Snowy... two of our other geese have gone to my friend Susie and as with most things here have missed out on being Christmas in July dinner. They have a very plaintiff 'honk' and I don't think either James or I could face it. Snowy is getting bullied by the drake who obviously has little man syndrome and picks on him terribly. He seems to be a gentle giant. Lastly I went to shut the chooks in last night and Wendy and Son of Brad (I'm sure it is a rooster) were roosting in the main chook house - he was sitting up next to his Mum looking very proud of himself, it was quite cute.

The chickens stay free range...

Part of my plan with the 'big' vegie garden at the back (next to the orchard) was to run it in a permaculture system. This would mean rotating each garden bed and using the chooks to clean up the old vegies and fertilise the area at the same time, ready for replanting. According to the book this required me to use a chook dome which James obligingly agreed to build for us. The idea is that the dome goes over the bed, and the chickens live safely in there protected from foxes and the like, while the other garden beds are in turn protected from them until we are ready to move them on. All the theory seemed sound. It even had instructions on how to build a chook dome using only piping and bailing twine with some wire over the top. A morning's work in fact. On the right is what it was meant to look like - on the left is what it looked like before the bailing twine 'cross braces' were put on. There was a lot of swearing from James about 'bloody hippies' not knowing how to build anything...let alone write instructions. Once done we all stood back to survey the structure and unanimously agreed that it looked awful. It is still sitting sadly in the front garden to be disassembled. A sturdy wooden one with shiny handles and wheels on the bottom will probably follow.

Pig Medicine

Well, nobody can accuse us of not offering our porcine charges the very best of care. This little guy was born with a testicular hernia which made him walk as though he was one of our kids wearing an overly large nappy. We have had a few with umbilical hernias that haven't seemed to have caused much of a problem but this one didn't look too good. James made some noises about getting rid of him early on..but just like the bottle reared earlier piglets, we thought we should give him a good shot at life (which is odd considering we are going to cut it short at 6 months... I am not sure why it makes me feel better but it does..perhaps I just don't like waste?). Anyway, a book published in 1958 called Swine Medicine held the answers that James was looking for and so he was loaded into the cat carrier this morning, crapped extensively through it all over the ute and arrived at the vet clinic shortly after. I went in to take some photos and show the kids and brought him home so the clinic staff didn't pass out at the smell (it is an indication of how bad it actually was that it made even the clinic smell bad). He recovered very quickly and is now up with his Mum. The suture material may mean he is unable to join the human food chain, however I have a back up plan at the local high school with the agriculture class.

Mouse plagues and namesakes

Most mornings for at least the last month have included the body of a mouse being left helpfully beside the bed, or in a doorway (in perfect position to step on whilst blundering about and trying to open my eyes). Initially we have felt very proud that our city slicker cats are obviously venturing over to the barn to rid us of pesky little mice. Today after rummaging in the cupboard James came running out with one of my shoes in a plastic bag with what he hoped was a mouse inside. It appears we have live ones in the house, which begs the question - are all those little dead mice actually coming in from the shed or is our house crawling with a mouse plague. I am not entirely sure what is worse..spiders or mice. Mice are definitely cuter but really make you jump when you pick up something and they shoot out and run off. Anyway, I am trying hard to come up with good excuses because as you can see Emily has a new friend we have christened "Betty". She is meant to live in the shed and rid us of mice and hopefully therefore snakes....she is currently in the laundry.. hmm. We have had Maguire's namesake visit (not sure if that is the right way around)...anyway, Chris visited the pig that we named after him this week and filled us in on all news and gossip from North London...he also laughed at us when we complained bitterly of the cold. It reminded us that we arrived this time last year and many people were astonished that James insisted on wearing shorts every day. To us it was hot but everyone else was in deepest winter. Change doesn't take long does it.

Winter

I have decided the problem with a blog is that in my mind, I don't want to update it until I have the photos to illustrate our latest disaster (or sometimes success). It isn't that I don't mean to take the camera out everywhere we go, I just keep forgetting. Take yesterday, which was a prime opportunity. Felix went to a 'Harry Potter' themed birthday. To get ready for this Grandma stayed for a week sewing a cloak and knitting a gold and brown scarf (oops, was meant to be red and gold but luckily Felix didn't notice). I knitted another one - with the help of 'Google: how to knit' (how did we ever live without the internet). I drew on glasses and the scar and great fun was had by all. Did I take a photo? No. I can never even prove to all those who are skeptical that I am capable of actually knitting anything that I actually did it. That is my excuse anyway. I was so enthused by my scarf knitting success that I have been thinking that we should get the wool from our sheep (what is the word??) - "made" into wool and I can do a quilt? One square at a time. For some reason this statement was met with much humour by James and the kids. James also seemed to be re-living uncomfortable past memories of wearing hand knitted jumpers on the farm when he was a boy. All in all the idea has been shelved and I may just buy some wool from Big W and save it for a rainy day (which in the current climate may be a fair way off).

So what has been happening.. well, the car was returned to us working at great expense and we are now too frightened to tow anything with it. Luckily our trusty ute workhorse doesn't have any such problems although there may be some kind of mechanical jinx on us at the moment. Coming back from Dubbo markets - which can I say are now one of our favourite places to go after we were put in the paper with 5 other producers for being 'one of the most unique/favourite stalls'. Anyway, driving back from Dubbo with both phone batteries flat we had luckily come back into Mudgee. James was itching to get to a farm sale and I was just itching to get out of the ute as Emily was squashed in between us in a car seat. As we rounded the corner there was a bit of a bump and James looked out the passenger side window to see the wheel of the trailer continuing in a different direction off into the local park. We pulled over with the trailer on a precarious tilt and both scratched our heads a bit and maybe uttered a few choice words. Everything pretty much closes in Mudgee at lunchtime on Saturday so we couldn't phone the rental company and our phones were flat anyway. With luck a nice local who knew the trailer owner pulled over and gave us his mobile. In the meantime we had to unhitch the trailer and get the left over meat home and into the freezer. Luckily we didn't have a lot left - had it been post Sydney we would have had a problem.

So we hit the Sydney markets with about 7 pigs.. the butchers worked into the night to get it packaged and boxed up and James left for Sydney at 10.00pm on Friday night. As tends to happen with our animals they sensed that something important was coming up and Kimmy decided to be very helpful and have a complicated farrowing. I left at 12.00pm with the kids to go on the coach and train to Sydney as we didn't have the car. At that point Kimmy looked like she was getting on with it, she is a bit of a stressy girl anyway and my presence was probably going to hold things up so I left her alone. By the time James finished work at 5.30 she had produced one piglet which is not particularly normal. In between getting organised he gave her oxytocin and tried to help. In the end we left her with our very competent neighbour who looked after the animals for us and a vet friend on standby too. By the morning she had produced 4 live and 5 dead and had a possible infection.

With this on our minds we drove to the St Ives market and were a little surprised to be one of about 10 stalls, with a man selling toilet paper on one side and another selling towels on the other - very nice people and great company for the day but not what we were expecting for the 'organic food market'. Fighting the urge to laugh or cry we set up our stall and ate an awful lot of sausages. As it happened we had lots of really nice people come and buy from us - some who had been through the Mudgee markets and made the trip to St Ives especially which was really touching and makes it all worthwhile. As always, all the other stallholders were great company and we met lots of people who really loved our pork. Had we been a bit less gung ho and bought one pig we would have had a lovely day - we both just kept thinking of how much we were going to have left over and tried to be optomistic about Frenchs Forest on the Sunday.

It ends happily because Frenchs Forest was a huge and busy market - we talked non stop all day, handed out hundreds of brochures, met lots of people and sold a lot of pork. We are now left with the dilemma of what to do about Sydney long term, although we will be there for the next couple of months, as we have been invited to Bathurst as well - which is a local market for us and one which we had aimed to go to. It is on the same weekend. The dilemma is mostly because at our present size we can only produce 4 pigs a week and as we are keeping breeding stock so we can increase these numbers this month we are going down to 2 a week (thinking winter would be a slow month). Its great to be invited to other markets and have our belief in what we are doing reaffirmed by the demand but juggling it all as we grow is a challenge (see, it isn't all ponies and picnics!).

On the animal side of things Wendy, one of the silky chickens decided to have a drink from the horse trough and sadly drowned (I told you they weren't so bright). I have got 2 more to replace her because I am not having much luck with egg hatching (success count at the moment: 18 eggs attempted - 1 successful chicken). We have planted our asparagus and look forward to our first crop in the speedy time of 3 years. I managed to milk Amanda this morning and put my first batch of milk in the freezer towards the next lot of fetta. She has turned out very nicely and happily goes into the milking area and no longer trembles when I am actually milking her. We are in school holidays for the next 2 weeks so I am planning to get the veggie garden weeded and get our second veggie garden sorted out - Brad and his ladies will go and live in a chook dome there to clean it up and fertilise the soil in the hope that Brad himself will stop fertisiling my other chickens and let me get some decent chicks out of the next batch of eggs. Lillian had her first litter of piglets...only 4 and she decided that she didn't like our hut and preferred to have them in the mulch of a large eucalypt. They were moved to the shelter later and are gorgeous strong little things. With her litter of 4, Kimmy's litter of 4 live we are a little short on piglets this month. Beccie is due next month and all hope rests with her to bring our numbers up.

We are right in the middle of winter here, although blue skies everyday and some frosts mean it doesn't feel like it. Our only source of heating is the wood fire which is getting a lot of use. James is also giving his chainsaw a workout getting rid of dead trees and chopping them up. My ratio of fires built to actually burning is probably about 4:1 at the moment. We are also building up our winter bonfire and are thinking it might make a good Christmas in July addition - this is where we get to have an English Christmas with all the seasonal things that don't feel right eaten in 35 degree heat. The geese are looking nervous.