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.