What the heck is here....

This is our new goat and her kid... with Maggie and Dora pregnant and therefore not milking my cheese making abilities are going to waste. The lady that sold me Maggie and Grace had just had a new 'batch' of kids so the farm kids and I went off to have a look this morning and look what we came home with. Conversation on the way home went like this:

Me: so kids, what do you think we should call the new goat

Felix: Rusty, or Dark Vader or Luke

Me: well, it is a girl goat so maybe we could have a girl name

Emily: lets call her What the Heck

Me: why would we call her that

Emily: so we can say What the Heck is her name! (very pleased with herself)

Me: (impressed that she has come up with that by herself but not sure if What the Heck is acceptable pre-school language and not sure if I will get in trouble from her teacher at some point this week) laugh .. NO

After much of this type of discussion on the way home we have settled on Chloe for the baby and Amanda for the mum. Being the bargain that she was (I got her for meat money) she hasn't actually been handled and attempted to climb the walls out of the pig trailer when we climbed in to lead her out. I am not sure whether this bodes well for milking... Maggie has slowly improved but have had time to work on her. Not sure if I have bitten off more than I can chew.

James has had a long weekend of fencing and has managed to catch a cold in the process - he is off tomorrow for a long 7 hour return trip to pick up our new boar... photos of Dennis to follow. I will stay and hold the fort here.

This week I also learned theoretically how to hatch out eggs. It goes a little something like this:

1. Collect up the eggs and leave them out of the fridge, pointy side down for up to 3 weeks until you have a decent clutch for the hen

our version: put them in the fridge and had a mad scramble to find suitable eggs - now have 'fruit salad' approach which means we have 4 duck eggs, 1 silkie and one unknown in the batch for the hen.

2. Make sure you have moveable nests in the main chicken pen so you can take the hen out at night and put her in a separate pen to hatch the eggs.

Our version: take the chicken out in the middle of the day because you keep forgetting to do it at any other time, make husband do it because the little hen keeps pecking you very scarily and then watch him tell you to stop being a whimp but use heavy leather gloves to pick up the hen and move her anyway. Watch her escape and run all over the hen house making so much racket that the rooster starts looking like he might have a go at you. Corner her and shove her into the new hen area and wonder whether she will ever sit on or even lay another egg as long as she lives.

3. Once the hen is sitting happily in new area, lift her gently and place the eggs underneath her.

Us: push the eggs underneath her whilst dodging her beak and hope that she will organise them herself later - telling yourself that they have sat on a bench for a week and being a little outside the nest for a night won't hurt them.

I wonder...will it work?

Ups and Downs

Its been a bit of a rollercoaster week actually. We continue to try and develop our Ormiston baby snags (latest name...still thinking). After eating enough fat and cholesterol to clog my arteries many times over and just when the thought of another sausage was intolerable I think we pretty much got the recipe right. It has been tested on a few kids, other than our own, and the next step is to try them on a few more... so far all comments are good. Earlier on in the week we decided to start signing up for the farmers markets around us, only to be told that they all had pork producers (not free range) and didn't want any more pork. My attempts at explaining the difference was pretty much met with 'well pork is pork'. This, frankly, is more than a bit of a blow for us. If we can't go to the farmers markets we can't really sell our product. If we can't sell it at the markets then we can't really build up slowly and we may as well chuck in the towel. This defeatist attitude only grabbed hold for a bit and then we rallied. A few calls to Sydney markets soon cheered us up with much excitement from the managers at the thought that we might be coming down there sooner than we thought. After coming back with enough pork to make our visitors sick of coming over here from Dubbo we took a risk and sent another 4 off for the Mudgee markets. There was much nail biting and looking at the clouds building on Thursday and Friday - a little torn because we are desperately in need of rain but were aware that if it arrived on Saturday during the markets it would affect how many people would show up.

Mudgee didn't let us down and we sold out of everything once again by 10.30 - what was fantastic was seeing so many familiar people who had bought last month come back again this month with lots of positive comments. Both of us were completely wired after finishing at 12.00pm and came home and collapsed in front of the tv with the kids. We spent the afternoon in front of the fire watching it rain intermittently and hoping it might chuck it down and give everything a good drenching. Despite lots of dark clouds and heavy winds (and freezing temperatures) it remains fairly dry...

Another sporting moment.

I'm not entirely sure which order these pictures go in...I think in fact that they are back the front. Felix starts with the ball, then he runs the wrong way only to be put on the right track and attempt to score a goal or whatever they do in rugby. This way makes him look better, but in reality I just can't work this damn blog site and am happy if they upload at all (later note: have just accidentally erased all photos and have put them back on inexplicably in a different order...ignore above comments). This is obviously to show Felix starting rugby at a pint sized age, I spend most of my time having to be held back from racing in and protecting him from the rough and tumble. He generally comes off the pitch saying 'that was awsome'. Last week for example he learned how to spit with the other boys.. charming. I guess I didn't have brothers so I can't appreciate how normal this behaviour is....James is very proud.

Our day in pictures

Well, its more fun to look at than my writing - the kids are now true farm children and are meant to be helping with the weighing. This involves fighting over who is going on the tractor, getting stuck on any number of gates and then setting off the car alarm many times whilst electing to sit in the car and wishing the morning was over. Felix has discovered Star Wars and the animals are wary around him as he spends most of his days as Luke Skywalker and anyone unfortunate to be in the vicinity becomes 'Dark Vader' (his words) to be dispatched with this 'Life Saver'.

We waved goodbye to Vanessa, Fiona and James dog who we very jealously watched drive off into the sunset for a year of adventure and carefree fun... until we can trap them here again on their way through..

Anyone for Banglets??

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...

More piglets and a successful farmers market

Why is it that I never have a camera when I really need it?? Clearly I would have made a lousy journalist - that said, you will just have to read our latest update and be content with pictures of more cute little piglets. Despite our dates our ladies decided to farrow in the opposite order - Lucy won with 16 piglets, one dead and another very small one (which I should have taken and bottle fed, didn't make it either). The remaining 14 are adorable and are under a week old and tottering around the paddock already. Lucy is often found resting away from the hut after tucking them into bed at night having a glass of wine and some 'me' time - I know just how she feels. Shortly after Lucy, Rosie had 9 little ones and Bev followed with 7 (not the 2 I was predicting). A little disappointing for second litters but lovely little pigs so we will just have to be content with that. That boosts our numbers up and probably makes Felix rest a little easier. Still struggling with the concept of eating our pigs I got a little closer to the reason this week when I asked him what exactly was worrying him about it all (expecting a heart wrenching reply) - he said "I like pigs and if we keep eating them we will run out" - after I showed him that we had 30 more with the latest litters he seemed perfectly happy with the whole concept.

Speaking of eating pigs our first Farmers Market was a huge success. Once again we both had minimal sleep trying to figure out what we would do with 3 pigs and the resulting meat (LOTS) if the local demand for free range pork wasn't as we had hoped. Our butchers had very kindly lent us their refridgerated ute and as James loaded up the meat I struggled gamely with the tent that we had bought to cover our operations at markets such as this one. Everyone else seemed to set up like a well oiled machine whilst I stood around and aimlessly attempted to stretch the legs out on this supposedly easy to assemble piece of equipment. Once again Mudgee's friendly locals saved the day and helped out with the million things we had forgotten - tent pegs, hammers, scissors and some muscle in putting things up and carrying various boxes. By the time people started wandering through I think we looked almost professional. I say almost because on our first sale I had just taken the money and felt quietly excited about selling a packet of sausages and chops and managing to add it all up in my head when I went to open the till and realised that I had left the key at home....worse than that Emily had been playing with the keys the night before so I was pretty sure I would never see them again. Slight panic descended as more people came to buy the meat and I flapped around trying to figure out how I was going to operate with no change whatsoever, however emptying both our wallets and begging for the right money soon put us on the right track. Vanessa and Fiona responded to a call at about 9 which sounded a little like "HELP, please come down here" and even were so organised as to bring change with them. By 10.30 we had sold out of everything and for the next 2 hours had to hand out order forms and apologise to a lot of disappointed people. Champagne was drunk that evening and since then we have had 4 orders directly and apparently a lot of interest through our butcher, Hodges. It is all very exciting.

My goats are back and our chickens and laying like the clappers - 6 eggs today. We are all a bit desperate for rain and despite the fact that the clouds are ominous and the weather is cold I think we had about 4 millimetres today...the winter vegies are not happy and I have had to start buying fruit and veg from the shop for the first time in a couple of months. This weekend we are preparing for Wings Wine and Wheels - an airshow with wine and cars I guess. We will be selling hot pork rolls and sausages as usual and next weekend we will try our luck at one of the big farmers markets in Dubbo. Despite James' refusal to ever go back there are EI vaccinating it seems that the lure of thousands of customers is changing his mind.

Countdown to Farmers Market

After smugly commenting on the fact that we have all been free of 'bugs' since leaving the crowded streets of London, we have all developed unpleasant hacking coughs over the last week or so and so life has been a bit miserable, especially for the kids. James' ear has healed up nicely, although I was hoping for a permanent hole so that he could sport an ear tag as well.

Last weeks cyclists were very keen on the hot pork rolls, which sold out within a couple of hours. Next we had to make around 300 canapes and the day began with me forgetting that the local electricity supplier would be cutting off our power from 10.00am to 3.00pm. Thank god a friend's kitchen had been lined up as it was closer to the event and we could keep the kids occupied a little better. I spent a day sweating over a pork belly recipe which I had not attempted before and that luckily decided to cooperate. This was combined with some sausage rolls and taken up to a rotarian conference for about 300 people. Again the tables were empty in about an hour and a half and we had lots of great feedback on the meat. It is now time to put our money where our mouth is so to speak and we will start selling the free range pork at the next farmers market. We are getting labels and brochures printed, having our sign put on the side of the ute and looking around at portable coolrooms. I have a long 'to do' list at the moment that I am trying to work through.

James' parents, Julie and Peter, arrived on the weekend and have not so far suffered too much from jetlag. James and Peter quickly kicked off by finishing the kid's treehouse (above), much to the delight off Emi and Felix who would probably like to take their beds up there if they could.

The goats have gone off to the billy and I am told have both have cooperated with much enthusiasm. I am embarrassed to write this however I am actually really missing having them around - as is Gracey who spends her days bleating pathetically at the gate for someone to come and play with her. I will leave them for another week to make sure that they don't come into season again and then they can load up and come home and get back to eating our blackberries.

Woody is off to dog school this weekend - he spends most of his days ambushing Coco and launching himself at her ears with a tenancity that would make a staffy proud. She is suffering a bit and has taken to jumping out of the back yard and heading up to her good friend James dog for a cup of tea and some rest and relaxation. I am hoping that getting a good start on his training might help, but am slightly worried that we may never have enough work to keep him busy. The pigs seem so clever that they pretty much walk themselves out now and go through the scales without too much of a problem. Staying on the pig news we are due to have about 3 litters in the next week. Lucy is so heavy that her teats are almost dragging on the ground and she looks distinctly uncomfortable. Little Rosie (who is still my favourite and loves a scratch and a cuddle) is probably coming up second and Bev, who really should be first, either has a solitary piglet and therefore not much to show, or is like one of those supermodels who manages to sail through pregnancy without looking as though there is much more than a beachball till the last minute.

Last but not least my chicken saga continues... Brad has been joined by a new Angelina - she is a pretty little grey thing but so flightly that I couldn't get a photo of her. I know that she is there because every morning when I let them out she almost flies into my head and runs squawking off around the yard. I have long been looking for some silkies and found out that there was a sale up at the agriculture plot at the high school with one rooster and 2 hens going. Clearance and garage sales around here seem to be pretty competitive with people showing up hours before they begin so I wasn't going to miss out this time. I went there ready to push to the front of the queue and jump on the chickens at first sight, however luck was with me and they hadn't sold. We therefore now have Buzz, Isabella and Wendy (named by Felix) who you can see above. They provide me with a lot of pleasure as they are like owning something out of the Muppet show... not highly intelligent (even for a chicken) they seem to strut around and bump into things a lot and unlike the others don't roost so I have to be meticulous about locking them up as they would be an easy meal for a fox. They are already laying and the plan is that they are so clucky that I can use them to hatch out my duck eggs.