How lovely for me yesterday, Bevan got up and did all the morning chores, while I just lingered in bed and read a book. Can’t remember the last time that happened.

Later I had a call from the local vets telling us that two of our sheep had run across the road in front of a car and were now in the neighbours bobby calf pen.  Very odd considering that the sheep were way up in the orchard, but I went and checked them anyway, and sure enough all of ours were present and accounted for. I rang the vet back and then thought nothing more about it.

After lunch we popped up the road briefly and on the way home we noticed that the gate to the pig paddock was open. No sign of the pigs anywhere.

My new vege garden is right by the pig gate, but not a vege was touched, nor was there any sign of there passing. The neighbours hadn’t seen them, and they were not around the road anywhere. We started to worry that someone might of taken them while we were out. To the point that Bevan decided to ring the police and report them stolen. He could reach them so he left them a message.

About 2 hours later, we started to wonder if the found sheep were in fact our missing pigs – but then surely country people could tell the difference between pigs and sheep.

Anyway, Bevan wandered over to check the bobby calf pen across the road, and sure enough there were our two little piggies. I took the car down but the naughtly little things would not go into the boot, so they had to come up in the back seat. Finally they were back where they belong.

Now even after scrubbing the seats down the car still smells like a pig, not a good thing on a hot summer day.

As a new year is about to come upon us, it is time to take stock and see how close to our goals we have reached.

The garden is starting to crank up for the summer harvest, and we even got our first crop of beans for the year. We eat alot of beans, so this is something that I not only grow for immediate eating, but also I freeze alot for the winter months. Last winter we ran out in the last month before the garden got going so this year the plan is to do a bit more.

I have some peas in the freezer for use over the hot summer months when they don’t grow, and my last row of them is just poding up now, it looks like I got the timing right that they will be finished before the heat kills them. I have today sown the pean beans that we used last year for homemade baked beans, so it will be good to get some more of them.

We have cucumbers and zucchinis in over abundance right now and the the tomotoes have started to ripen. The garlic has been harvested and is in the process of drying, seems to be bigger bulbs than last year, so that went well.

Potatoes, well  I could well be able to do two full crops so we will have plenty over the summer and still be growing them for the winter months. This year we have once again grown Chipawas for the wonderful chips they make, and also Sambagos for roasting. I have some moonlight seed potatoes but haven’t got them in the ground yet, as well as an unkown type that were here when we came and I have moved to the orchard to help the forest garden get going.

As for fruit, well we have had a surprising large number of raspberries off our one little plant, and I see that it is now sending up lots of shoots so as long as we have a cold enough winter we should get lots next year as well. The blueberries have done nothing with the berries just not ripening on the plants at all, but the strawberries have done well so that is all good.

We are looking like we will get plenty of apples and are already getting plums. One row of pear trees(winter cole) is doing very badly in the fruit department, but then it always has done next to nothing and we are still trying to work out what the problem is with them. The packham and nashi pears both have lots of developing fruit again so no worries there.

The necterine tree is doing really well on all the compost and manure it got last year, but the peach tree right next to is is fighting with us as to whether it will stay alive or not. This morning it had nine shoots on it, that is two more that two days ago and seven more than last month. Needless to say we will not have any peaches this year.

I think all the other trees are pretty much doing what they have always done, although there does seem to be alot of figs on the fig trees at the moment.

We are continuing to milk the cow, and we have been enjoying wonderful homemade ice cream, yogurt, butter, as well as milk. I have not made any cheese as yet, but nest year when daisy is in milk we will probably have to. Daisy is, I am pretty sure, now pregnant, but we have not been able to catch Sweetie Pye in standing heat to get the AI man into her, so not quite sure what we will do about that as yet. Her not so little calf Liquorice has been growing steadily for the last seven weeks and has will make a wonderful addition to our freezer in a couple of years.

We finally reached the point with the chickens were they are paying for themselves, and then my rooster died some mysterious death one day. On christmas eve we hatched the last lot of eggs we had from him, so now we will have to decide what to do about a replacement for him. I have been toying with the idea of just buying in fertile eggs rather than feeding a rooster all year around, but that decsion is still to come.

We have ended up with seven lambs of which only one is on the plan to keep, so lots of lamb chops in the future.

Having the pigs in winter stocked the freezer well, but they were not fun to care for in the rain with all the mud around. We had to repave around their gateway as they had created such a hole in it. Summer is definetly the only time we should do pigs, and certainly Orenoko and Tobermore that we have now are much more fun. Lesson learnt and we have an extra one on order for the end of next year to raise over the summer.

Over all I feel that I have reached my goal for the year. I wanted to be producing 70 -80% of our own food, I feel that with the addition of a housecow we have reached that point. We can certainly go through our fair share of packaged foods when we want to,but the whole point is that we only do so by choice and not because there is nothing else to eat. Even Bevan has been heard to comment on the poor quality and hugh number of additives in prepackaged goods, and that is a whole new way of thinking for him.

Now for my goal for next year. This is a hard one, as I really want to continue on the path we have started on. I think I need to have the gardens under better control as the weeds keep getting away from me at the moment, and I would also like to make some cheese in the future.

Certainly we will be wanting to achieve at least as high or higher percentage of home grown food.

Where she came from they started having problems with over sized calves and some very serious calving problems on account of the new bull they had brought in. I was worried!

We were in no way equiped to cope with a full problem birth and the potential loss of both cow and calf. The local vets office was put on alert.

I started taking regular photos of Sweetie Pye as things progressed towards the birth. Her udder got so big it looked like it was going to explode.

I could not imagine how the udder could get any bigger. Something had to give.

Just before lunch she started pacing around and seemed unable to decide where to put herself. Within two hours it became obvious that labour was in full swing and the baby would be here soon

I watched carefully for any signs of a problem, but did not want to intervene unless it was absolutely essential.

At 1:50pm on friday Liquorice Allsorts came into the world, with no help from anyone.

Click on the thumbnails to see the actual birth.

Two days later both mother and baby are doing really well

Now that he is here, it is believed that the father is not a hereford, but instead a Red Devon bull that belonged to Marys neighbour. Liquorice is a nice big healthy boy and appears to be doing very well so far.

We have been helping out at the milk bar since there is way more milk than what just one calf can manage. Yesterday we milked of almost eight litres of colostum over two milkings, some of which went into the freezer in case of future need. It is looking like Sweetie Pye has one blind quarter(no milk in that part of her udder) with another one having very little, so most of the milk is coming from the two front teats. Even so there is still plenty there to feed one calf with a bit left over for the house.

We have some more pigs arrivingthis week so they will be able to to have some as well.

I couldn’t resist this family photo – Sweetie Pye, Liquorice Allsorts, and that is Cricket(Sweetie Pyes daughter from last year) on the other side of the tape.

Happy Families.

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We had our first and only frost so far about 2 weeks ago, followed by the wonderful tree pruning weather.

Guess what I have been doing, yes cleaning up the garden and starting to prune the fruit trees in the orchard.

Now one of the problems with having a large home orchard is that it take so much time to maintain it. If this was my only job then it would be different, but I am squeezing it in around all the other things I have to do. The other thing is that when we moved in, most of the trees had been neglected for a few years, so it  is a long slow job to reshape and knock them into some sort of shape again.

The two rows of apples are now responding well to all the compost and food they have been getting so whereas last year there was very little to do to prune these nongrowing trees, this year they have grown quite a lot.

The large peach and necterine trees had a big prune this year, as did the cherries.

Plums well it is a work in progress. The trees that got a big prune last year, have had a smaller maintainece prune and work has started to reshape more.

Pears well I will admit to only getting one of those done so far, still its early days yet and if we manage to get more fine days then we can continue with the pruning.

The rest of the garden has been having a fairly major cleanup as well while the fine weather persisted. There has been a lot of weeding, chopping, pruning, pulling out, digging up etc. Not much replanting at this stage but it too will come.

We have also ended up with another couple of pigs. Tamworths this time. Sammie has called them Tom and Rose. They are smaller than the large blacks we had, but after treating them for worms, lice etc they are growing well. They arrived with a mild case of mange, but are coming right with that now. Sammie and I had great fun trying to catch them for their treatment as they are quite people shy, they don’t even like to have a scratch while the eat. Still we did manage to catch them and Sammie sat on them while I popped a needle behind their ears. I was amased at how they didn’t even flinch when it went in. Poor things, still they have stopped scratching now and the hair on them is growing back, so they are starting to look much healthier.

I am not thrilled with the way they were ringed and they are having great fun rooting up the paddock, so will probably not do winter pigs again. They need to be gone around October as we have some more large blacks booked for the summer. We should end up with plenty of bacon.

Now that the weather has turned, it is time to focus more on the homeschooling and this will be the time I reevaluate and plan for the coming year, but more on that later.

We after a couple of days they had settled and were happily coming when food was offered and had the run of the paddock. The sheep had grazed the paddock and we had run and electric wire around the bottolm of the fence to keep them in as everyone had told us pigs were good escape artists. And the neighbours were very worried that they would get out.

Well they were very happy pigs they must of been getting more than enough to eat since the grass grew so long that it was soon taller than they were, so they looked really funny leaping over the grass as they bounded up the paddock with their ears flopping over their eyes. Eventually as they grew they did start to eat the grass down.

We were lucky that a friend offered us the goats whey left over from her cheesemaking, and the pigs loved it. They also loved the windfall fruit and exscess eggs, so feeding them wasn’t too expensive.

We took George and Mildred to the homekill guy yesterday. It wasn’t nearly as difficult as what I had expected.

I had had visions of us chasing them around and tackling them and then trying to wrestle them into the trailer.

What actaully happened was that we got them to wander up to the trailer a couple of times and they sniffed at it and then deciding that even with the apples on it it didn’t smell right, so they wandered off again in search of better pickings.

So off I went and got a couple of slices of hay, spread it over the trailer base, banged the food bowl, and wouldn’t you know it George just walked on.

Mildred by this time was way up the other end of the paddock, so I went and ot some Nachis for George to munch on and by the time I got back Bevan had called her down and re-opened the door, and she looked at George in ther just finishing off the apples and decided it was a good place to be. So up she climbed.

Easy Peasy. I felt a moment of regret as we drove down the drive and past their paddock, but that was all.

We were told that they will be back in about 10 days so not too long to wait.

Things feel like they are finally coming together and this will be our first homegrown animals, so we are looking forward to it.

At the end of the day, having pigs are on or list of things to do again, so there is progress.