- Linhda preparing to make home-made sweet chilli sauce a couple of hours ago: “The recipe says to use 6 chillies, so I’m going to use 15.” Linhda about 5 minutes ago: “Smell the sweet chilli sauce.” You’d think I’d know better, right?
- Getting pigs this weekend. This fast forwards our plans to make a smokehouse…
- Linhda quote #1 today: <looks at her breakfast yoghurt> “This looks and smells gross. Here, you eat it.” Linhda quote #2 today: <after learning of a country dance in a nearby town> “I want to go… and learn to do a jig… like the hillbillies.”
- Honey, our biggest pig, has one blue eye and one brown eye! She’s the David Bowie of the porcine world!!!! I’m no expert, but I’m fairly certain that means her babies will be even tastier.
- This morning I have piglets eating out of my hand, though they still startle at any sudden movement. For the record, piglets are not polite eaters. Seriously, no manners at all.
- Bruce was outside tonight when he started to bark with intent. I went out to see what was up, and he’d found the biggest freaking fox I’ve ever seen. He and I chased it off. Seems like the big man earned his keep… On a related topic, I’m contemplating getting a gun, and just the thought disturbs me a little.
- We have a scarecrow (Cecil), dressed in farm formal, a hanging fake bird, and a perched fake owl. The only bird that goes anywhere near the veggie patch now is a Willy Wag-Tail. They’re basically the fox terrier of the avian world anyway, and they only eat bugs. All-in-all, our bird denial day was a huge success! Weirdly enough, the only bird that died was a starling I found caught in a mouse trap. That was a little surreal…
- I found the first thing that the piglets don’t seem to want to eat – celery leaves. They eat every other green thing we put in front of them, including carrot tops which even the chickens don’t like. Hell, they spent five minutes trying to eat my filthy old volleys off my feet. Celery leaves, on the other hand, are apparently gross. On a related note, my favourite piglet, Honey, has dry skin on her back. I’m now googling “piglets with dry skin”. Yes, I’m *that* farmer.
- Going to make mulberry wine today. How hard can it be? We’ll just have dad try it first. If he doesn’t go blind then I’ll call it a success…
- Got two more piglets. More than that, we learned exactly what NOT to do when keeping pigs. Or goats. Or sheep. Or poultry. Or young children. The guy we got them from was the small-holding version of a puppy farm. Despite the fact that both these piglets are destined for our freezer, I felt like I was saving them.
Dad being useful.
The Atherton Farm Blog 