• WE HAVE PIGLETS!!!!!!!

There have been a couple of accidents (giant mums getting comfortable, little piglet bodies getting in the way), but right now we have 15 babies on two mums nursing away like little champs. YAY!!!!!!

• Don’t you hate it when you’re worried all night about your cold day-old piglets, and then wake up at 5:30 with a brainstorm on how to keep them warm? And then you get up and engineer said brainstormed idea before the sun is up? Yeah, me too.
• Fun Farm Fact #124: Three-day old piglets have teeth. Top and bottom. The result is that, while it may seem cute to let them suckle your fingers, the little buggers will bite the shit out of you!
• I spent probably 7 hours this afternoon butchering a 93kg pig, making bacon, and making sausages. This has taught me a couple of things. Firstly, my dreams of being a butcher when I grow up may be a bridge too far. Also, I should probably use the chainmail glove Linhda made me buy.

  In related news, if any of our visitors tomorrow eat a sausage, there’s a *very* good chance that it’ll have a special part of me in it…

• It’s official, we make the best bacon EVER! The new method recommended by the guy at MBL worked a treat, and is actually quite quick when you’re doing smaller (1 to 2 kg) chunks. I can see how the free-ranged, properly cured and smoked, artisan-type bacon is $30+ a kilo though – there’s a lot of work involved!

   Of course, when you’re talking about bacon, any amount of work is worth it…

• Cheese making class was awesome! My favourite part? Eating the cheese at the end.

• Had a total country night at the local pub tonight. Won the meat tray, because apparently we don’t have enough meat in our house. Linhda ordered a shandy. Watched footy. Rubbed shoulders with lots of dudes wearing jeans and thongs.

   It was freaking awesome!

• Today we spread, by hand, a tonne to a tonne-and-a-half of hay in the pig’s runs, after shovelling out a whole lot of poop. Now their runs are nice and neat, which will last about 3 minutes. Then I watched a couple of ducklings hatch, much to their mum’s disgust. We rounded the day out by catching a piglet who had developed an abscess on its butt, and syringing out over 80ml of blood and fluid, some of which ended up all over me.

   All-in-all, it’s been pretty Farmtastic!

• I discovered that the best time to pat the piglets is when they’re peeing and/or pooping. They either concentrate really hard, or they zone out, but either way they don’t try and run away from me. Piglet win!

Clarisse, sporting her trendy new halter, and meeting Bruce. They are not friends yet.