If you go down to the woods today....!

 

Having had a week of feeling pretty miserable as I’ve had this cold/flu bug that’s been doing the rounds, I got a real pick me up on Sunday afternoon when our pigs arrived.  They are brilliant and I’m really pleased we got them (I know it’s only day 2!).  I don’t know if I’ve said this before but only one of them is ours and one belongs to Paul and Rachel Vaclik who keep alpacas here as well.  We were golng to get three for ourselves but thought that as we hadn’t kept pigs before it might be better to start slowly.  Pretty impressive hey, not rushing into things!!!  The thing is we are doing this for fun – and sausages! – and don’t want to make like difficult for ourselves.  Paul and Rachel have named their pig “Bangers” but ours - after a lot of thought and some good and bad suggestions for names – is just being called “Pig”.

Just as you can spend ages watching alpacas, the same goes for pigs.  They are really quite hilarious.  They don’t seem to do anything slowly, as they go rushing around the place, chasing each other round their bijou residence and if they catch sight of you, their heads turn round as if they are jet propelled.  They don’t seem to be worried about our dogs and were nuzzling Scrumpy on the
nose through the wire fence.  I think Scrumpy is the one that needs to be wary as if she got in with them, they could flatten her pretty quickly, as they are so strong, even at 8 weeks old.  It will be interesting to see what the alpacas think of them as it won’t be too long before some of them will be going into the field that borders the pig paradise.  Paradise it must be too – loads of space, lots of trees and piles of brushwood to investigate.

 

Late yesterday, we got on with doing our regular alpaca vitamin drenches and also spits.  All of this husbandry stuff is so much easier now we have these proper pens inside the barn.  We were really pleased to find that all those, bar one, that we thought were pregnant, were spitting well – and I mean well!  Mike was chortling away when I got mildly spat at, but then Maisie got him full on.  It was especially funny as she was lying down in her pen which we thought looked a bit ominous and we were presuming that she was not pregnant after all.  As Maisie is Minerva’s mother we were especially disappointed about this.  However, she was lulling Mike into a false sense of security, as he had only just taken King in to her pen when she leapt up and started spitting at them both really vigorously.  I wish that I’d had a camera!

 

 

It’s such a treat to have better weather this week.  I was walking round our garden yesterday and quite frankly it just looks ravaged.  So many shrubs look quite dead and others just badly burned with the frost.  I think it’s going to take a lot of work to get things turned round this year.  I will finally get my seed potatoes in this week and think that I may actually order some plug plants rather than seeds this year.  Everything is so behind and apart from vegetable plants, I think there are going to be loads of gaps to fill in the flower borders this year.  Mind you, you do sometimes wonder if it is false economy buying these plug plants, by the time you’ve bought compost and maybe more pots to pot them on – not to mention the time it all takes.

My cooking seems to have picked up again as I have started to recover from this bug.  Just as well really as I think there was a limit as to how long people would make diplomatic remarks about quite obviously dodgy cakes etc..!  So there are fruit cakes in the Aga and I’m just wondering now what to do with some chicken breasts that are in the fridge.  So what better excuse do I need to sit at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and pore over a cookery book or two!