Piggy Update

An interesting post over on my other Blog if you want to nip over!!

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Piggy update - no babies yet, it should be tonight if the dates are right, but she just looked SO ready yesterday I thought she might be early.

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Sue xx

Expectant Mum

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Anyone who's been pregnant will sympathise with Maud. She has just one day to go until the arrival of her babies and she is HUGE! She can't lie on her tummy and watch the world go by from the doorway of her ark as she loves to do. She struggles to get comfy on her side, then just as she does she has to get up and answer the call of nature outside the ark.

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Today she is not quite as muddy as in these pictures taken yesterday evening when she had been sorting through the mud pile in her enclosure ......don't ask! If pregnant women can do strange things I see no reason why a pregnant pig can't, and it's important to have your mud arranged just right!! Once she'd built her nest in the ark out of straw, packed at the sides to keep out draughts and loose in the middle to make it soft, she obviously felt the urge to tidy the mud!!

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And it must be so frustrating to have your slim sister living just over the fence!!

Hopefully she will be much happier tomorrow. I'll keep you informed.

Sue xx

Itching to get started.....

I'm itching to get started on the planting. But with more frosts forecast over the next few weeks, I know I shouldn't.

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It's just that time of year, slight promises of better days with the sun giving us the odd peep from between the grey clouds, and if you stand in just the right sheltered spot you can feel warmth of her rays. If you stand the thermometer in the right place in the polytunnel the mercury shoots up, but then plummets disappointingly as the sun vanishes behind a cloud.

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The seed packets have been sorted through and the polytunnel tidied, the wind up radio has been tried out and works a treat.........I'm raring to go.

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But I think I should do as Archie does......and sit on the fence just a little bit longer.

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Sue xx

Our Year of Living Simply........

Our Year of Living Simply has started.

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Looking at the picture above says it all, what does a dog need to make it happy.......a bit of sunshine, some fresh air and a person to throw the stick they have chosen from natures toy box.

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Now I'm not for one moment saying life is ever that simple, but I do feel the need to get back to basics somewhat, to find out what is really necessary in our lives. So this year is a time to jettison the unnecessary, embrace and enhance the necessary, to sort out our minds, our home and our plans and to move forward into the unknown.

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Not all plans made last year came to fruition, for instance we are still here on our leased land looking for the next patch that we can really make our own, one that suits the needs of our pigs better and makes life easier for us. Some plans worked out beautifully, we tied up the past neatly and with love, we paid off all our debts to credit cards and other establishments. We are now in the fortunate position of being on a pathway we have chosen for ourselves.

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Some may say we are lucky, but I believe firmly (from past hard-learned experience), that it is always the hard workers that are lucky. If you really want something you will strive towards it, whether it be improving your own and your families lives or just acquiring some longed for thing. We have never won loads of money or foreign holidays in competitions, if we wanted a holiday we saved and worked hard for it (or splashed out on the credit card and then worked hard to repay it!!). We have never been handed good fortune on a plate, we have searched for it, grabbed at it with both hands and then nursed it well. You could say we have made ourselves masters of our own destiny. This is all we have wanted and from now on we are rejoicing it that and keeping life simple.

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Join us this year as we work towards living simply. We are starting it well, we are both in reasonable health, we are debt free. Lovely Hubby has his job and we have another year left on the lease on this farm to give us time to find the next place we can call our own.

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Home is where the heart is and mine is firmly with my darling husband and our family and animals. I have all I need.

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Our Year of Living Simply starts here!

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Sue xx

Review of theYear - Part 2

The second half of the year was even busier than the first. July saw us busy harvesting crops as the polytunnels and the raised beds proved very successful and bountiful. We preserved foods for Winter and started making our own bread.

~ It also saw delivery of our new farm work horse, a necessity for getting off the farm when the track turns to a muddy quagmire, and with a very useful rear section big enough to hold animals for short journeys. ~ August saw the fast expansion of the piggy side of things with first Elizabeth Taylor (Liz), arriving, shortly followed by..... ...Monty, the Middle White Boar and then Jack the Large Black boar (who rather quickly sprung into action). ~ September saw us off on our annual pilgrimage to River Cottage to get our farm diary signed by the great man himself. ~ We ate like kings and enjoyed the fruit and veggies growing all around us. ~ October saw the cutest piggies on the farm arriving in the shape of Tinka, Tayla and Gypsey, the Kune Kunes. Rare breed pigs that originate from New Zealand. ~ November was an egg-citing month the the hatching of our very first chicks, Iris, Fern and Pipsqueak and their little brothers and sisters. Our seven Lavender Pekin Bantams chicks. ~ It was also a proud month with the graduating from University of our youngest son Jason, with his Masters degree in Document Analysis. ~ And then we come to December, a truly marvelous end to the year with the birth of our first piglets, four little girls born to Lottie, our Large Black. ~ We had Lovely Hubby baring his chin to the world for the first time in 30 years..... ~ ...and my gift to him.....you've all waited a long time to see this one.....I bought a dress!! Yep....he got to see my legs for Christmas and I have promised that, whenever the occasion warrants it, the legs will be on display again. At last, as Barbara in the Good Life would say...." I have a posh frock", and occasionally this tom-boy pig farmer will be a girl!!

Thank you for sticking with this Blog, for calling by and reading about our lives here on the farm, for showing an interest and for participating by leaving your lovely comments over the past year...... you've been very welcome.

And you will continue to be welcome over the coming year as we see things continue to grow from the seeds of this life that we planted two years ago. There will be more babies on the farm in the next day or so as Maud is HUGE and obviously about to have babies at any moment.

So thank you, for reading this, for being there with solutions to problems, for giving moral support and we would like to take this opportunity to wish everyone, family, friends and fellow 'good-lifers' all over the world a Very Happy, Prosperous and Animal Friendly New Year.

Sue and Alan xx

Review of the Year - Part One

And here we are...almost at the end of our second year on the farm. It has been a year of expanding, and developing, of moving forward and best of all.....getting more new animals.

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January (the top picture), nearly got off to a sad start with Molly the White Star being found by me frozen in her nesting box. With an absolutely blue comb and rigid feet, she truly was a 'frozen chicken' and not the sort the supermarkets sell all neatly trussed. With a lot of TLC and a few days in the house, she was soon back to health, and when she started stealing the dogs dinners and chasing the cats we knew she was well enough to re-join the flock.

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February saw us up to our knees in mud, and the trusty JCB that towed all the other stuck vehicles clear of mud was itself finally swallowed in the yucky brown stuff.

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March saw the polytunnel really earning its' keep with the beds groaning under the weight of pots and seed trays all holding our veggies for the coming year. We had an amazing 99.9% germination rate and things literally grew inches overnight.

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April saw us moving the big pigs back from their Winter quarters in the barn. What we thought was going to be an easy walk back turned into a three hour piggy tour of the farm. With the pigs putting their heads in chicken houses for a nosy, touring the ponds a couple of times and generally doing exactly what they wanted while we followed with wry grins on our faces, and even at one point retiring to the patio for a glass of cider to watch the goings on from a comfy seat.

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April also saw the arrival onto the farm of two little girls who won our hearts, Lulu and Lottie. Shown here in a picture so reminiscent of this morning when Lotties' piglets peeped out to greet us.

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May saw my eldest son, Simons visit to the farm, he mucked in helping with strimming, wood cutting and fixing the JCB when it ground to a standstill and generally doing all those jobs that a genius with motors thinks so easy and the rest of us (me) just sulk at.

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May also saw all the raised beds in full production, with potatoes, peas, beans, kale, spinach and lots of other veggies growing well, protected from the chickens with mesh and tunnels.

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June, the halfway point of the year was celebrated with the arrival of the 'Cow-avan', surely the

most original pig feed store in Oxfordshire.

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Back tomorrow with the second half of the year.

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Sue xx

Would you vote for me........

I entered this photo in a little photographic competition over at Tinned Tomatoes (an absolutely brilliant vegetarian foodie Blog), under the heading 'Snowy Days on the Farm'. We are now into the final day of voting, so here it is....a plea......will you vote for me? (Just click on the words Tinned Tomatoes to get there.)

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In the interest of fair play, if you do pop over there and see a photo you prefer you do have my full permission to vote for that instead!!

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Sue xx