One Step Forward, Two Steps Back?

Yoiks! Not a howling success then, that 'hard' cheese. 

I have always tried 'on here' to report our story. like Cromwell's portrait, warts and all. Thankfully embarrassing howlers are infrequent and most readers' comments focus on the good stories with happy outcomes - "living the dream" and all that jazz. I think you can probably place my latest cheese making attempt and my first try at hard-ish cheese, firmly in the 'warts' camp. I have definitely missed a stage in the process and the lovely white, semi-hard cheese I hung up in a muslin bag to ripen started showing very dark through the cloth within a couple of weeks. I have, it seems, hung a lovely moist, nutritious chunk of fungus-food up at air temperature in a non-sterile bag in a non-sterile air flow. Spores must have been queueing up to come to this party. It seemed like a good idea at the time and I can't quite believe how stupid that sounds now. Back to square one - I will go read some more book and talk to our goat-milk supplier and (now) successful cheese-making mentor (Hi Sue! Congrats on your "promotion"!).

Ouch. Yellow arrow shows where the girl's sting went in. The
big red patch was the itchy, alarming result but I am still here
to tell the tale.

Then I was just off to enjoy a bit of archery on Sunday and took the opportunity to water the courgettes growing in the polytunnel. I leaned over my water tank wielding my watering can, then stood up and flexed my arm to lift the can just as a wasp zoomed up from the tank and through the crook of my elbow. Bang. I half-crushed Miss Wasp and she reacted as wasps do, zapping me before I could flick her off. She fell into the water and a less merciful soul would have wished her good luck.

I am currently feeding these lads for a neighbour. Grub's up.

I am silly enough that I rescued her with the spout of my watering can and, as far as I know, she lives to sting again. I was alone in the house at that stage and could only wait the few minutes to see if, like my Mother, I am allergic to wasp venom and there would be anaphyllactic shock dramatics, ambulances and paramedics. Fortunately, no. A tiny white pimple with a fan-shaped red patch below it was my only injury. It itched like fury and 'Nurse Lizzie' administered Piriton and a chilling 'Wasp-Eze' spray but I was able to go to archery and lash the required number of arrows down the hall as if nothing had happened.

Yes, I know we have a bowl each. but....

With Thursday came the piggies' 6-Month Birthday. Local tradition (all be it only 3 years old as an event) has it that the pigs get an extra meal that day at lunchtime which includes Guinness poured into their barley. It is very simple as kiddies' parties go; there's no jelly or crisps trodden into the carpet, no disappointing magician or balloon-animal guy, no party bags and no tears before bedtime, but we like it and so do the pigs. They can't believe their luck - an extra meal! And beer in it - which they have never tasted before (and won't again). I also got them some banana and cherry tomatoes (both on special offer from Lidl; I wonder if their marketing bods know that their special offers are the must-have fruit choices for 6 month old gilts party fodder?)

A Birthday back-scratch. All pigs love a good, hard,
dig-your-finger-nails-in, rake-over. Get that dandruff flying!

The Guinness was almost a story in itself. I'd bought 2 cans and was only going to give the 'babies' one between them, but I took the other can (the pigman's share?) in with me to make a better photo. I put it down while I messed with bowls and barley but Ross took a shine to this new object and promptly gave it a good chomp. She pierced the thin can with her teeth and set the whole thing off with a spray of beer like a fire extinguisher. Rather than waste it I glugged the rest into the bowls and the pigs got a can each.

Two very happy little piggies schlurrrrped up the beer-soaked mixture and the fruit with more gusto (and saliva) than normal and then did a good job of cleaning the ground around the bowls. No waste there, then. At that point they pretty much headed for the ark and a mission to sleep off the full bellies on the straw. Later I was barrowing in some shredded wood to 'repair' the poached up muddy bits and it was only at the 2nd barrow that two bleary eyed pigs woke up to investigate, shaking strands of straw from their noses as they wandered over.

Of course, we have now probably spoiled them rotten and they were 'asking' for more barley and beer at lunchtime today but I only gave them a couple of chopped up apples to shut them up. Over feeding was the mistake I made on the Tamworths in 2014, handing them food every time they squealed. That way madness lies (and pork chops where 30% of the weight is the skin and subcutaneous fat!). I am pleased to say that my pics of these ladies at 6 months, posted to Facebook yesterday, have been complimented by our breeder/supplier who says they look "perfect".

On that subject, too, on the day we went to collect these pigs, the breeder passed me the phone number of another customer of his, who is now a breeder of 'Oxford Sandy and Black' pigs only half an hour's drive away. I contacted that guy yesterday to see how that project was going and the man was delighted to talk to me and have me as a likely future buyer of his piglets along with our friends Sue and Rob, who are also looking to get back into the pig game with a couple of these. More on that next year, probably.

Happy Birthday, Somerville and Ross.

Mary's Marked and Isabelle Isn't

This year's piggies. Berkshires. Mary and Isabelle.

After the trials and tribulations of yesterday with its bee losses and poorly lamb, we needed a good and successful day to restore the equilibrium and our faith in the fact that we have the general idea on this small holdering lark. With great timing, our pig supplier had rung to let us know that this year's pigs were ready for collection at 8 weeks old, down in Colbinstown, Co Kildare, south of Newbridge and Kilcullen.

How would you choose. 

These lovely people (Therese and Michael) have the website  http://www.freerangepigsireland.com/ which resolves, rather alarmingly to a page splashed with the header "PiggyWiggy's". You are trying to be a ruffty tuffty stockman, all professional and serious, and you wonder what you are getting into - Piggy Wiggy's? Don't worry. This is geared to their Kune-kune "pet pig" operation. They get all serious and proper when you want Tamworths, Berkshires or other 'proper' pig breeds. They even do "Iron-Age" pigs (Tamworth x Wild Boar, not for the faint hearted).

Mary (left) and Isabelle (right)

We can thoroughly recommend them but it is a bit of a hike from here - 2 hours 40 minutes which is probably not ideal for the young pigs. They seem to be like human babies in a car, though, and drop off to sleep reassuringly at the drum of the engine and the thunk of the Kildare potholes. €65 a pop, in case you are interested. We have this year and last year made a day-trip of it, taking friend Charlotte along, for her pig-wrangling skills (you should see her grab a scarpering piglet by the back leg in the 'proper' manner and lift it, helpless, into her arms). Liz cooks a superb picnic which we eat at the farm sitting on big logs upturned to make tables and seats. This year it included sausage rolls made from last year's Tamworths but Michael (pigman) declined as he has a gluten intolerance, so he needed 'spelt' flour in his pastry. Ah well. All the more for us. The site also houses their nursery - big beds and greenhouses of hellebores and the like. That, they describe as the 'day job'; the pigs are a sideline.

Crated for the run home.

These two pigs had already been named - we had put the question out on one of Liz's internet forums (fora?) and then offered it to the redoubtable Olive (90), good friend of our own "Poobie" in Leeds. Olive was reported to have gone "pink with pleasure" at being asked to name the piggies, and chose Mary Elizabeth and Isabelle Heather just because they were her favourite names (and spellings!). I baulked a bit at naming a pig 'Elizabeth' but I am re-assured that this is OK provided the Elizabeth in question is not your good lady. So Mary and Isabelle it is, but which was to be which?

Charlotte, ace pig-wrangler, gets a firm grip on Isabelle

Driving home, it occurred to me that one had a big white face-splash marking to go with her white socks, while the other only had the tiniest white dot on her forehead, hence "Mary's marked while Isabelle isn't". Had this (Olive's names) not happened, these were going to be named for the Berkshires in the 'Empress' books by one of our favourite authors, PG Wodehouse, but we will have to save those names for another year. We love that as we drive out of the breeder's site. Michael bids us farewell and "Probably see you next year, then?" We are working our way round the breeds at present and can see no reason why not.

Charlotte and Liz check out the parent sow and boar with
Michael the pig-man. 

The girls are now home safe and were set down in their ark which looks enormous against their tiny bodies and they were quickly out exploring the range of their new home. They seem so tiny, I was worried they might sneak through the fences but we've now watched them for a while and maybe they are just a bit big. Tonight the dogs met them through the orchard fence and they took a few wary sniffs at each other but the pigs were unimpressed and wandered off. Liz tells me that the Irish for pig is 'muc' (pronounced 'muck') but there is also the word "banbh" which comes out as 'bonham' and this is a word used a lot in Irish pig farming for young male piglets. Liz tells me that this caused the young Irish girls employed at London auction house "Bonhams" (where she worked for a while) much amusement especially as some of the managers had a particularly 'porcine' look.

Home and exploring the woods.

I guess I should give you an update on yesterday's woes. The lamb seems to be recovering on her doses of liquid paraffin. She looks much more comfortable today with none of the arched back or high tail stuff. We caught her when we got back from the pig run, to give her another dose and she definitely looked like she had passed some fresh poo, so we hope she is feeling a lot more comfortable and relieved. We will keep an eye on her and keep reporting back to Aoife the Vet, but we hope she is on the way back up. Poor little mite. It cannot have been comfortable to be 'backed up' like that.

Checking out the sunny grassy bit.

When I was out in the orchard giving the dogs their run this evening, I was enjoying the dogs trying to chat up the wary pigs, but also took a look at the hive. It is a bitter-sweet thing. The few hundred remaining bees are soldiering on gamely, still out foraging and flying to and fro. They cannot know that there is no future in this and that they are the end of the line for the 'Two Marys' colony from last year. With no queen there is no new young coming through. These ladies will live out their allotted 6 weeks and fade out. I am relying on the promise of some replacement stock soon as the fruit trees in the orchard come into blossom. It will be a shame to have another blossom season go by with no bees going about their work. I'll keep you posted on pigs, lambs and bees.