What?

I'm off to the Canberra Show today to see a few things. Friday is Milking Goat Day I want ot have a look at what involved with that. I also want ot have a talk to the Bee Club and intriduce myself before I go to a meeting.

There's also the Photography and Agricultural exhibits - I haven't been to the show for years!!!!! let you know all about it on Monday.

Getting too dry

Lucky we have a Midwife on staff here at Valley View. We’d moved a pregnant sow into a paddock of here own over the weekend, our Midwife was doing her rounds yesterday when she discovered the sow in birthing mode. This was the sows first litter so she thought she’d take a look. She went to investigate and found the sow in a little bit of trouble having a piglet in breach. So the Midwife went to work and rescued the little one with a good yank – she managed to get blood and yuk all over herself as well. The sow ended up having six piglets in all – better than twelve. We have soooo many piglets – anybody want one?

The pigs where out again last night and this morning and the fence was not working as well as it should. I had a look around the yards and couldn’t find any problems. The Cook/Jack boot Jane/Midwife and I had been talking about it last night so I figured I try her suggestion of wetting around the ground stake – seems to have worked, good on you girl!

Last night I went out feed the dogs, it’s no moon so it’s pretty dark at the moment but I seem to make my way around the yard okay in the dark. Anyway I was throwing them some bones, normally George the lamb hangs around so I‘m used to a crowd. Anyway I’m throwing a bone to Archie when I notice that there are already two dogs sitting on the lawn next to me – it was one of the runties from last year – damned darkness. Pigs aren’t supposed to eat meat so I took off after her (stupid idea), tripped over the esky and whacked myself against the tap. So I figured running around in the dark was a bad idea and decided to negotiate with the pig instead. I fetched a loaf of bread from the trailer – got stalked by the goats - and tried to talk her into trading with me. I had to divide the bread up with the goats – everyone was happy, the dogs got the bone, the pigs and goats had bread and I’m sure George did too. I just hope the goats never learn how to use a tazer or I’m really in trouble.

Just goes to show how dry it is. There are articles in the paper today about ACTEW/AGL, the local water people for the ACT are trying to find out why the quality of the water coming down the Murrumbidgee is so poor at the moment – I can tell them – it’s because it’s not flowing anymore, there’s no inflows, not for weeks – it’s dry people DRY!!!!!!!!!

I wanted to ask the guy’s up in Rocky something as well – but I‘ve forgotten what it was. Obviously it wasn’t about sheep. Never mind I’ll remember. It’s nearly Autumn which is our rain season – lets hope.

Dad - the pigs are out

Sorry – busy day yesterday and just didn’t get the time. I had the Tuesday bread pickup in the morning. I pulled up at the front gate and tugged on the hand brake and the brake cable snapped – just what I needed.

We separated some of the pigs so the couple that are due to farrow any time now are in paddocks on their own. The fence was off when I arrived home and most of the pigs where out. It had been a windy day and Tiberius’s tin shelter had blown across the wire – once I get the shelters completed I can remove the tin shelters from the paddock, which will be nice.

Unlike Sunday night the pigs all went strait back into their paddocks with out any drama. The new piglets are chunky little blighters (“probably” no reference to Anna – for all you Queenslanders out there) and seem to have discovered the fun parts of pig life. A couple of the weaner pigs broke into the chook pen yesterday and stole all the eggs from under a couple of sitting ducks, that’s another problem to fix this weekend.

Hung out to dry

I hope I made the Cook happy this weekend. Started out by erecting her Hills Hoist in the back yard at last, it’s only been two years. Unfortunately it seems I’ll have to get her a stump to stand on while she’s hanging out the washing – it’s too high. I went to the dump as well – this was a little delayed, Hugh came on the Lifestyle Channel so I just had to stop and watch.

Never mind, I also started digging her Moo Poo Pit for her biodynamic preparations. The ground was so damned hard that I broke my favourite Mattock, and cracked the shovel handle. I think I’ll have to wait until it rains to continue with that project. So what is a Moo Poo Pit? I hear you ask. From what I’m told it is a pit about a foot deep, you fill it with cow manure and compost to encourage worms to live in it. To keep the worms in you need to have boards lining the inside. Once the cow manure and compost has been attacked by the worms and digested, you remove the worm casting and mix with water. This can then be applied to your paddocks as a sol conditioner.

I finished the new paddock at the front of the property yesterday and we decided to move the young boars down there for the time being. The Cook rounded up a posse and lured them down to the paddock with a bucket of bread. At first they were happy enough to follow and eat the bread and we ended up with most of them in the paddock. After a small amount of pig drafting we weeded out the ones we wanted and locked them in the paddock. Unfortunately I’d forgotten to charge the fence energiser and the pigs discovered this in about ten minutes. I was busy fixing something when I turned around all the pigs had gone.

About five minutes later I hear the Cook bringing down the pigs again – this time they are a little less enthusiastic. They get half way down and decide to scoot back to the old pig yards. The Cook comes down to the paddock and has a look; she says to me “where have all the pigs gone?” I told her what happened, and she remarks that she was wondering where the extra male pigs had come from. Anyway, by the time I get back up to the yards there are two males left out and the Cook and Harry are trying to get them coaxed back into the paddocks; but, because it’s 7:00pm on a Sunday night they are being less co-operative. I think they ended up back in the pig yard; I need to go check because I don’t know for sure. Of course – the electric fence wasn’t working so I spent an hour looking for the problem in the dark.

There’s so much to do – now the paddock down the front is finished I need to build a shelter there. Luckily it has shade from the poplar trees so it’s a rather pleasant area for the pigs in summer. I still need to put the sides on the Boars hut and the back on the sows hut. The Cook needs the garden rabbit proofed, the little buggers have eaten all her carrots and numerous other vegetables. I’d love to start building a green house as well – but I need to get something done for the hand raised piglets and the young chicks so they can stay outside.

Potato salad

The Cook made a great potato salad the other day – the potatoes came strait out of the ground and onto our plate. She grows a variety of spuds in the garden very year including some of the purple specimens which name escapes me. She use’s them in her famous potato salad, a derivation of the German potato salad her mother used to make, and; which I look forward to every summer. The purple potatoes add that wow! Factor and always attract people’s attention and once they see the intriguing purple colour they simply just have to try them.

So - this is how the Cook does it – it’s a secret so don’t tell anybody; First comes the potatoes, they are dug out of the ground when only small, about the size of a golf ball. Give them a wash – but don’t peel them. Cook them in boiling water until soft. Drain and leave to cool a little then peel the skin, use a knife and don’t take any of the white flesh – just the skin.

Whilst they are still warm add two table spoons of mayonnaise and two of sour cream. Before mixing allow the mayonnaise and sour cream to soften – then mix, it’s easier and you don’t accidentally mash the potato. This is the secret part; She slices a little bit of pickled gherkin and adds some dill or parsley and mixes it all together and serves. For my masculine tastes I prefer the pickled gherkin replaced by anchovies – but that’s a personal thing. Also, by not peeling the potato until it is cooked you keep more of the goodness in the potato.

I would have liked to snapped a couple of pictures of this – but; If I had of taken the time to get the camera I would’ve missed out on one of my favourite summer foods. Maybe next year I can get one!

Noise's in the night

The horses are fine. But, it would appear that our phantom gate keeper is back. On Sunday I took a walk with the dogs out to the NSF site to collect a pair of sun glasses, on the way back I opened up a gate – which at the time I remember thinking how strange it was that the gate was closed. Jack boot Jane (aka The Cook – but she won’t take off her new gumbies) went to check on the horses last night and found the reason they hadn’t been down to the house. She found all the gates were shut and latched.

We had been leaving the gates open so that the stock had easy access to water, particularly during the hot period we just had – why anybody would want to close them is a mystery.

The piglets are both drinking milk from a bowl – which is great. Means we don’t have to feed them from a bottle and they can have as much as their little bellies will hold.

Hopefully we can pickup our pig brand number from the LHPA this week. That’ll put us another step closer to getting pigs processed. There’s just purchasing a couple of extra freezers to go. Hopefully, in the next couple of weeks we will be eating our own pork.

I was reading on another Blog about foxes taking piglets. The farm is on the other side of Canberra so within about 100km of here. I was quite surprised; I didn’t think that foxes would take on a mother pig. We’ve never had a problem that I’m aware of, with foxes – and I don’t doubt it’s true, I just never considered it could happen. I suppose it’s another thing to look out for.

Where are the horses?

We haven’t seen the horses for a couple of days, their up the back in the old Lucerne paddock enjoying the cooler weather. I watched the three goats walk back along the track to the house last night after spending the day out there as well.

The Jeep is back on the road after a couple of days at the garage – it’s nice to have it back in action. I’ve been doing some thinking about a couple of winter projects, shouldn’t say too much – the Cook might be listening.

We’ve got two piglets in the house/barn now – both with coughs. But they just keep the ducklings and chicks entertained. We had to give one of the piglets penicillin the other night, the poor little thing struggled a little and those needles are awfully long – but I shouldn’t get any nasty infection for at least a week! Have I told you about the night the Cook wormed me for heart worm – maybe another time.

We missed a good lot of rain that travelled down the coast over the last couple of days, but, there’s always tomorrow.

Everybody should have Backyard Chickens

I love the River Cottage TV program with Hugh Fernley-Whittingstall – We’ve seen episodes time after time and never tire. There is one continual theme throughout the series “anybody can do this” - and it’s true anybody can. But what is this? Raise pigs, grow vegies, be self sufficient?

Well really I don’t think it’s any of these single things. I think that the ethical treatment of animals is very important and we do everything that we can to make sure our animals are treated well. I also believe that everybody should strive to become more self reliant when it comes to food. It doesn’t take much – start small, a hanging pot of cherry tomatoes on the veranda, some mint under the tank stand or lemon grass in the garden. Once you start the bug will bite and you’ll be off. I don’t know how many people I know in Canberra who have plum trees and don’t even eat the plums! It’s worth giving it a go – look at the young lad keeping bee’s on his roof in the West End.

I’ve been amazed at the number of people here, where I work, who have chickens in their back yard. The free range egg market is red hot and people line up for the chance to get fresh, free range eggs.

Having said all that – I have a paddock full of pigs I need to get sorted out. It’s time to start eating pork, nothing more to it. Probably work better if I could find the Cook a new stove – but one thing at a time. No good letting a small thing like an oven get in the way. So, this time next week – I am aiming at having the pig processing wheels in motion.

Bee’s, there’s a thought. I had a hive lined up the other day but I lost the phone number. I’ve put an add in the local classifieds to try and find some – lets see what happens. Worms is the other thing – I don’t have any, that I know of, but I will need some soon.

This morning was bread pickup. The Cook is doing a course in town so I had to take her with me. The Jeep is in Cooma having a faulty fuel pump replaced – so we had to take the little car. I can usually fit a good load in the small car, but normally I’m by myself. Anyway, the Cook and I packed the car to the gunnels with bread and jumped in for our trip into the city. The poor old Cook – now a year older, had to squeeze in and be carefully assisted into her seat. As we zipped around the various roundabouts she became lost in a pile of bread until all you could see were her arms flailing about. I forgot she needs air sometimes. Luckily I didn’t roll the car – ha ha! She didn’t like the joke either. We finally arrived at our destination where she struggled out of the car, bread rolling out of the car on to the road everywhere. It took us twenty minutes just to get it all back in. And then I found out somebody I know saw us – what a laugh.

No more rain.

The rain didn’t quite make it down as far as us. We ended up with a little bit of drizzle this morning but nothing much else. I finished two sides of one of the pig outbuildings, a few more modifications and we should be ready for an improved and more comfortable winter for the pigs this year.

Once I’ve finished this project it should nearly be acorn collecting time again. I’m planning on a big collection this year to carry us all the way through winter – which equates to approximately one bag per day or 400 bags. Normally a bag weights in at 25kgs so I’m looking for about 10 tonnes of acorns, which is about 10 trailer loads – last year I gathered about 3-4 trailer loads.

Then it’ll be time to get the garden back into shape for spring – after that I have plans to …………… Can’t say too much about that yet!

The young chickens keep escaping from the chicken pen. This weekend we’ll spend sometime collecting rocks and making the bottom of the fence pig proof. The piglets keep pushing under the wire and last week they stole a whole clutch of eggs from under a broody duck.

The house is full of animals again, we had to evict a bunch of chickens to look after a sick piglet and there are already a gathering of chicks and ducklings sleeping next to the bathroom.

I took a walk up to the NSF site to collect a pair of sunglasses one of the group left behind last week. George, Shadow and Archer all came along for the walk, George lasted the entire way and I am sure he thinks he’s a dog. We ran into Mildred who is still wearing her bell, she makes a lovely tinkling sound as she bolts across the flat.

Anyway – more plans to make, need to get in amongst the weeds soon as well. I’m sure the Cook has something lined up – especially after the one gum boot for valentines and one gum boot for her birthday debacle!!!!! That reminds me – I need to find a cake. It’s never too late to make up the lost ground.

Piquet goats

It finally rained – 10mm over Thursday afternoon and evening. Of course there is always something to take your mind off the rain - On Thursday the Cook was half way home when she got a call from the eldest, he’s at home having just finished school. The call went something like this

“Hi Mum”
“Hi Harry”
“Mum, the cattle are all on the highway”
“What?”
“Yeah, they are up near the Bridge”
“How do you know?”
“There’s a policeman here – he told me”
“What? – Is he sure they’re ours?”
“I’ll ask him”

So Harry puts the phone down and starts asking the patient Police Officer twenty questions – it goes;
“How many are there?”
“Four”
“What colour are they?”
“Three cream and one black”
“What sex are they?”
“Two bulls and one cow and a calf”
“What colour is the cow?”
“Cream”

Harry comes back on the phone”
“Hey Mum – they’re ours!”

So the Cook speeds home and in the only rain we’ve had for weeks has to round up the cattle and get them back on the farm – ruining her work shoes.

So how did the cows escape? Somebody had come into the property and opened all the gates – all the way to the main road. Not only where the cattle out but most of the pigs had escaped from their paddocks as well. For a while I couldn’t find all the small pigs and I thought they had been stolen – but they ended up being in the hay shed sound asleep in a piggy pile.

We search around but couldn’t find any reason for the gates to be opened and nothing had been stolen.

I made it home a little bit later; I had to rent a ute to get the pigs trailer of bread home after the Jeep broke down – so I wasn’t aware anything had happened.

It’s the Cooks birthday this weekend - happy birthday Cook --21 again!!!!!! She’s having a weekend off (after she does the laundry, cooks dinner and washes the dishes) – so are we all. I had to get the Jeep in to Cooma this morning so we could get it repaired. Luckily I was able to convince it to start after a half an hour of effort. The Cook needed to pick me up so I shouted her a Bacon and Egg roll for her birthday. I also so gave her a new pair of gumboots!

She has been cooking all afternoon, she is using the River Cottage preserves book to make some dill pickles – hopefully, the newest book from River Cottage arrives early next week – it’s the bread making one, problem is I still haven’t found her a cooker.

George - he's getting big!

The Jeep broke down again – that’s why no Blog yesterday. I spent all my time in town hitting it with a hammer! Fuel pump is shot, not bad – 15 years service, 420 000 km. I’ll need to get it towed to Cooma so we can get it fixed – another job for the fridge list. Hopefully I can have this done before next Tuesday.

The horses made life a little bit harder last night as well. Phoe disappeared somewhere just before dusk and we couldn’t find her anywhere. After a lot of searching, in the dark, we called it a night – this morning the Cook found her in the next door paddock happy as Larry with her silly trotter mates.

Some of the young chooks are looking a little bit scrawny as well, it might be worms, I’m not sure. Anyway, we’ve bought them into the house to be fed for a few days, the Cook has the wormer out and we’ll see how they go – it may have had something to do with heat as well.

We’ve had clouds and the BOM has forecast rain for the last few days - but not a drop has fallen anywhere near us. There is rain over Bredbo on the radar picture today – but it’s not making it to the ground. At least the humidity should be high enough to stop the grass burning if there is any lightning.

A clutch of ducklings

Sometimes there are jobs on the farm that you just have to leave to the kids. Yesterday one of the ducks decided to hatch out her clutch of eggs – not that she really had any choice. The problem we have at the moment is that with so many ducks, geese and turkeys the little ducklings can get stomped into the ground. So we have a farm policy to take the ducklings away from mum until they are big enough to look after themselves.

Getting the ducklings away from mum is definitely a kid’s job. The mums, as you can imagine, aren’t that impressed at first. And I’m not getting into a caged area with a rampant mother duck! That’s what kids are for (I still think we should have had more – it might handy to have a couple of spares!) – right?

The Cook will see that and I’ll get another “I’m not a brood mare” lecture.

I sent a letter/email to Maj Gen Jeffery, the previous Governor General, yesterday asking him to support the NSF movement in securing funds from the Governments Stimulus package. We need everybody we can to get he government to take seriously the benefits of such methods – if you want to email him send it too Maj Gen Jeffery through his PA - wendy.button@pmc.gov.au

We have a problem with getting native trees established on our farm. This is pretty evident from the fact that we have very few native species growing anywhere except the hill tops. Our creek lines and river bank are full of Poplars and Willows however. We had applied to the NSW National Parks for some funding to fence our gully from the cattle and use pioneer plants to establish better growing conditions for natives and help control soil erosion. But, it would appear that this isn’t going to happen.

Last nights sunset

The heat is on.

Even though we lived in Canberra in 2003 I can’t imagine what it has been like for the people in Victoria over the weekend. I watched a little of the reporting on Sky news – it’s still hard to comprehend the scale of this disaster. You can donate to the Victims through the Bendigo & Adelaide Bank.

It puts into perspective everything that Peter Andrews was talking about on the weekend. We need to cool down the landscape to bring back the rain. Peter had a “Mad Scientist” friend from CSIRO with him. He was very complimentary towards NSF and could explain the “science” to minuet detail which enlightening.

We looked at two properties apart from our own on the weekend, one up at Jindabyne and then Ingelara. The Jindabyne property was very impressive. The owner had spent a lot of time on his project and had access to good materials and equipment. Ingelara are still working on the planning aspects of their project.

We took the group up to the gully line at Valley View first up on Sunday morning. It was hot and because of the risk of fire I couldn’t take the vehicles all the way to the source. We stopped a couple of times under the shade of the willow trees and Peter explained the landscape and why it had degraded to the level it had. He was very positive that his methods would work on our landscape, and we could see the remnants of the old wetland areas in the soil profiles. This gave me a little more heart and encouragement. Luckily we also had our local plant contractor with so he could get instructions first hand from the expert. The about ten members of the NSF group from Canberra attended and we met many new friends and lovely people. Most of these guys volunteer their spare time to help people like us carry out NSF projects – their help is invaluable.

We ended the trip with a BBQ under the poplars down by the river, the Cook had done marvellous things in the kitchen and everybody left fed and watered.

After Valley View they headed off to Billilingra, we needed to tidy up first and missed that bit of the day. It would have been interesting as they are our neighbours and both projects back onto each other.

Ingelara was the last property, we’ve been down there before, and it’s very nice. They have a lovely lake and their backdrop is spectacular. On our way home we drove into thick smoke which was coming from the east. One of the blokes from the NSF had been called out to the local RFS for a fire at Jerrangle. By the time we had reached Bredbo the smoke was very dense and both of us were starting to worry – our property is only a few kilometres from Jerrangle. I decided to stop at the fire shed to ask what was happening; thankfully it was the change in wind direction that was blowing smoke in from the Bega fires – nothing for us to worry about. I still went outside and checked the horizon before I went to bed

We continued to have new arrivals over the weekend with one of the sows having her first litter – five piglets in all. Some of them look rather nice, well marked and good confirmation. All the pigs now have proper shelter and we can start to move the dongers out of the paddocks. By winter the shelters will have walls on three side and be ready for what ever winter brings this year.

Of course not everything went smoothly – last night when I went up to turn off a tap, I caught a fox trying to get to the chickens; I hope we wont see him again for a while. And this morning I had to take the kids to the bus, this was after finding out there was no pig feed made up and having to prepare that for the next couple of days. Once I’d done that and fed the multitudes we all jumped in the Jeep – I was late, of course. Jeep wouldn’t start – again. Out with the hammer, we arrived at the bus stop just as the bus did; eldest jumps out of the car and realised that he didn’t have his school bag!!! So it was back home and get it and try and catch the bus up down the road. Of course there’s no petrol in the Jeep either. By the time I arrived at work there were no car parks so I had a nice little walk through the rose gardens.

Todays picture has the Cook listening to Peter Andrews under one of our willow trees - true NSF heaven.

Sleep walking piglets

We are working up to the NSF Field Day at the moment. I have to finish the pig shelters tomorrow, get he roofs on and the sides and then have a quick cleanup. It was a pity we didn’t get time to have a pig ready for it.

The weather forecast is for hot weather the next couple of days then a cool change. The weather channel is forecasting a change from 35Deg C down to 12Deg C over a couple of days.

The Cook wasn’t totally happy with me yesterday either! She read the Blog – enough said. She did enjoy her course out at Gunning. She’s ready to give the Biodynamic Farming a go now she is a little more familiar with the practices and application of the theory. I suspect this will mean more work for me, but as long as she is happy – I get fed.

Anyway, it would appear that she has volunteered us for a Biodynamic Field Day of our own in November – so stay tuned.

Almost stuck at home

At the end of the day it’s how you feel inside that matters most. I was in the middle of Wednesday Morning Breakfast when I received a call from the Cook – she makes sure I take my phone everywhere, which I hate. And those that are familiar with the Blog will know the problems we’ve been having with the Jeep.

“The car won’t start” she says,
“That’s no good” I reply – she has to go to work and drop the kids off at the Bus, she’s always late, so this is important.
“You’ll need to find the air filter under the bonnet” I say,
“I found it” she says,
“Now get a bottle fill it with petrol and pour about 50ml into the small pipe”
“OK” She goes off and does what I’ve told her and comes back,
“What next?”
“Go around the back of the car and bang on the fuel tank a couple off times with something heavy” now, this doesn’t do anything except make her feel good.
“What now?” she asks
“Get in and drive”

She was so happy that she can now fix the car, a little more independence!

Todays picture is of the pig that was trapped under the trailer on Sunday – he was a big one, not one of the new piglets.

Eagle eye'd

Pretty hectic last night – the Cook was on a holiday, with a sleep over at a friends tossed in. Hopefully she’ll be back fresh and full of life ready to get stuck in! We floundered without her.

After getting home and having the traditional – “it’s over 35Deg C out there hour long nap” I jumped into feeding and watering. We had to catch a couple of small pigs a bloke had ordered out Bungendore way, then it was cooking dinner, bathing kids, making lunches, ironing uniforms and what ever else I had forgotten.

We did get about 2mm of rain – in a storm. The rain was cold as ice and, as you would expect, only lasted as long as it took us to feed the animals. Better then nothing!!

The two eagles are back and where flying low around the front of the property in the afternoon. I think they had an eye on the chooks, but ended up moving off to the north.

So I was up at day break to take the pigs into Fyshwick (BTW – I don’t make these names up, in case your wondering). There they were picked up and I went off to collect the bread.

Thanks for all the comments on the Blog every body!!

Girl - boy - girl - boy - boy- girl - girl - girl

It was a weekend like no other – hot and dry. Okay so it was like all the rest. What did I say about the pig – Friday night she had 10 piglets, all pretty healthy and well. She has 16 nipples!!! One of the weaners from the last lot of piglets was suckling on her last night. When I tried to take him away – he weights nearly 20kg, when the damned thing squealed she came after me and tried to take a leg off.

Archie decide to talk a walk down to the Bredbo Primary School – I think he had ideas of becoming the teachers pet.

I had to take the kids into town on Saturday, I was just dropping them off when the Cook calls me on the mobile – There’s a snake in the chicken box, what am I going to do about it. By the description it would appear it was a Tiger Snake, nothing too poisonous. I told her to run down the house and grab the camera – a shot of a tiger snake eating a chook would be great for the Blog. So she ducked off , and grabbed the camera – I didn’t have to ask twice! When she arrived back the snake had gone – I got a text message “It’s worse – Snake has gone, don’t know where”. I asked Ben if he had fed the chickens, he said “yes”. I asked him if he did the ones in the box – he said “yes”. I asked him if he had seen the snake in the box – he just looked at me and said “what snake?”

Poor little George. He lost his tail on the weekend. We had him ringed when we sheared so we did expect it. Ben and I were following him up from the garden when it dropped off right in front of us. Ben stopped and starred opened mouthed, Shadow ducked in from the side and grabbed it in her mouth – she wanted it for breakfast! The Cook got totally grossed out and told me to catch the dog, get the tail and bury it – I’ll still laughing, but not out loud.

Sunday morning we found the front gate to the TSR closed and Mia the horse locked in the road paddock. Luckily the gate to the highway was shut. We have no idea what was going on, but the gate was latched so it had to be a person.

Sunday afternoon I was home alone building another pig shelter. I unloaded a pile of posts out of the trailer I had picked up in Cooma. The truck was in the way so I decided to move it for convenience. As I drove forward I heard an almighty squeal, I thought I’d run over a dozen pigs. I jumped out and looked under the Jeep – nothing, then I looked under the trailer.

One of the big pigs must have crawled under the trailer and gone to sleep whilst I was unloading – I didn’t see it. Now it was starring at me from between the axels, well and truly stuck. I tried taking off the trailers wheels but the pig couldn’t fit out the gap. So I tried jacking the trailer up, but I couldn’t get it high enough. Finally I managed to get a long log and a stump and lever the axel high enough for him to escape – with out even a mark. I went back to move the Jeep – and the fuel pump had stopped again, another hour of fluffing about before I could get it moving and finish the job.
The Cook came home and asked what I had got up too – “Not a lot” I replied

PIctures aren't working again - I'll upload later.