By torch light

The tap that couldn't be found

I’m no plumber, in fact, I have problems flushing the toilet – just ask the Cook. On Tuesday I had to repair the broken pipe on the side o the house, which was made harder by arriving home in the dark.

The Trench behind the Cooks Jongles

As I’ve said before our house is more of a ruin then accommodation, and finding things like pipes and buried taps is a real hit and miss affair. So after an hours worth of digging, some tool throwing and just a little swearing I managed to find the buried pipe and tap in the dark. I must have made a bit of mess because the kids came in the next morning and told me the pigs had been rooting around in the back yard and it was totally destroyed.

Anyway, by the time I found the tap and turned it off it was really dark and I still had to get the pipe fixed. It took me a while to work out how to get the broken bit of poly pipe out of the old fitting, luckily I remembered I had a gas torch I’d bought to fix the copper pipe. I went around to the shed and grabbed the torch and called out to the kids to bring some matches.

As usual in our house, mention matches and Ben is the first one there. He was busting to have a go with the torch so I let him have a small turn. He gets right into it – can’t wait until he’s big enough to weld. I was surprised that the torch actual worked and I had the pipe fixed in no time – I’ve even been back to check and it’s still not leaking. Of course I will have broken something else somewhere – plumbing has never gone that smoothly at our place……

I was out early this morning and noticed the Wedge Tails out soaring the heavens. One of them looked a little odd and when he landed I decided to have a look and see what he was up too. When I got to the place I saw him land, down the road embankment I almost walked right in to hi. He was sitting in a depression munching on road kill. He sprung up the side of the embankment where I could get a good look at him. I don’t know if he was malting but he had not a single tail feather, which is why he looked so strange flying.

The Eagle on top of the embankment

We have moved the pig with piglets and haven’t had anymore go missing thank goodness. But because of the small number of piglets feeding off the mum they are all rollie pollie fat and full of energy. I watched them this morning playing with a piece of cloth in the straw, they where having a great time. Rosie the mum is holding her condition well too and I think we've finally hit on the best way to look after the sows.

und out yesterday, from the local paper, that a fellow I knew down the road had died suddenly. He and his wife ran a small farm with a great orchard and winery, they grew the most delicious cherries and made some splendid wines. Peter was a very generous man and had been going to teach me to make sausages Hungarian style and was also going to do some smoking for us. Their farm is up for sale now and I’m not sure what his wife is going to do after it’s sold. It’s sad to see such great characters like the both of them go – I only wish I had been around longer to hear more of his stories and learn some of his sausage making secrets.
There’s a Bee Association meeting tonight – I’m off to that. There was also a NSF meeting but I had to skip that. Hopefully I’ll have something for the Blog tomorrow