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.