Goats arrive

Allsorts have been going on of late!!!!
We had a call late at night to go and rescue a beautifull pedigree german shepherd dog, he was driving his foster parents mad, social services had told his original owners its the dog or the chidren, so he was put with there friends who could not cope with him pooing and peeing all over there house, so late at night i got a call come and get him before they kicked him to death for making a mess, they were in town in high flats and he was getting in more and more trouble, Ipicked him up and was handed all his papers i put him in my car wondering what i had just landed myself with, sure that our love would help him out... we drove home and walked in the forest with him till 1.30 in the morning as i wanted his firts poops etc in the forest not in his bedding area, we decided to keep him outside for now so there would be no issues with mess and him worrying about being knocked about for it, well so far hes never messed his area, and always goes on his walks, he sits, walks heals and also learnt to lay down, hes settled in well with the pack and is a perfect gentleman. Some people!!! well i think we will leave my comments there..lol
So the Goats!!!
Next arrival, I have an advert on preloved offering homes to unwanted farm animals, so i was contacted by a lady in Walsall, i assumed she had a small holding or city farm....mmm well she was a lovely lady, with an unusual back yard!!!! lol... she had 30 odd chucks 10 ducks geese, dogs and kids and a shed for the chucks, she's fed the goat very well on concentrates if any thing maybe a little too well..lol ... they are lovely tame goats and are being introduced to grass carefully today, they walk on leads and are very kind and gentle.... It was quite an adventure in our newly aquired landrover discovery. We decided that after last winter being snowed in it was time to get a good off road vehicle.. right its time for me to get on, must go walk all the animals....

Winter missery!!

Oh I'm fed up of the weather theres so much to do and it keeps raining...Welshpool has glorious sunshine .... here rain... I have a new boar arriving soon, need to fix his accomodation, I have a broken car again!!! So stuck here, lukily I have a full freezer and store cupboards over flowing so no need for shopping, animal feed all here.. just i dont like the restriction, not being able to get out in an emergency. Andre's asthma is very bad again, and I seem to be a bit low, we seam to have had no summer this year, we have had another 4 piglets, we have a home kill to organise, cockerals to go in the freezer.. Im awaiting a delivery from wynstay we spent a fortune on fencingposts wire etc htey have a good deal on wire netting at the moment, I also have been ebaying and bought £200 worth of fram gates as new for £40 add on £10 for diesel and still winning!! So I need to slap my self and get out and do something...lol .. I'm on a diet and I think it must be getting to me now, I have lost a stone I have given up Ribeana and subsiquently lost my sweat toothe, so am being carefull about what i'm eating... hungary was great lovely weather, red hot... was nice to catch up with everyone but only managed to stay away from the animals for 12 days....It took 2 tanks of diesel in our Peugeot 406 estate which holds 80 litres which is very good, £20 on the ferry crossing. I was very happy to get back to my animal family and Babe my favourite pig wouldn't leave my side, she leaned her head in my knees for half an hour easily... she told me off for leaving her... Well thats it im off to shake my self...

Jobs nearly done...lol

We are just a little tired.... we've managed to fence most of the chicken field, the ground is so hard and stoney that we had to fill the digger front bucket with huge stones, then carefully use the diggers weight to push the posts into the ground, even with all that weight, some refused to go in as far as they should... putting in the big fat posts, that have the triangulation post on for straining against was a very long job even with a really sharp point on they didnt want to go in... We've put in one gate way and are recycling some timbers from the floor of an old static caravan to fence by the side of the gateway, now what else happened.....???

We had a visitor , on preloved I have advertised on old stock trailer so a man whos been following my blog, came to meet the funny farm and to take a look at the trailer hes unsure if he will have it, I dont mind either way, its so useful but does need a little love on it soon.. I took him down to see the very muddy pigs, they seem to eat there bedding up very quickly, and make huge mud pits... never mind soon I will be putting in planning for the pig sheds, he liked looking at the piglets. We talked pigs and he left, nice man, another self sufficient nutter I think...lol

I cant wait to get the chucks confined in there field. the fence does look good. I think Joe wishes we had just thrown it up but I want it to last... I'm off to bed now I need to get up early, I'm going to put on some extra plastic netting to stop the younger chicks escaping through the pig netting..then there will be no escaping and just to make double sure i'll be clipping there wing feathers so they get used to staying on that side of the fence, now just for reference... you clip the primary feathers on one side so, on there wings that is, so when they try to fly they are lo sided, if you were to clip bothe side they would be balanced and would manage to fly, some think its a cruel practise, it may cause wilder chucks a stress whilst being cought , but ours all enjoy cudles so wont mind being caught, there is no pain because your cutting feathers well away from any skin and I feel they will be safer away from fox confined in there own area and in the future we will be getting a gaurd Alpaca for them to make sure Mr. Fox stays away..

Home produced breakfast....

Is'nt it lovely being self sufficient..... home reared bacon, free range fresh eggs, on home made bread, if only we could produce our own flour, well maybe next year I will grow an experimental bed and try some grains not a huge amount just enough to grind up for a couple of loaves. Maybe a 10 ft square patch as we have plenty of growing space.

Todays job....

Andre has to go to the docs for an asthma check, whilst we are in Llanfyllin we are going to sort out the sugar daddys trailer.(Jim) A few months ago he put  a huge load of muck on his trailer for our veg patch, but he only got half way and the over loaded trailer's tyre gave up, so we are going to go and try and get the wheel off and change it so it can hopefully comlete the journey and dump the lovely goodness the muck has for our ground.... It is much needed, our veg patch hasn't done very well it is crying out for humus...The plan is to put maybe 10 loads on the field, dig it in ruffly with our digger then put the pigs on over winter, then start again next year, hopefully then we will enjoy the heritage veg we had hoped to grow this year...

Right i'm nicley stuffed now so better go and see how much we can get done!!!

So today I carry on as if nothing happened last night,

We have decided to fence off our new grass field making it chicken proof so the 30 odd chucks can concentrate there scratching and picking skills on helping me cut and eat the grass down, not dig and scratch my flower beds, and poop all over my path especially the entrance to the caravan on my wooden decking, or attack all of the stacked boxes of veg we bring home for the pigs, and there favoutite occupation will also be stopped which is.... pooping all over our tools in our tool shed.... 

We have managed to get the posts all in and tomorrow we will get the wire up, Joe and I had our usual mild altications... I want things done in straight tidy lines with posts all at the same level etc and Joe just wants to go go go!! Throw things in and move onto the next job, but as usual I won and yes it may not be finished today but its looking smart and is sure to last a good while as long as none of my lovely neighbours kick it down in the night....
I also popped out to buy some pond plants, I saw an add put in the local Morrisons for water lilys plus 5 other pond plants for £15, so phone calls later and off I went....well what a lovely man, he showed us around his garden, introduced me to his 2 colonees of bees, which I stood about a foot from taking pictures of there loaded up little bodies with pollens sticking to there legs, he told me how there were gaurd bees on duty around the hive entrance and explained that the wasps who go and raid them, of there golden honey have to get past the gaurds .. as I watced them 2 wasps tried to gain entrance and they were attacked having there wings damaged by the bees and then they killed them, amaiazing. They were so interesting to watch,  I vow to keep bees next year and he has agreed to mentor me!! Then he took us up the garden path and showed me a lovely little den he'd constructed, the garden had 30 years of his love and attention, as we talked he realised he knew me, when I was a designer many years ago, I used to buy yarn from him and his wife in Welshpool, isn't it a small world, he spoke of  how he'd lost his wife 2 years ago and had lost heart in the garden, but what a lovely paradise he had created, he gave me loads of tips and samples of his veg etc. 
Whilst we were in his garage I spotted a jam kettle for cooking up jam, his wife used to make the most lovely jams, but now he said all the fruit on the loaded trees was going to waste, so I offered him a deal, if we come and pick the plums, pears, apples etc I will give him some of our meat produce... he like that and we shook hands on the deal, he found me some lovely plants, 2 water lilys, Iris, variuos bog and pond plants well so many that my boot was full and the inside of my estate car... I began to get a little concerned about how much I'd just spent...I was begining to think maybe £100.... he said £20 would do, what a deal, I had a lovely afternoon , found a new friend, done good deals, and learnt some great tips... lovely or even Perfik as Pop Larkin would say.... Any how when I got back  Chef Andre took the job of cooking a lovely dinner, slow roast pork leg, luxury mash, yorky puds, lovely thick gravy with my home made apple jelly. whilst Joe and I put in posts for chicken enclosure, the new grass field will be theres any how, I now need to go out as its getting dark and the dogs are going mad some one is about.... will add pictures of the gardens that I visited today...

So the threats start again!!!

My heart is pounding in my chest, i'm terified, I'm shaking and I got a terible migraine, some ones just driven up and down slowly then set off some huge bang like a bomb at the top gate by our caravan, I went out in the car and found some pipe they used which was still smoking they had used a long fuse to set it and obviously wanted to frighten us, I'm awaiting the police...

Police have now rung, could do nothing, they said the fiiring tube was no use as evidence and i'm to ring if anything else happens on the non emerancy number which took 20mins to get through on ....no comment....Why wont people leave us be... I said today to Joe how happy, settled and safe I'm feeling here at the farm.... it could have been nasty if we had been near that when it fired or the dogs or cats..... oh well I need some thing for my head..

I will not be frightened off by bully boy tactics, I have a shot gun and 2 gaurd dogs, one of which is viscous and would attack, I also have very well hidden security cameras so everypoint of my farm is filmed, so far I have caught neighbours kicking down fences , driving into gates, and willfully damaging my property, Switching off my mains electric whilst I was away in Hungary, so three pigs worth of meat rotted away in my freezers and all my beautiful tropical fish were murdered, we have had our drinking water contaminated, Joe has been threatened, Andre and Joe, Andre being 8 at the time, they were both verbally attacked by a neighbour, and there lives threatened in no uncertain terms, due to them being non British!! We've had death threats, and papercut threats through our post, we have had our animals let out contsatly, onto our veg gardens... also calls to the R.S.P.C.A saying we had gone abroad and left all our animals to starve, the officer was most suprised to find us in the country, let alone home tending our animals... all the animals were healthy happy and well fed, he later rang me the following week saying some one really had it in for us as he had another annomuns letter sent to his office full of lies.... So they have tried everything over the years to get us out.... Oh also they bombarded the council planning department with complaints against us, even getting lies sent in in letters which are on my planning file, I must say they have never hurt an animal or endangered them, (except my fish, which they wouldnt have known would have been there..) but now with our dogs that we have on site they wouldnt be safe coming on our land nowadays.... Its sad that people cant live and let live, any how i'm feeling calmer now and know that all the eveidence I'm collecting and the film footage will soon add up and some one will pay soon...Even the police said that with all the evidence they have, when they find some one in the act they will have the book thrown at them!! Good thats what I think.....GOOD...

Right my rant is over I'm off to bed with one eye open to catch these idiots that are about..xx

A rainy day....

 Woke up early today, to the lovely sound of rain hammering on the caravan roof, me thinks its an ideal wash day, plenty of rain water has collected in our butts, there is so much to do, but even I'm not mad enough to work on the farm in this awful rain we are having,

At least its good for the grass.....I used to suffer from grass envy, as our place was always a mud pit but now I have grass stress or even grass sickness!! It just wont stop growing.... I keep cutting it with my lawn mower as I'm worried about it, as it so young I believe you have to keep it short, well I just cant wait for the sheep to come and take over from me...We need to put a fence all round that field and keep the chickens free ranging in there, as at the moment they are running all over the place we have to watched Sheba the German Shepherd like a hawk as she has some sort of 6th sence as to where the chickens are laying, we must ave 30 laying hens, but I seem to never get to the eggs, the dogs have lovely shiny coats though!!!!

Chicken love..

We love there greetings in the morning we are ambushed by all of the chucks wanting there breakfast, Louis has a pet Rhode Isle cockeral who follows him everywhere and sits on his head...but if we manage to keep them on the grass they should benifit from that and we should have a good chance of getting to the eggs before the dogs, also they will add nitrogen to the grass and make it grow even faster!!! Grown...

Andre has struck a deal with a local Buff Orpington breeder, we found out that at a few weeks old she necks all the cockerals we felt it was a terrible waste and what if she was making mistake I have no idea how she can be sure at that age!! So every few weeks she calls Andre and we pick up another batch of upto 20 young chicks, he has a very good  rate most of them live, we have found that the blacks and the lavenders are slower and not so strong, if any die it is of these colours... we give her some of our produce every now and then. as  a thankyou....

      The cats are in hiding they hate this weather... We have a lovely Snow Marble male kitten he must be 13 weeks old by now hes been advertised on Preloved website for £150 and no ones jumped yet, most suprising, surely the recesion hasnt got to cat owners...

We have a had huge delivery of animal feed from Banwy feeds, just down the road I like to keep plenty in....Andre is outside feeding all the animals this morning, hes a very good boy...Ho hum the rain continues, shall I go and get a watering can full for a shower or shall I go down the health club for a swim, and shower first of course!!

 We are off to Hungary again for a week in october..In Hungary this is our local Tesco hyper market!!! Its all a bit different life out there. At a slower pace with unusual sites all over the place...It like stepping back in time, untill you bump into Tesco...lol.... This is in Kalocsa which is 10 mins away from the village we stay in heres a view out of our window... the neighbours... Self sufficiency is the norm there...

 This is the neighbour, they sell un pasturised milk for all the local kids, you see all the moms peddling up on there bikes to collect some milk for there babies and kids, most worrying... here the neighbour is cooking over an open fire they had just killed a pig and she is boiling up lumps of fat, she will keep the lard for cooking and sprinke the cooked lumps with seasoning and eat them like pork scratching, really tasty but not too ood for cholesteral...The local council workers bring her all the lawn and grass cutting all day long in there little pick ups and tip it out for her to feed th cattle, they are all teathered, i got up one morning to see if i could still milk a cow... and I could, they milk all there cattle by hand and leave a milk churn at the end of the road for the tanker to pick up,  i have also seen another neighbour boiling up her washing in a similar fashion.... even more hard work than my style!!!



The Health club..

 Thats my one little luxury, as we home educate the children and  we thought they may miss out on sports acticitys, so we joined Rowton Castle Country club, its got 3 swimming pools, sauna, steam rooms, jacuzzi, tennis courts, table tennis, childrens activity groups and clubs including achery, the children all swim beautifully now, and we enjoy the gym too, even the kids have a gym club with full supervision, I know its a big luxury at £100 per month for our family of 5 but its lovely having a hot shower and a relax after the hard work here, its good for the kids they are developing friendships, the staff are lovely and friendly, its a bit on the well worn and tired side and there are posher places but its good value and just perfect for us, I've been struggling with my back a lot lately and have also taken up, yoga, pilates, and even belly dancing. With in 6 weeks I felt a huge difference, stronger toned up and buzzing with energy, well worht it!!!

This is me!!!! the mad woman who runs the funny farm..

The 6 weeks wait is over... Decision ...

Well it came a little bit earlier than they said,, I suppose you would like to hear the answer.......

We WON!!!!!!!

 
The inspector totally got what we were up to, he understood us, he pointed out that we needed time to finish our work and that if we were thrown out like the council wanted within the 6 month period that would mean we aould be out in mid winter, how would we care for our animals etc... Well what a nice man!!!!

WE ARE OFFICIALLY GYPSIES!!!!

According to council policy and guidelines we are officially recognised as Gypsies, we are following a gypsiy life, we fullfill all the criterium in there paper work.... you dont have to be ethnically a gypsy but to fall into line with there official guidelines...

We are given 20 months stay!!!

He gave us until May the 1st 2012 he pointed out that this was good time for us with the summer in fromt of us for travels....

 Once again he showed that he totally understood us, he also, at the hearing said you will be putting in for planning and you will be appealing if they turn you down??? I feel he was telling us something there... So after getting very excited and hyper ventilating a lot, I rang Les Stephan Planning Associates to give them the good news, they were so pleased for us and said the Gypsy status is very important, we have decided together to put in for planning straight away whilst the council has the words ringing in there ears ....

Oversion to living with in bricks and mortar!!!

3 times the Inspector refered to my oversion of normal life and houses made of bricks and mortar.... Well I just want to live on my own land with my lovely family and enjoy self sufficiency..

So a new chapter open in our lives...

We are now feeling settled for the first time in our married life, we have a home, we are doing this for us!!

We are planning now our futures  on our holding, our veg patch has to be huge next year, we have to have a house cow, making butter, cheese and enjoying our own milk, we need to keep bees, we soon have our sheep arrive to eat our fresh grass that is now growing too much..


We have a batch of pigs ready to go to the butchers and to sell our meaty products we also have a Dexter beef animal ready to kill too, we are producing all our own eggs now, and about to kill some of our home bred and reared meat cockerals.

Iron age pigs .....

We are now looking into wild boar x Tamworths, this is the direction we are going into, our neighbour is homing our, large white pair to help with there veg patch digging, We have been given our first Iron age boar and have arranged to have some Tamworth wives too.... our Middle White x Oxford and Sandy Black had 8 healthy piglets and all are doing well...

A  Very Sad day!

Sadly Babe my Belgium blue sow, deserted her lovely maternity quarters in the middle of the night during a horific storm and gave birth to 13 piglets which she sadly drowned in her mud patch she had created, most sad, we now know that next time she has to be locked in her straw bed kit and not allowed to follow her miss guided instincts,

She was broken hearted, I had to fish out all the little ones and leave them in a line for her to see dead, as she kept looking for them all and got very upset, rubbing up to me her sadness was very clear to see, but once she saw them all she stopped and allowed me to dispose of there bodies, her milk quickly dried up. A very sad day..

So I really must get into the habit of blogging now we really are going all out for self sufficency.. we are having a weeks hol and animal sitters are moving in then we move forward, no more dreams all has to work, we are going to look into a new home firstly...

Our new home an ARTIC FRIDGE LORRY BACK...

Yes we have decided living in the caravan is far too costly during the winter, we need a well insulated home, we will be installing recycled double glazed white windows and patio doors, we need to look into some way of digging our own boar hole and getting frsh water, at the moment our well is full of stinking brown surface water...

Log burners a necessity, all that wood laying around here, we need to heat oursleves and be able to have showers.. I have been skip diving and found a shower, I just need a better water supply, but i'm not ready to ditch the watering can yet!!!

The roof of our building must go on so we can store our impliments in the dry.


Poly tunnel...

Well sometimes we are so lucky, a lady emailed me and offered me a huge 12.5m x 8.5m poly tunnel well its actually a swimming pool enclosure and cost over £12k its just had a new cover and was all our dreams come true.... we borrowed our friends lorry he runs his own removal business Kynastons Relocations and is based in Guilsfield hes a good friend and we appreciated his hel,. we drove off and slept in a heap on a pile of blankets in the back, one day of work later and our polytunnel was loaded , it was a very pleasent drive to Cambridgeshire, we will be putting it up very soon, and moving the old one onto our veg patch..The diesel came to £100 and we gave John £50 to say thanks... it was a great adventure...

We will also be looking into Diesel production from veg oil..
Also researching some sort of heat safe or store for our new poly tunnel, we want to heat it all year to supply us with all year round veggies..
We went to a strawberry farm just past Aberystwyth who grows them off the ground in polystyriene pots so we will be collecting poly boxes and having strawberry tunnels, we have been down to Coed y Dinas our local super store country store type thing that had a huge sale strawberry plants for 50p and they even had loads of runners on them ... yes.. free plants....


So let me know... how many of you are there out there reading this, is it interesting?? what else do you want to know??? Should I write a book about our adventures?? as I think they are about to really begin!!!

The Hearing RESULTS!!

Well I know its taken me long enough to post the results.

 Let me tell you all how it went...

Well from the beging the inspector seemed really nice and extremely fair, straight away he pointed out many errors in the councils paper work, he told them off for racist behaviour towards us, he told them that they were being unreasonable, we went down the road of gypsy status to help us with our planning, he told them off for lack of preperation and not providing him with the information which was needed by him to make his decision.
He asked us lots of questions, but told us from the begining due to us not paying the full fees he could only determine the length of time we would be allowed to stay on our land and not the possibility of giving us planning permision
The council said 6 months was the max that we needed to stay her and we were asking for him to consider 2 years...

My man who kindly represented me for nothing, told them quite clearly that if it had been heard on all aspects he would have wiped the floor with the council and we would have easily been able to prove that permision should have been granted... mmm I wished i'd been able to find all the moneys but it was impossible for us... £700 is alot for us... well the enforcement officer brought legal representation, which the Inspector said was un reasonable behaviour in the hearing, as it was supposed to be informal chats not a court of law, Nick Morgan was the inforcement officer, hes nice enough chap to talk to but is young and full of the power his position gives him or well he thinks it gives him.it felt like he flexed his muscles bringing it to the appeal and then sat back expecting the inspector to do the dead, he hardly spoke and looked very uncomfortable throughout.

The inspector questioned us to determine our lifestyle, Jo's ethnicity, and basically what we were up to.. the councils solicitor argued that we were not Gypsies and accused us of lying, where they got told off agian, we were very truthful and tried to explain about our lifestyle, the children behaved perfectly throughout. after a couple of hours the inspector adjurned to site..

They wanted to inspect the contents of my freezer!!!!

So on site the inspector walked up and down asking the enforcement officer if he had a problem here, here and here, that was in 3 different location each time he responded no!! mmm
we went down the bottom of the land and showed him the pigs, one of which was looking like she was ready to pop... the inspector said that at any time I needed to go to her to help her I could leave the meeting.

We showed him all the chickens on our newly laid grass in there individual breading pens, Buff Orpingtons, Blue Jeursey Giants, Rhodes, Light Sussex, various young chicks we had bred, Mr. Morgan (the enforcement officer) rather stupidly admitted in the hearing in the village hall that he hadn't been on site for months not even driven past so scoffed and said what a mess it was, and that not even a blade of grass could be sustained on our land, well he lived to regret that..he had even put that in writting...

We have a large veg patch growing, garlic, onions, peas, various beans, sunflowers, grape vines, maize, potatoes, strawberrys, herbs, etc etc... he face was a picture he didnt know we had a huge field of grass now, he said" Wheres all the mud gone?" I explained to him that the pigs had done there work on that patch and now had moved on to another... we had a good 12" of grass growing.... on returning to the top of site where the caravan is the inspector finally asked well where do you have a problem?? He explained that he didnt like our caravan and our porta cabin.... so we argued that the cabin was ansillary to the farm we have freezers in there for the meats for sale and the farm records, medications and some tools kept in there, Mr. Morgan begged to differ he thought it was all nonsence and that is was primary use was for personal things, this is when he asked to be shown in, after looking and standing back outside they still said they felt the majority of the space was used for domestic use, I argued that the huge freezers contained meat for sale and the american fridge freezer that stood empty was for my hams etc when curing, he then asked to see the contents of my deep freeze, I laughed and thought he was joking but no... my freezer was inspected, it only had meat for sale in, with a very small amount of frozen milk.. I felt humiliated, it was left to the inspector to later decide on the final use of said cabin...

The inspector noted we had our American caravan here to do up ready for our travels, he pointed out that the council couldnt touch us on that, also that they could say nothing about the building materials on site or our cars, we chatted over a few things and felt quite hopeful but no desision was given on this day, but all that witnessed it said that it seemed very fair and that the coucil came over in quite a bad light, suggesting that it was a waste of tax payers moneys...We said our good byes and declarred a stay cation, we were told that the decission would be with us within 6 weeks.... we had 2 weeks of doing nothing other that feeding our animals, the kids loved it, but I soon got fed up of doing nothing...

Only 1 day left untill the hearing!!!!!

only 1 day to the hearing.... have woke up shattered again!!! toady we need to put the storage yard tidy, plant some plants put the green house glass in and im sure i'll find loads more to do...lol

Looks like the weather is going to be nice. Last night we had a huge bonfire, burning all the tree roots and dead trees that we had saved for our log burner, quite sad to see it all go up in smoke with out any benifit, other than being tidy for the council... In one of there last letters they brought up the log piles, what idiots, what harm can it be providing a wildlife haven, which DEFRA actually incourages us to do.... Any how i've thought about it and  decided the garden can benifit from all the ash created, so not totally a   waste.

Have left out for the neighbour some fence netting that is no good to us but he can use it for his donkeys.. 

I'm just so tired and Dead almost numb to tommorows hearing, I think its my body protecting me from worry, I just keep working from 8 in the morning till 11 at night stopping for 10 mins to wolf down a sandwich. I still not loosing any weight though, not fair!!

Babe the pig stil hasnt poppped, she is exceedingly comfy in her quarters, may be too comfy, I cant believe she can go on many more days as she will burst!!

It will be just my luck for her to go into labour the minute the hearing starts, I wonder whether that would bring it to a stop as there is supposed to be nothing able to stop it now.....

Oh I just want to sleep, we still have no car it blew up 2 weeks ago, but we have had too much on our mibd with all of this to eve think about Joe fixing it, the big end has gone, I think my big end will give up soon too.

I found a referance to this mad woman running a funny farm on the small holder site last night called Pig in mud! self sufficiency!! yes thats me, i'm famous! lol even more pressure..

Right Imust go and find some energy from somewhere and go and work... Bye

 

 

New found pressure!!! lol

Well I never!!!
 People like my blog, i've reduced some to tears even! I'm getting phone calls from people who love it so heres the pressure, I need to blog more regularily!
So another quick catch up.... Its all action stations here as on the 6th July there is a hearing in our local village hall at Llwydiarth 10 am the council want to stop us and get us off our land, saying we cant be self sufficient here and that its not viable, they have put stupid things in there report saying that our land is not even able to sustain a single blade of grass, that we cant be viable here and can sustain any animal life on our hostile holding, you would think that they were refering to the moon not our little paradise. So hence not hearing from me lately, but now I have followers I have a responsibility! So we of late have... built stone walls, created a field of lovely lush grass using traditional pasture grass seed from Powys leys, What a success 14days and it was up and green 4 weeks on we have cut it 3 times with our lawn mower and today we have put our breeding trios of Buff  Orpingtons, Blacks, Lavenders, Light sussex, etc on it in there new breeding cages.... 
We have hand Picked tons of stone off the land, but the pigs really have done an amaizing job of soil conditioing. We have also finished reinstating all the nusery bed of flowers, and edged all the beds and fields with little stone walls. Today we have been busy in the piggy matenity ward as Babe our Belgium blue sow has dropped and has bagged up.. (laymans turned Too fat to move, belly dragging the floor and uncomfortably large bussoms..poor girl) Our large whit sow doesnt look much behind her either so we have given them tons of fresh straw and left them to it, Babe earlier this year was lent out to a friend to have piglets whilst we were away. Sadly she ate and killed most of them, I believe it was because she wasnt just left to it, the lady said she was a dangerous pig and should be turned into sausages, mmm well I hope she proves her wrong soon.. She is fussing me and making lovely piggy noises and wont leave my side when I go in to bed her down so she doesnt seem to be dangerous. I do admit she is jealous though, once I went in with a cat on my shoulders and fussed the cat when i should have been loving Babe .. she didnt like that and bit the back of my leg in a threatening ish way... so maybe when in a jealous rage and when suffering from PMT she is dangerous but how many women go like that once a month .. ?? come on hands up!!! I know i turn into a killer... I only ever want a divorce once a month, never more than that!!

So i better get on with my efforts to prove the council wrong, we can sustain life and our own too.. we have now got a veg garden growing grapes, maize, peas beans, strwberries etc, so hopefully they might look a bit daft but it could always go wrong and we will be homeless and look stupid. I cant see us winning but our planning consultant, Les Stephan Associates of Shrewsbury, have decided to be very charitable and come and represent us for nothing, Note to self better remeber them when killing out the Dexter, lol.... So we have decided what we are doing, all this tidying and fixing is for us not the council, if it makes them happy all well and good, but i have given up worrying aboutit, I was homeless for 2 yrs before with 3 kids and we were fine something will come up, right i'm off it windy rainy and cold but lots of jobs to do... enjoy!!

Its my birthday..

Im 36 today... we are having an alternative birthday , well we would wouldn't we!!! Im having a bog gratch, meal... its a hungarian way of cooking over an open fire with a tripod suspending a kettle pot, or a witches coldron.. Its a traditional way that Hungarians cook there goulash.. We are having home corn fed chicken cooked over an oak fire the smoke and i little ash add to the flavour, as its cooked for hours the meat is also very tender, and its a lovely event, there type of BBQ really. I will add pics soon..


We have had puppies..Sasha has just had her second and last litter. She had 11 but 8 lived, a couple got crushedunder the puppy rails that were supposed to prevent that, another got sat on by Sasha..All are doing well and now been introduced to puppy food soaked in puppy milk.

We have also had our first Bengal kittens. 4 born 1 sadly died and it happened to be a snow leopard, but there is one more snow, 1 marble and 1 leopard spot.

We have spent weeks ploughing the fields where the pigs have been working there magic, we have picked 10 digger bucket loads of stone out of the field, Joe created various attatchments for the digger to help us, pictures will be added, he also made a huge rake to help collect the stone, then we have spent about 2 weeks raking and collecting stone by hand..at last yesterday we have added a top dressing of fertiliser and got the seed down we chose a old traditional pasture mix. After throughing down the seed by hand then we had to rake it in again , then roll it, Joe found an old lawn mower in a skip that has a roller on it so he got it going again and round and round he went, it was definatly worth doing the difference it has made..

The Grass party!!
The children are now watcing for the field to green up when it does we shall have a clebration "Grass party" it could be misconstrude but we are so excited about seein the field green up, We have a major planning event on the 6 th July we have a hearing to try and though us off our land , and in the planning enforcement officers notes he says the land is waste land and that not even 1 blade of grass will grow on it , he will be sorry he wrote that!!! I have also preparred a huge veg patch and planning to go over the top.... my carpet now has seed packets strewn all over it .. i hope for some rain now so to kick it all in to action.... right im off to go get these seeds in i have loads of pictures to up load just no time to do it.....

Catch up!!!

Well its been far to long!!! Ive been so busy being ill...We've all had the nova virus.. nearly 3 weeks of sick and yuk!!! I lost a stone and a half, Lily has vowed never to be sick again, she been so ill, on the up side its cured her travel sicknes...lol.. cant be bad. So we really have had nothing to report, and on top of that we've had the worlds worst cold. Lets see what been happening??? 

My new Incubator. 

RCOM 20 PRO USB Incubator

I've been struggling all last year with bad hatches maybe 1 or 2 out of 30 odd eggs I had a useless polystiriene incubator, so I thought, but after binning it  found out it was my thermometer that was to blame..Typical. 
 So I woke up to ebay, its amaizimg shopping on the net, I must be the last person to discover the benefits.. I even tried to do my food shop on line but we are too far out of the way for them..Even Tescos wouldnt touch us...
Anyhow I started looking at incubators and dreaming about these fully computorised USB models all you do is choose the picyure of what your hatching set go and it does everything, turning, humidity, temp ,counts down to hatch day and then changes its setting for the hatching , ... I thouht well dream on.. then I noticed some on ebay going quite cheap, but then got out bid so I took a look at Preloved that is a great site,  found one still boxed as new the latest model for £220 so  Paypal my new best friend did its job and here it is... perfect,
I have  bought new thermometer combi hygrometer and candler so I have the right set up....and eggs on the net, Rhode Island reds, Wyondottes, Marrans and Speckled Sussex I think... anyhow they should all arrive soon and we will see what happens...

Ive also found this shop on the net...

P&T Poultry Contact Information :-

For Credit Card Payments contact Gillian on 0844 357 3926

For product information contact Trevor on 0844 884 3278

e-mail: gillian@pandtpoultry.co.uk 

They are very knowlegable and provdide a fast excellent service. I have been shopping with them a little bit!! When I upgrade to a bigger version of this model they will be the ones I go to..Look them up on ebay...

Now What else...

Mini mini pigs.....

A lovely lady responded to my livestock always wanted add on Preloved, she brought me 3 Pedigree Kune Kune's now I thought our mini pig was small but they make her look huge!!! 

1 Sow and 2 Boars, they had grown too big I think she said and were destroying her hay padocks, also the brothers were getting too friendly with there sister.. Who we now believe is pregnant... oops. I have never seen such cute gorgeous pigs I cant stop watching them. Will ad pic soon. They were very badly affected by the move, sulking and shocked, I have never seen pig shock before they just sat in the mud and refused to move for a few hours, by morning they were a bit better but 3 days on they still not too happy, they had a couple of cracks of the electric fence which did not help, as soon as they are settled and happier we will put them on fresh ground out of our training pen..

Electric fence training pen...

Electric fences are great for pigs that know about them but any young pig who's never seen one before will hit  the wire, shoot forwards screaming and there out, the ensuing chase is not good for man nor beast, so I invented our training pen...It consists of several unmovable metal post which then have 1inch square gauge mesh of about 4 foot tall wire on and pulled tight all the way around, then  put a few lines of electric fence wire all around on the inside about 4 inches away from the back up solid fence .. so they catch the wire shoot forward keep getting the shock and have to reverse, they onlty hit it a couple of times and learn to respect both wire and solid fences, its never failed. Some of my old timers learnt that well that they wont even cross where the wire was when you take it down I have to walk back wards and forwards to show them its ok..honest..

The Orchard

The council in ther infinate wisdom has forced us to plant huge amounts of trees on our tiny piece of land... every bit counts every blade of grass, but no we need to plant every where...so we thought we would plant edible trees so as to make the most of it all, so we prepared with our hand rotivator and shovel...The digger of course i'm not stupid!! a traingle bed and planted Stella cherry, Conferance Pears, Brayburn Apple, transplanted huge Hazel nut trees, added a pampus grass and "hey presto" instant orchard.. we will add more but the rain has hit .. which is exactly what they need but I'm not working in it, on our land your boots just get heavier and heavier...

Thats it for today I have decided to bake all day and hide from the weather, and maybe spend on ebay a bit more...

Good days work!!!lol.....

Right what have been up to??? Mmm not enough if I'm honest..lol Joe decided he was well enough to go outside to work, well after I gave him the idea, "get on with it Joe!" said I... 

note to self be more subtle next time.. then cant be blamed for consiquenses..

He went straight out dived into the digger and sank. I stayed in the caravan teaching the kids, and cooking up a feast, cleaning etc. you know just girly multi tasking...lol so after a few hours of listening to Joe's digger making very promissing digging sounds I went to see how it was all going... Big mistake... Basically he 'd got in the digger drove over to start work on our blocked drain and promptly got stuck every time he tried to pull out, move, push pull he ended up deeper and further stuck till half the digger was under the mud...oops... 

"its all your fault" said he.. oops .... I wasnt very helpfull as I replied with " Why did you go in that deep mud why didnt you go over there?!" not helpful ..lol  hours later both of us changed colour and yet again digging out the digger, an all too common experience....broken backs, shattered and finished I said we should give it one more go when Joe was ready to give up, eventually we some how got her out of the bog that had nearly eaten them alive, I must add here that this the 3rd or 4th time we have got stuck in this particular boggy bit... once with our huge DROTT machine a huge bulldozer on tracks that i was very proud to be able to drive, I said that DROTT stood for (Drag rubish over to there!!!!) she ended up on her side, she actually nearly lost . Then, I nearly burried the hire machine alive. Williams Plant hire of Welshpools, gorgeous 3 1/2 ton hymac thingy.. then Joe in our poor old much loved Massey ferguson 50B digger. Oh dear another lost day and suprise suprise a much bigger mess than when Joe started what a good days work..

Pigs well they all happy in there new homes, the new boar has settled and is no longer beating up his new Glousceter old spot wife.. dogs happy in the snow we have about 5 inches again.. chicken is laying... fixed up our incubator that Joe found in a skip, set some eggs in it, done a deal to get 9 hybrid laying hens, 1 Barnwelder cockeral and 8 eggs for the incubator for £20  good deal I think.. hope they hatch and hope there isn't a good reason for the incubator being skipped but so far so good its keeping up its temp nicely. 

Andre went out taking pics of the cats today and found my prize Bengal  champion stud tom sitting in the hen house on the eggs... mmm I think he's a little confused....Shell shocked!!! 
He could even be suffering from "Egg-sor-sesory confusion"

lol then after that our Rotty Sasha who is deeply in season and wanting a dog, or should I say should be wanting a dog was trying to persuade our young boar to sort her out.... she seems confused too!!! 

Could be an interesting hybrid... well she did foster one of our orphened piglets before maybe its all my fault... Look on daily mail online Sasha and the fostered piglet Apple sauce!"

What else???? mmmm nothing really should be out there getting loads of work done planting out trees fencing tidying up but theres too much snow on the ground..

Mmm lots to catch up with... 2 nights ago I decided to go to my moms house for the night with Lily. Thought it was about time I slept in a full size bed (ours is a Caravan SMALL double.) so small that if Joe lies on his back half of me is out of bed hanging over the side... I also took some washing to do as all our rain water was frozen solid. We aso fancied a longer shower than our watering can 2 min blast. So I drove Adrians car to town stayed over in a proper house and experience a few of lifes little luxuries.. Hot water, even water that comes out of tap is very novel, flushing toilet, fully plumbed in washine machine. and central heating...mmmm thoughts after. 

Well my caravan is warmer, I was froze to death, sleeping on a proper bed was nice but needed duvet, sleeping bag and a dressing gown on to feel warm, well I still wasnt warm the house was freezing. 

You know doing washing my way doesnt actually feel like a chore you feel proud and well that you've accomplished something. Its actually quicker too as moms washing machine takes 2 and a half hours for each load and I did 4 loads.. The shower was lovely and the pampering with moms creams and potions was good too. Will have to treat mom to some more.lol....

Next morning we got up and went round the charity shops, did a bit of banking, then waited for Jim to pick us up for this was the day to bring home pigs...

Oh forgot to mention that Sugar daddy Jim rang me and said to treat myself to a hair do and he would pay...What a nice treat I no longer look like I 'dbeen pulled through a hedge backwards...  I'm a proud owner of a bob hair style.

We firstly went to Pant by Oswestry to pick up our freegle pigs... What a gorgeous Glos old spot she is the most lovely attitude and very laid back. She had no name so whien I looked at her she spoke to me and said I'm Mabel so Mabel she is...then we drove all the way up past Chester to pick up a Large White pair, boar and sow, we were given them too. As we arrived to pick them up they both jumped up with arm pits on the door to say." And about time too .. where have you been mom said you were coming hours ago" Told you  I'm a pig whisperer...lol... honest they do speak..lol..

We duly drove them home, and settled them in temporarily. Well Jim got out at Guilsfield at his farm and told me to take his Nissan 4x4 home with his stock trailer, he didnt need it till monday. 

What a beast its nearly new and full of power well there was about 3/4 of a ton of pig and 1 ton of trailer and it was still too powerful for me. 

Piggin Paradise..

Joe is still quite poorly he has a serious skin infection is his one arm and its swelled to twice its size with a red mark growing or even glowing.. its gone from his wrist up to the top of his arm. Firstly I had to pop him to the docs, over night we had a good 6 inch of snow.. good job we had Jims 4x4. Docs says his arm is really nasty and we have to watch him as he could need to end up in hospital with it. Hes got antibiotics, will see how long it takes for them to work there magic.

So on gettiing home he took his pills and retired to bed. So that just left me with our two porkers to prize from Babe our adult Pietrain sow, then persuade them to follow us and get into there own electric fenced of area. After that I had to load the one and only Gay boy, pig out of his nest and into his trailer so I could muck out the barn and get it ready for the three new arrivals, electric fence off a large run for them too. Nothing to it..mm

Well this is how it went. Porkers seperation, fine piece of cake. Babe never noticed. Move to there new area not on your nelly!! 30mins later much chasing about and hurdle building eventually they got there. Right I decided more prep need to move Gay boy. So reversed up the trailer to his entance and went over the top hurdles blockade everything nothing could go wrong... Ha in my dreams.. it was all going to plan he was just tootleing up the ramp when Sheba decided to say hello...arrgggh. he panicked, shot through my ever so well made blockade, 2 hours of chasing and cursing, near collapse state that's me not him.. 

Joe heard the comotion, got up from his sick bed and basically, another hour of wrestling eventually got him in, Joe collapsed in a heap gasping for breath, I thought he was having a heart attack. Any how he recovered. We then mucked out with the digger excellent system believe me. Made a luxury deep straw bed, double checked the electric fence and drove in the three newcomers, put there food down in along line and settled back. 

To my horror the boar now called Henry picked her up with his tusks ripping her throat and her sholders held her up in the air and then tossed her I coulndt believe it. She ran off to sulk and nurse her wounds and I vowed not to go in with him on my own for a while.. Joe popped back to look in on them later to find him happily serving her and she was watching her P's and Q's obviously getting on somewhat better.

.........Must mark the date three monthe three weeks and three days.

Any how am shatteed now, got mud all over my new hair cut, wet through all over and every bit of me aches, so have gone to bed extra early, it may be a small sized double but its lovely and warm, with no traffic passing every few mins. I feel safe and secure so maybe Im just not cut out to be normal and am destined to be a caravan dweller for ever..night night..

A very cold day!

Well I got up with good intentions to plant trees.... but it just didn't happen. I ended up clearing out the portacabin, checking shelves and the freezer I think we still got a good months worth of supplys, good thing really as cold is coming back maybe we will end up with snow. At least one good thing about these freezing temperatures, the boggy land is freezing solid so should be able to drive on it with the digger and not have to call for Jim to pull us out with his 4x4 tractor again.
Joe got froze through to the bone. He spent the day stripping the engine of the Kia seddona further. He found that we need 2 bearings on some pullys and 2 complete. They broke when he tried to extract them. Guy, Amandas husband (my friends) came over to borrow a cage for a puppy nest for tonight. They went to an animal sactuary and got a collie pup. Oh well not every day can be full of adventures or confrontations... will see what tomorrow brings.

Trip out to town.

Thats about it today Joe got up early to feed all the animals, I spent the morning on the phone trying to sort out insurance for our new car, then we went to Shrewsbury to buy the parts for our Kia Sedona that we had bought it off ebay for £450 with half the engine in the boot and the other in the front, Jim helped us pull it up the hill and said hed never seen a car with an engine in both ends before...lol  We managed to get trade discount for the head gasket, cam belt and some special stretch bolts, oh and a tiny collet that sprang off into the mud when we stripped down the head. That all came to £240 so we should have a people carrier for under £800 by the time Joe puts it back together. I hope he doesn't find any other problems lurking.. time will tell.

On the way home we filled up a boot full of water bottles, so much that the car was nearly dragging the floor. At least we dont have water rates to pay. Glad to be home the more I spend time away from our little home the more I miss it. Much better up here in our own little world.

All nine of the Bengal cats were very happy to see us they are so much fun.

Mom still enjoying Egypt, and Adrian our neighbour is hopefully home tomorrow which should bring an end to our donkey baby sitting, one of them is heavily pregnant. So far she still in one piece.

Tomorrows job will be planting trees shrubs and fruit bushes, will let you know how it goes...

Bit of a nothing day....

Bit of a boring day spent tidying and during that process, finding paperwork out  that needs dealing with.  I really need to get on top of my DEFRA farm books. Everytime we move an animal or bring one in, be it alive, dead or going to slaughter it all needs documenting and then a copy of that paperwork has to go into DEFRA. I believe if your a proper farmer and get caught being silly, trying to pull the wool over there eyes you can actually be fined thousands.,(which is what happened to a local farmer he was fined £6000) On the last DEFRA inspection I had a few errors in paper work but the two young ladys that visited  were lovely and helpful  but  never the less it still was nerve racking. I believe they visit yearly.

Well I might as well tell you a little bit about our unusual life style, brace yourselves...lol 

We bought a static caravan in 2008 for £500 delivered. It arrived the day before Christmas eve. We had a lovely family time roasting one of our ducks with all the trimmings. 

We have no running water on site and have to carry in every drop. Which is not a big deal i know many people who's water either freezes up in winter or there wells run dry in sommer.. so no big deadl they all cope with it in there civilised life.
I harvest rain water everywhere that I can. We have a watering can for a shower, one saucepan of boiling water topped up with rain water. I have been known during summer storms to stand under the pouring water that comes of the roof of the caravan starkers and have an invigorating cold shower.... Ducking everytime a van went past on the road. Cars were fine as the hedge covers them but vans are taller. One lad delivering something last year had a  bit of a shock...

Washing machine????

For a long time I used an old caravan travel washing machine which was basically a glorified bucket with a turning mechanism, this was great, but time consuming and a family of 5, generates a lot of washing! So one day last year I had a brain wave, my automatic washing mashine was stood outside which I started to use for spinning out the hand washed clothes then,  realised i could actually use it to rinse, I carefully, with my beloved watering can,  fed  water into the draw. I found that it only starts to work when its full enough so you cant harm it.(Well it only cost £40 from the newspaper so its not like i paid hundreds for it.) Then  thought as that had worked so well why not try a coloured wash, it worked!! Wow technology. You cant believe how much this transformed my life, I felt so proud of my self. Lateral thinking. I've now found after months of doing this that the best way to do it, is sort the washing into piles of dirtyness ' firstly  washing the cleanest, spin it then remove it, next  put in the next dirty, and so on I save all the water that comes out the other end and reuse on every load. After that I start with the rinses in a similar way until all the washing comes clean and it does, its spotless,  the water is never thrown out, next we use all the dirty water to wash down the decking outside the caravan, well I say decking its actually the bottom of a lorrys back I think its oak its very sturdy and stops the mud. Then clean down all the patio, this came from Shrewsbury freegle a couple of hundred slabs, it took a good days hard work. I made sure that it had good foundation of shaie then laid it, the patio juts up to a portacabin this came from a friend, he runs a skip business and thought of us.

Our little shop!! (The portacabin.)

This is where we keep all our foods we call it our little shop, when we go shopping I do three months worth at a time. I laugh to my self and think the great unwashed are coming down from the hills... picturing up the old American ranchers coming down to the towns to get in there provisions. 

I buy 25 kilos of sugar in a sack, 10 kilos of rice, sacks of potatoes and flour, it has shop shelving inside and there's where we store all the other things like tins, bottles, soft drinks and all the soaps etc that a family would ever need. The huge freezer is sited here too. Inside we have a whole Dexter beef  steer,  a pigs worth of ham, gammon, bacon, another of sausage and yet another of pork.
On top of all that I buy up whatever is reduced in the super markets. So I will clear the shelves of whatever is a good deal, its amaizing what freezes, 20 bottles of milk, packs of butter, cheese, all sorts. I also have a back up freezer, a gorgeous American side by side fridge freezer. We always wanted one but could never afford one, then a friend needed some help for a few days moving house and gave it to us for our troubles, its as good as new. 

We have a motto all comes to us who wait,

it's amaizing what you find in the skips, rubbish bins and in charity shops, I wont let my self buy new I just store up what I want and then find it... oh I do draw the line at second hand knickers...lol childrens shoes also come from Clarks. 

Its a good lifestyle, it only gets me down when others judge, or say I dont know how you manage.. We did try out living normally for a while in a council house and amaizingly lasted 1 year. Everyone thought we were mad leaving there but my mental health couldn't cope with it. The council, I think were very happy when we left as we constantly got into trouble, having chickens in the back garden, poorly piglets in the utility room  and incubators. Carrying in home killed whole pigs in from the car under the cover of darkness. The neighbours would have gone mad..lol 

So we ended up back on our land, living in a backwards old time sort of a way. aqs much as we were, it saves you a fortune, less impulse buys, crisps, biscuits, cho'colates, good for your figure I've lost nearly a stone now. Even better it's good for your carbon footprint. Saving on fuel, got to be good. 

E Numbers...

As I said before my children are allergic to all bad additives so we have chosen not to consume any type of pre made food, i.e. pizzas, bread, ready meals etc. With our  bread machine, which is my best friend and a Kenwood chef I make everything from scratch, it's not that time consuming really and tastes a million times better. Lots of people think, only I could cope with this life style  Jim  (my adopted suger daddy) say "you put up with a lot" he also says (he doesnt know of any other women that would put up with it."  Jim 's a great friend to us all in his late 60's and a normal farmer with 100 odd acres and provided well for his family, he seems to think its all Joes fault we live like we do and that I'm being dragged into this lifestyle. That couldnt' be further from the truth I'm really happy and yes I do moan some times but i've chosen to live like this so thats that!

Jim the sugar Daddy!  lol

I met Jim at Welshpool market looking for some one to supply us with hay, he was the first person I bumped into and turned out to be a hay merchant, we developed a great friendship, his wife ran off and left him 2 years ago. (He's sure to have worked too much he thinks nothing of working all night muck spreading..lol) Any how I took him under my wing, cooking extra dishes and pudding freezing them and giving him insruction what to do with them. We reagularly go out together, he borrows me he laughingly says. He says that going threw the divorce without me would have been hard. The worries of loosing half his farm and the lonelyness. He's a very generous man spending a fortune on the kids and us, last year he bough  me a lovely digital camera. This year hes taking me off to spend £100 at least he said.. I couldn't think what I  would need to spend that much on. then Ive decided to have a young Dexter calf, were going to collect her soon. She will be our house cow. All the kids love him he reagulary visits us we have a huge family feast, which always goes down well and he brings us free hay, he never takes money off us. Every small holder should have a Jim..lol The children see him as a grand pa and he's happy to be there for them. Andre regularly goes to his farm helping him with the sheep and both of them get to drive his brand new tractor and quad. He enjoys teaching them his craft.

 Home butchery..

I kill and butcher most of the livestock for our food and it becomes a family event, the children can draw anotomically correct drawing of the insides of the animals, they appreciate and respect the animals and the value of there life that we have chosen to take from them. 

Lots judge me and say that this is wrong but they are happy with it and have never been upset by any of the home killing processes that go on here, 

We use a humane killer that releases a captive bolt, they are humanely and instantly dispatched.We all muck in helping scrape off the pigs bristles or skin the sheep whatever the animal , even little Lily. Judge me if you want but this is nothing different to what our grand parents or great grandparents did. 

In Spain the other year I witnessed something similar and in Hungary it's still a family day and feast. Its just us over here that have moved in to the different lifestyle. 

We as a family choose to be responsible for the meat we eat we know exactly what its been fed on, any medication it may have needed or had, how old it was before we ate it, which breed, etc, it's a stress free process and they never know what is coming. I feel we are responsible and not condoning the awful life and stresses that commercial meats sometimes go through in order to provide the consumer with cheap poor quality "alledged" meat products. We eat like kings so there!!!!

Swiss Chalet (Pig Sty!) Completed!!!!!

Today  we finished our piggys new home. 

Now it is a little imperfect, we can all see that, but it cost nothing other than time. So I rate this a success.. Before we moved them in, we baby proofed the enclosure. Now we didnt go as far as baby monitors and stair gates... but we did sure up the electric fence making it tought so as no one could get little trotters stuck in any loops and then be unable to escape the shock.. Threw out some rocks that would have made for a very uncomfy night sleep. Then filled up there bedding with good quality clean straw. Oh and of course double check for any missing tools, well nearly all our tools are missing due to over active kids and one big one (Joe) but none are missing in there new enclosure...We had a debate on who was going to test the strenghth of the electric fence but whilst in mid discussion Sheba our G.S.Dog was a little too inquisitive and just touched it with the side of her nose... what a scream, i've never seen her move so quickly, poor thing I dont think she'll make that mistake again.

It was fun moving the pigs we considered a few options..

  a) Risk getting eaten by Mini pig by going into  her nest to collect all five babies - put them in the dog cage and some how carry them over to the new quarters. (They are heavy little critters!) The thinking behind this was that Mini pig would hear them and follow there calls to her new home.. We decided cosiderable stress could be brought on this way and discounted it. Oh also we could have got severly hurt if she didnt want us to do it.

b)Let them all free and hopefully they wouldnt get too distracted by all the dangerous things all over our site and keep close to mom while she followed a bucket of food. 

Mmm well we hadnt finished filling in some very deep drains so that could have been disasterous.

 c)Which is what we finially went with .. We opened the door to her bedroom showed her the bucket of food, whilst she was distracted we scooped up one piglet closing the others in and carried it in front of her whilst I hearded her from behind, she was an angel, walked perfectly all the way from one end of the farm to the other. We tipped out her food and then quickly carried the remainder one by one to her.

We discovered that if you hold them loosley and soothe them, the usual screams (Ear piercing!!) that normally ensue didnt happen..

So what to you think of this place then...Shall we stay???

There are 2 girls (gilts) & 3 boys (boars).

Pig in boots!!!! 

This is to show you the size of them at 1 day old, but dont be thinking they stay this small, they grow and grow and well just grow.

Mini pig the mom was one such cute little piglet that some one took on, in there house she was duely litter trained slept in the house and was spotless, but as she grew problems started, she loves rubbung and itching as do all pigs, its ecstacy to them, as she rubbed on all the furniture in her old moms house she used to tip it over move it eventually spoiling it.

In her desperation for a more normal piggy life she jumped out of a 2nd floor window amaizingly didnt get hurt but then gave Aberyswyth Police the slip for 3 weeks eventually.


She ended up at a rescue centre who conacted us and asked us to give her a proper pigs life.
 
She seems happy enough and is a very gentle 160 kilo pig at about 3 foot high.. Kune Kune's come from New Zealand and there name translates as short fat and round I believe. (They got that right!) using them for meat as they fatten at an incredible rate, which we can see from our little hybrids. 

We crossed her onto a Pietrain boar, these are the Arny of the pig world they are double muscled, same as the Belgium blue cattle. They are also known as Belgium blue pigs.

We felt the two extremes one being fat and short the other long, carrying no fat just a thin skin and masses of muscle should in theory produce an excellent small holders hybrid porker. Being hybrid they should have the vigor and extra boost of size.

Well I  can definatley recomend the cross as they are pure muscle, if only I understood more about genetics I would endevour to create the ultimate small holders pig, as they dont eat very much at all. and need mini pig sized housing.

But i have no idea how you would stabalise the type and then breed true to type.. oo thats all getting a little heavy is'nt it...? Any one that knows more please let me know...

Thats it folks for tonight I hope you like the pics and info....

come back tomorrow....

"Pig in mud!" Self-sufficiency.: Well this is DAY 1 of the pig in mud blog.

"Pig in mud!" Self-sufficiency.: Well this is DAY 1 of the pig in mud blog.

Swiss Chalet style Maternity suite!! (Pig Sty!)

Today i had hoped to be able to put a lovely picture of our finished Mini Pig house ... or should i say Swiss Chalet style Maternity suite on here. Well we got a bit carried away, it is built completely from recycled materials even the nails, we've got it bad ... but they do say Reduce (well that could be the pigs size!) Re-use (enough said.) Recycle (well thats easy the materials.) You can judge for yourselves. Will post the photo soon. 

We've decided its such a good design with the over hang at the front we shall try producing some for sale. It looks cute and i havent seen any out there this shape, selling point being made for your pigs from people with pigs... mm something to mull over.

Right what else. Andre tried to shatter Lily for me, he took her on a good 4 mile walk, came back saying that she STILL wasnt tired, he wasn't either but they had a great adventure they went off in the forest with Sasha our Rotty for protection.  

Sheba our German shepherd dog stayed home to gaurd us, she only 1year old and busyied herself with getting completely tangled in my Maturnity suite electric fencing, she also rather fancied the look of the Challet and wanted to move in.

Oh i did a deal today. Chris my adopted mom, (she's a friend really but mothers me,and i love her to bits!) text me to say a pair of Glouster old spots were being given away on freegle. So i emailed him, he duly rang me, saying that i was the only one that sounded like I knew pigs. He had one lady mail him enquiring if these full size breeding pair would be happy to live with there horse in his stable, well the mind boggles threee in a stable mmm... well we'll leave that thought there. 

So i rang him back today and asked if he would like one of my porkers for his freezer, maybe needs 1 to 3 months more fattening dependant on the finished size required, you may ask.. why?

Well i bought this one in with his sibblings to fatten for the freezer, he was the runt that the mom rejected so his human parents, a lovely gay couple had took him into there bed... yes he slept with them!! Feeding him with lambs milk replacer and doing a really great job he progressed onto the run of the whole house with a litter tray and well, when I went to pick him up he was toasting his belly pork, fast asleep in front of a roaring fire with there Stafy. He sat on my lap all the way home (only throwing up once) whilst the more normally reared sibblings, in the boot in the dog cage were all snuggled up.

To cut a long story short he cant decide if he's Gay, a dog or what, but, hes sure hes not a pig. We cant put him with any of ours as they want to kill him on site. He has no pig etiquete so cant mix. After explaining the situation this man was happy to give him a home with out other pigs till he's ready for the freezer.

The moral of this story... I will never never try to hand rear a pig ever again. Unless there mini tea cup pigs that will end up being a sudo dog human companion- its just not fair they need to learn how to be a pig from a pig .

I did previous to this, try and help out a piglet before "Apple Sauce" Sasha the Rottweiler fostered him when she had pups and did a brilliant job for a few weeks feeding him as a puppy. (look on the net to see all the lovely pics and details) but sadly he passed away in the night after struggling to regulate his body temp.

Any how thats a lot of rambling, so tomorrow the sty will be finished, i hope and we will have the adventure of moving Mini pig and her litter the length of the farm to there new home.