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.