Dear Vicky
You poor things. But think of that little pig as the glue to your new relationship with the neighbours, a little sacrifice for your new way of being?
I had to kill a Myxi wild rabbit the other day and cried my eyes out as I stood there in my yellow marigolds with it twitching in my hands. The kids (and Jed) watched in a mix of admiration and horror. They hear so many stories of my childhood in the country from both me and Gory Grandpa that I don't think they quite know what I'm capable of. They held the puppies pretty close that night.
Penicillin? Does that mean that they'll no longer be organic? I'm not entirely convinced by the argument anyway; our milk comes from the cows opposite who get anti-biotics if they get mastitis because cabbage leaves just don't work. But it does mean that they won't get the premium milk price. I'm with the cows on this.
We're still waiting to exchange on Three Acres (today please?) but went down there to have a chat with the pigs yesterday. I realise that Demolition Dave who actually owns them (and the sheep, the chickens and the sweetie Jack Russells who are kept outside with frozen water in their bowl) and I might have different ideas of how to raise animals. That'll be an interesting thread to this smallholding debate. Interesting that I wrote "threat" instead then....
lots of love
Gilly
Monday, 12 January 2009
Sunday, 11 January 2009
Not a good day!
Dear Gilly,
The beautiful hoar frosts have almost gone - I almost began to believe that we were going to live forever with everything around us sparkling and silvery and the sky perpetually tinged pink and everyone over the age of forty telling their children that this was a proper winter like we used to get when we were children. The boiler has roared away for days now like a dragon in the laundry room guzzling up the oil. We can't light the Aga because we can't find charcoal for love nor money, but then I noticed some burned scraps of wood in the fireplaces and with sheer determination and perseverence managed to get the darn thing alight again. A bit late maybe as the temperature outside zooms up from -9.5C on Friday (full moon on hard frost at midnight...the light was amazing).
Today, however, we were having the Neighbours round for Sunday lunch. We bought this house off them and it was to be our first proper 'social' together - so in my mind it was imperative that the meal was cooked on the Aga - that the beast and I could work in perfect union just once. All was going well. The Aga was red hot and raring to perform. The neighbours had been invited for 1pm and I was working on the premise that they would be prompt. The children were considering getting out of their jim-jams at 12.59pm. The house was in a tip but I'd found a linen table cloth for the kitchen table and the food, miraculously, was cooked and ready to serve (slow roasted Morrocan Style hogget, ratatouille, rosemary and sea-salt roasted potatoes). It was like Ready-Steady-Cook as we counted down to 1.00. By 1.05, when they arrived, I felt almost relaxed. We had a glass of wine and sat down to eat fairly promptly. It was all very easy-going and we got on to the topic of pigs and how sweet and lean is the meat of milk-fed pigs; how intelligent they are; how easy they are to keep; how you wouldn't want to pass out in a drunken stupor in a pig pen because you'd have been eaten by the morning. I was feeling very proud of our thriving pigs, relieved that they's made it through the cold weather - when all of a sudden Monty burst through the back door shouting, "There's a dead pig in the field!"
He was right. There it was, poor little thing, keeled over and dead as anything, with the others all snuffling round it. Very glad the neighbours were round. They called vets for us. Got advice over the phone. The children were very stoical about it (only Louis shed a tear). Dave removed it from the other pigs and laid it under an oak tree and we tried to work out what on earth had happened - only an hour before I had watched it foraging around with the other pigs, but in the morning Dave and Louis thought it looked a bit under the weather - snuffly and off its food.
Phoned our Pig Lady. She said sometimes they just die like that. It had had nothing odd to eat. Phoned our new Smallholding friends in Chailey who had a dead pig last week. They said it was pneumonia. Got to get the others penicillin first thing tomorrow. New Smallholding Friends have got loads that they would have given us but we'd have to inject it into their bums every day for 3 days! Thought Dave might be ok with that, but apparently I'm calling the vet first thing while he takes dead pig to knackers in Ringmer. It's a sharp learning curve for us ex-townies!
Love, V xx
The beautiful hoar frosts have almost gone - I almost began to believe that we were going to live forever with everything around us sparkling and silvery and the sky perpetually tinged pink and everyone over the age of forty telling their children that this was a proper winter like we used to get when we were children. The boiler has roared away for days now like a dragon in the laundry room guzzling up the oil. We can't light the Aga because we can't find charcoal for love nor money, but then I noticed some burned scraps of wood in the fireplaces and with sheer determination and perseverence managed to get the darn thing alight again. A bit late maybe as the temperature outside zooms up from -9.5C on Friday (full moon on hard frost at midnight...the light was amazing).
Today, however, we were having the Neighbours round for Sunday lunch. We bought this house off them and it was to be our first proper 'social' together - so in my mind it was imperative that the meal was cooked on the Aga - that the beast and I could work in perfect union just once. All was going well. The Aga was red hot and raring to perform. The neighbours had been invited for 1pm and I was working on the premise that they would be prompt. The children were considering getting out of their jim-jams at 12.59pm. The house was in a tip but I'd found a linen table cloth for the kitchen table and the food, miraculously, was cooked and ready to serve (slow roasted Morrocan Style hogget, ratatouille, rosemary and sea-salt roasted potatoes). It was like Ready-Steady-Cook as we counted down to 1.00. By 1.05, when they arrived, I felt almost relaxed. We had a glass of wine and sat down to eat fairly promptly. It was all very easy-going and we got on to the topic of pigs and how sweet and lean is the meat of milk-fed pigs; how intelligent they are; how easy they are to keep; how you wouldn't want to pass out in a drunken stupor in a pig pen because you'd have been eaten by the morning. I was feeling very proud of our thriving pigs, relieved that they's made it through the cold weather - when all of a sudden Monty burst through the back door shouting, "There's a dead pig in the field!"
He was right. There it was, poor little thing, keeled over and dead as anything, with the others all snuffling round it. Very glad the neighbours were round. They called vets for us. Got advice over the phone. The children were very stoical about it (only Louis shed a tear). Dave removed it from the other pigs and laid it under an oak tree and we tried to work out what on earth had happened - only an hour before I had watched it foraging around with the other pigs, but in the morning Dave and Louis thought it looked a bit under the weather - snuffly and off its food.
Phoned our Pig Lady. She said sometimes they just die like that. It had had nothing odd to eat. Phoned our new Smallholding friends in Chailey who had a dead pig last week. They said it was pneumonia. Got to get the others penicillin first thing tomorrow. New Smallholding Friends have got loads that they would have given us but we'd have to inject it into their bums every day for 3 days! Thought Dave might be ok with that, but apparently I'm calling the vet first thing while he takes dead pig to knackers in Ringmer. It's a sharp learning curve for us ex-townies!
Love, V xx
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