The Green, Green Grass of Home

9 October 2008 Spring has sprung and the days are flying past at a great rate. The weather is warmer and drier but something isn’t quite right. The grass isn’t growing and the willows are taking their time to sprout forth new leaf. From what I’m hearing there’s a few farmers up north needing to destock at the moment. Frank is one of them and even Marty’s contemplating it. Marty reckons his spring growth is bolting to seed already. It’s a sign of stress in a plant so possibly a drought’s on the way. Won’t that be grand after having our wettest winter in decades?! Farmers are going to be doing it tough next winter again if they can’t grow enough hay this spring. We’re incredibly grateful to have all the extra grazing land on either side of us this year. Without it we too would be destocking. I’m not sure I’d want to be running 2 chest freezers! The Boys Turn Two On Monday Whisky and Coppa celebrated their 2nd birthday, an event that would have completely passed me by had it not been for Aaron and Lyn. Okay, so I’m a bad mother, I had absolutely no idea. Aaron wanted me to cook dinner for 4. I decided to brave roasting a couple of pork chops. I Googled a recipe and came up with pork chops steam roasted in beer and Worcestershire sauce and topped with blue cheese gravy. Apart from the fact that the cooking time was 20-30 minutes too long they tasted fab. As for the dogs, well they certainly didn’t complain. And perhaps it was a slightly better meal than last year when we served them fillet steak only for them to get so excited they both swallowed the lot without chewing. All I can say is watching a whole fillet steak being inhaled in a matter of seconds is slightly disturbing. Meat on bones is so much better as the dogs can spend hours gnawing and licking. Aaron is keen to make some more sausages and salamis on Labour weekend. We’ll also make another attempt to find the bacon in the freezer. We’ve got 2 huge hams to cure at some stage. Maybe we’ll tackle those next month. Of course it all seems like a lot of work right now but what happens when we’re overrun with pork next year? We need to pull our socks up and get recipes and procedures sussed before then. Baby Bacons Joy and Phyllis are most definitely pregnant. I can’t believe how fast their bellies are swelling. Joy had a bad week last month. I don’t know whether she had the pig version of morning sickness or a mild cold but she was definitely under the weather. However she’s come right now. As for Phyllis, our pocket rocket, her attempts at racing across the paddocks aren’t as successful as they once were. She’ll take off at a sprint and then suddenly grind to a halt as she realizes she’s not quite as agile as she once was. Poor girl. I’m not sure she’s entirely thrilled about the changes. She enjoys being a carefree piggie and given the choice I suspect she probably would have put off motherhood for a couple of years. A couple of times I’ve caught her snapping at Arthur as he’s attempted to snuggle up to her. Hmmm, I wonder if she knows he has something to do with it? Joy on the other hand is taking to motherhood like a natural. She just spends most of the day just kicking back and relaxing, snoozing in the sun with Arthur. Joy and Arthur are most definitely a couple. Which I guess makes Phyllis Arthur’s bit on the side. All 3 seem to find this situation acceptable so that’s fine by me. However, as the girls increase in size it will become necessary to move them back to the southern paddock with the shed. There is just no room for 2 pregnant girls in their current paddock. Arthur will stay where he is and we’ll move Spotty and Stanley in to keep him company. What Do We Do With Spotty? Spotty is due to go to the butcher early in the new year but I have had to confess to Aaron that I can no longer bear to part with him. Aaron says he can’t stay without earning his keep, which means getting him a girlfriend. However we also have to get Stanley a girlfriend. That means 4 girls on the block. I don’t think we can feed that many pigs or cope with that many piglets. I know it’s stupid but if Spotty were an ugly or not particularly friendly pig I’d have no issues. I didn’t really have too many issues 2 months ago when we agreed he could father a litter with Belle and then go to the butcher, but circumstances have changed and suddenly I find myself hating the thought of butchering those great genes. Perhaps I will change my mind though. I had originally told Aaron that I wanted to keep 46 as a pet but have since changed my mind despite his placid nature and good looks. This farming business isn’t easy! Shearing Sheep Saturday night Aaron rang the shearer to book him in for the end of the month. Sunday morning we awoke to discover Spike had a really bad limp and Thyme had baling twine wrapped around one of her legs. Aaron rang the shearer again and he said he’d be there in 30 minutes. Cripes! Our sheep were located the other side of the property and we had to get them into the yards. We dropped the electric fences and I rattled a bucket of sheep nuts. The sheep happily followed me with Aaron walking at the rear. All went very smoothly. They crossed 2 paddocks and walked through the gate and up onto the drive and then one of the lambs decided to shoot off down the inside of the gate. Suddenly his mum was missing, he panicked, the sheep then panicked and they all turned and bolted back from whence they came. For the next 15 minutes Aaron and I attempted to get them back through the gate. The gate of course had now become a great source of fear. The shearer pulled up at the gate. We hadn’t unlocked it so I sprinted down the drive to let him in. Another vehicle pulled in behind him. An older couple got out and introduced themselves as the soon to be new owners of Gerald’s 3-acre block. My jaw dropped but I quickly gained my composure and gave them a hurried hello before letting Duncan in. Duncan parked his ute and I told him we needed his dogs. He let his dogs out just as the sheep came running down the drive up into the yards with Aaron following close behind. Excellent! No dogs needed. The sheep were shorn and the twine removed from Thyme’s leg. Duncan checked over Spike’s leg but nothing seemed to be broken or anything stuck in his hooves. With 7 sheep shorn we ended up with 2 sacks of wool, which we will probably use to insulate pig housing. The sheep are now all black with white markings. Shorn sheep are just not attractive. I look forward to when their wool grows a bit and once again fades to that lovely creamy coffee colour. We Meet Our Potential New Neighbours Duncan left and we took the sheep back to their paddock. We let the dogs out and then walked down the drive to talk to the couple I’d met at the gate. The dogs of course introduced themselves first. All my screams of “Down! Down! Get down!” went unheeded of course but at least I made the effort. We talked to the couple for over an hour. It was a difficult situation. In the back of our minds we wanted to put them off and yet they were so nice that it seemed like it wouldn’t be an entirely bad thing if they moved in. So in the end we were completely honest about what we knew about the property. We asked them if they were looking at alternative power and phone sources and they seemed to think that all services were to their gate. I strongly suspected this wasn’t the case and told them to make absolutely sure as we had been told the same thing only to discover something entirely different. We were shocked to discover that someone else had also put a higher offer in but the deal had fallen through. Quite frankly we cannot fathom why anyone would want to buy the block of land for even close to the $160,000 it has been advertised for. That is far more than we paid for our 10 acres 3 years ago. The block doesn’t see sun for 6 months of the year. What are these people thinking?? Anyway, we left them with a lot to think about and an invitation to visit if the deal went through. Quite frankly I think they’re mad to go ahead after hearing about want they intend to do with the block.