We’re now 3 weeks into April and life is no less busy and only marginally less stressful from my perspective. The long dry has finally come to an end and today we have rain, lots of glorious, continuous rain. It has been a long time coming and the paddocks are crying out for it. The fear is it’s too late though. We need the grass to grow before winter arrives but now the temperatures have dropped the grass growth will have slowed considerably. Aaron is convinced that despite the recent destocking we will be resorting to silage before winter’s end. The fruit and vegetables for the pigs are already scarce. The apple orchard we collect from has had a really bad season. We had counted on those apples seeing us through winter but it is highly unlikely now. We are still getting heaps of cabbage from New World but quite frankly the pigs aren’t all that keen on cabbage and Stanley hates it. We have been collecting from the supermarket for a good 6 months now, and despite the fact that we know they throw out fruit and vegetables, it’s all too much effort for them to give us anything but cabbage and sometimes lettuce. I suspect we’ll be going through a fair number of sacks of pig pellets this winter. Thank god we have the cheese. At some point we will be ditching the cheese in favour of whey though. We just need to get ourselves some largish holding tanks and build troughs that are stable enough to hold all the liquid. Apparently the whey is better for the pigs so I’m keen on that. The pigs do like their feta though.
GAINING BALANCE
Currently my life still feels like an out of control train but I am having the odd day when I actually feel normal. It really helped to have the HelpXchange girls from Germany and we have 3 more HelpX people due to arrive this week. I like to think that in a couple of week’s time, when a lot more tasks have been completed around the place, I will feel more in control of things. I still feel like I need a break though.
CHAOTIC TIMES
Phyllis’ piglets are now 8 weeks old and rather big. This however does not stop them from leaving their paddock on a regular basis. In fact it is very rare now for the piglets to spend any time with their mum. If they are not feeding or sleeping they are looking for food.
They have figured out very quickly that nearly all food originates from the shed and that in order for the food to be dispersed human intervention is required. The sight of any human being now creates an instant reaction among the piglets, whereupon they race via whatever route necessary to where the human being is and gather round in a group and squeal as loud as possible. The noise is quite something and if the human does not immediately make movements indicative of the possibility of a feed then the piglets will bite and nip at pant legs, gumboots or bare legs to try elicit the required response. 
If there are no humans about it is not unusual for the piglets to come up to the house and run around looking for someone. Overall it is very entertaining but at times it is just absolutely chaotic and the sound of 8 squealing piglets can be somewhat overwhelming. This is especially so when we are standing in the tin shed and suddenly 8 piglets appear out of nowhere, race in through the open doors and start squealing as they race around looking for food. They knock over buckets and tools, leap into the vege crates and remove the lids from the boxes containing pellet feed. 
They have very quickly acquired the name “Naughty Little Piglets”, although I suspect the word ‘Little’ won’t remain for long. This is because they are growing at an enormous rate and I suspect that is partly because we have made the foolish mistake of trying to get them out of the shed by throwing food out the door. It works beautifully until the food’s gone but then they come straight back in. They now know that if they run around our legs and squeal as loud as possible we will probably produce food. This turned out to be quite disastrous for me last Friday. I had the day off so we could travel down to Mt Maunganui that afternoon. One of my jobs for the day was to make up 32 buckets of pig meals to be fed out over the weekend by my brother Matt and his fiancé Bron. For 2 hours I chopped up veges and fruit and then I set out 32 buckets on the floor. It was a hot day, so despite the roller doors being down I had to have the side door open. Just as I started dispersing food into buckets the dogs shot out the door and a familiar grunting sound filled the air. I got to the door only just in time, locking myself in and piglets and dogs out. This wasn’t good. The dogs have become addicted to piglet sniffing and licking. And when I say addicted I mean addicted. Whatever scent the piglets are emitting, which I can only suppose is something like a cheesy-bacon smell, it has become an intoxicating drug for our dogs. The piglets were determined to get in the shed and the dogs were determined to stay outside. Needless to say, it took several minutes before I could get the dogs back in with me alone. I carried on filling the buckets but the heat was stifling, the dogs were panting and the piglets were determined to get in. I swear at one point the piglets were throwing themselves at the roller doors in an effort to get in. The doors banged and shook so much the dogs actually freaked out a bit, then one little snout figured out how to raise the door. Bugger! I pushed the snout out and slammed the door shut again. Now I was stuck. I had buckets of food all over the floor which needed cheese added and to do that I had to get out the shed and around the side to the coolstore and back without being seen. What was worse is that I can only carry 1 bag of cheese at a time because they are so heavy, and I needed 4. Then I needed to get all the buckets from the shed into the coolstore. What next ensued was an almost 2-hour comedic scene, something close to slapstick I assume, of me trying to outwit the piglets while trying to get in an out of the shed. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t and by the end of it I was well past the giggling stage and my comedy had become a horror that had me shaking and close to tears of frustration. In hindsight I should have anticipated the piglets would not give up once they knew I was in the shed and dealt with the issue there and then. I didn’t though and by the time Aaron arrived home from work, I was racing around frantically trying to get the other 20 items ticked off my ‘To Do’ list and I was totally strung out.
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