Just 2 days to go and I can say goodbye to this year forever. Not a moment too soon may I say!
I hate to wish my life away but shit, how much can one person take in 1 year?
It’s not just been me either. I’ve spoken to so many people who have struggled with everything this year has thrown at them. I’m tired beyond tired, my body aches, I struggle to laugh and smile and my patience levels with anything and everything are shot to pieces.
And now it’s the Christmas holidays and as per usual, guests are coming and going.
There’s a lot of drinking and smoking and late nights and metal music and none of it is me. This year I’m struggling with it. It’s my holiday too and I don’t want to join in. I want to just drift through the days without caring about anyone but me. I want to be selfish and breathe only fresh country air and to just sit in quiet contemplation but of course there’s a certain amount of pressure to join in obviously. My need to just get up and walk away and sit in another room by myself is disconcerting for the guests but I’m past caring this year.
I have certainly not been the hostess with the mostest this year. By all means come into my home, make yourself comfortable, relax, kick back but don’t expect me to participate.
I know it’s hard for Aaron. Erik and Bettina are here for a week or so and the expectation is that I will be on my best behaviour but it’s not happening. It has nothing to do with them, I’m just exhausted.
A Quiet Life
The farm is fairly quiet now. Our plans to cull or sell pigs happened, and then we sold most of our latest piglets as weaners. About the only change to our plans was to keep Mabel. In the end I couldn’t let her go. We have reached a good stage in our relationship and I know she likes me and trusts me now.
We were due a set of piglets early this month but I am not sure what has gone wrong. Just as Phyllis struggled to get pregnant last year, Joy is also going through a phase. She doesn’t seem to be coming into heat. We had thought she was pregnant but this was not the case. She’s a little overweight but not obese. The diet is good, so I’m not sure what the issue is.
Not that we’re stressed about it. The pig farming dream died an unexpected death and so there’s no pressure on us now to breed.
However, because Joy was not pregnant we removed the electric wire between Arthur and the girls. It took 2 weeks for the pigs to dare to cross that invisible line between the standards and then Phyllis came into heat and she took the first step into Arthur’s territory. We assume she is pregnant but still there is nothing happening with Joy.
We have kept Mabel and Stanley separated but then Mabel came into heat on 12 December, Emily’s 3 boys got terribly randy, pushed under the fence and now I fear she may also be pregnant. The boys are only 4 months old but they were persistent in chasing Mabel around the paddock.
And so after the heat we opened the gate between Mabel and Stanley and now the 2 keep each other company. The plan is to separate them again just before Mabels comes into heat again.
Trouble in Paradise
The 3 saddleback boys started causing problems a few weeks ago by suddenly starting to escape and explore the property. That in itself is not so bad but they eventually found Arthur and family and started regularly visiting. The adults would chase them away if they got too near but then they started ganging up on Phyllis’ son ‘Piglet’.
The saddleback boys then seemed to have decided to hunt him down and harass him on a regular basis. Fortunately Piglet is a generously sized pig and the Saddleback picking the fights, though feisty, is the smallest piglet. Piglet holds his ground but tries to avoid confrontation at all costs. And so, as we were regularly trying to break up fights we decided enough was enough and the saddleback boys are now safely (and hopefully permanently) behind electric wire.
This has also solved one other problem – Whiskey’s piglet fixation. Once the saddleback boys started escaping so did Whisky. Every opportunity he could find he would trot down the hill to find the piglets. Then he would follow them wherever they went, sniffing, licking and no doubt humping for as long as he could get away with.
Last week Whisky disappeared for over an hour. Coppa and I searched the property and Gary’s and then up into the bush. I called and called and whistled and then started to panic; had he fallen into a hole? drowned in the stream? escaped onto the highway? been kidnapped by a stranger? Would he be gone forever and I would never know what happened to him?!? I was a parent quickly becoming distraught.
This was Whisky, our obedient dog who always comes when he calls. And then it occurred to me that the piglets were also missing. They’d been hanging around Naniwha Hill lately so Coppa and I went for a walk around the base.
They were there and so was Whisky. I know Whisky heard me and I am gobsmacked he actually chose to ignore me.
Coppa has been a most obedient dog the last couple of weeks so it worries me that Whisky is possibly putting his alpha status at risk by letting himself get into so much trouble.
As for Piglet, he continues to spend his time hanging around the shed or behind it, staring longingly at the coolstore door but he is growing bigger by the day. As much as I love his company, he must be close to 50kg and that’s starting to cause a few problems, especially when we’re making meals. He has absolutely no problem launching himself at crates of veges, knocking them over and spilling the contents across the floor.
He can also launch himself upwards so that he can get his front trotters on the table, where he can knock feed buckets off the table or even grab bags of cheese.
Still, even with these minor problems, having so few pigs on the land has given us a welcome respite from the usual time consuming pig farming work.
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