Little escapees

So I was off to pick some sloes, 

....turned round the corner of the house,

and look!

Six little piggies the wrong side of the fence......

So round they turned, but not too far,

because they needed to rethink the situation,

little piggies being unable to two things at once,

which is run and think,

so they do one thing at a time,

which is stop, think, then run.

Stop!

Think!

Turn!

Run!

Round the corner of Mum Pig's paddock,

down the side of Dad Pig's paddock,

through the hole they had dug under the wire in his paddock,

...... across his paddock,

...with no time to say hello to him,

as they raced to the gate between the two paddocks....

.... under the gate....

...and home, with relief, to Mum.

So the immediate project was to barricade them in with planks of wood, 

which Lester nailed at ground level.

And so it was that the day started, with Lester in a marginal grump because he does not 'do' mud because he was born and raised in South Africa which does not have much ongoing mud because of the quantity of hot days, unlike the UK where I was born and raised whereby the tendency to rain and make mud outweighs sunny dryness. It had rained here overnight. He was very muddy by the time he had done the planking. 

His mood went further into grumpiness when I interrupted him while he was sanding the beams in the kitchen, saying it was time to leave for a mid day BBQ up at Castelnau village. His mood took a quick upward turn, though, when a cup of punch was given to him by our mayor. I don't know what was in that punch but it sure packed a wallop. Being part of the community for a while was a grand experience for us, made us feel less like the foreigners we are. 

Meanwhile, the new Jacob ram is continuing to moan about not being with the girls. He is supposed to be kept away from them until we reduce the numbers of the flock by another four, the loss of winter grazing due to flooding making this a necessity. But Jakey Boy thinks he should be with the girls. He thinks he should start procreating, making new sheep, doing what nature has intended him to do. He is not a happy lad. We are starting to worry in case he loses condition because of stress because this is his fifth day of moaning........

It is six in the morning. I love being up at this time of the day, and feeling the hours of the day stretch ahead of me while everyone is still asleep. It is a lovely cosy feeling having all this sleeping life around me. Dawn is peeping in the distance, so I had better have a shower, make tea and toast, and get Lester up before Lissie starts yelling her head off about having a full udder. The boy calf is now in a small pen beside her at night, so we can share with the bounty of the morning milk, Lester taking the first litre or so and the calf having the rest, so he gets the cream which comes as the udder is milked out. Not to worry, we can wait for that cream. At least we now have raw milk coming into the kitchen. 

One of the bee hives is failing. I don't mind that it is doing so. It has given several swarms to the world, so has been a success in its own right. Managing the bees so they are part of the smallholding cycle of life is something we aren't doing at the moment, not through lack of interest but through lack of time. Not to worry. We shall get to being beekeepers eventually, and hopefully share a honey harvest with the bees. 

Ooops..... just heard a request from the dogs about wanting to go to the loo, so had best be on my way.

Hope you have a good Sunday, and bye for now, 

Vx