Pig Bling

Saturday 4th February 2012

-6⁰C overnight

Pig Bling

Before the pigs go on their little journey there was a job to be done which I'd been dreading. The hyperactive, pesky little things needed to have metal ear tags put in their ears. (This is unavoidable, they must have them in to go to slaughter.) I ordered these a while ago, but they took some time to arrive. I practised by tagging a couple of envelopes in the comfort of my front room, but two restless pigs in a field and numb-cold fingers was an altogether different kettle of fish!

Luckily, with a little maturity, the pigs have started to trust me more. (BIG mistake!!) This meant I could stroke their ears as they fed, though they continually moved around and pulled away when I pushed my luck. I tried to use the plier-like applicator confidently, but it wasn't easy as the ears kept moving around! When I finally got one tag in, the pig didn't even seem to notice. The second one was quicker and more clinical. As one was slightly bleeding, I attempted to apply some spray to stop infection. Every time the pigs heard the spray start, they ran off! It took several attempts to get the spray to hit where the tag had gone through the ear. So the pigs ending up with very blue ears!

All blinged up and ready to go!

Shelling out

Not a day for working outside today, as the risk of frostbite would be a real one. So we lit the fire and I began extracting the beans from the pods which we picked at the end of last year. Painted Lady runner beans, Canadian Wonder dwarf beans, Blue Lagoon climbing beans, Czar runner beans, Pea Beans and Asparagus Peas (very fiddly to extract the seeds from their pods). Some of these had been salvaged as the crop had been cleared at the end of last season. A fair proportion had not had enough chance to dry out, so mould had reached the seeds. However, I ended up with more than enough healthy seeds for a sizeable patch of beans this year. Some of these beans were purchased specifically to harvest dried beans for the winter. I used the first season to multiply my seed stock, but next winter we will have a valuable source of protein.
Sue had also collected a few sunflower heads, some French marigold heads and Rudbeckia heads. It took an age to extract the sunflower seeds from the mass of husk. I cannot believe how many seeds come from just one flower. Contrast this with the price of a few seeds in a packet. It may be that some of these sunflowers will have crossed with each other and I will be interested to see to what extent this has happened. Whatever though, we will have a forest of sunflowers of some description. The birds will thank me early next winter when these towering packages of bountiful seed provide them with a much needed food source. In theory we too could harvest the seeds, but I need to find an efficient method of doing this or it will be about one fiddly seed per minute.