The Great Escape.

Thursday 24th May 2012
The sun tries to break through on a misty May morning.

No wonder some of the eggs are getting cracked - why do they all have to try to get in the same nest box?

Meanwhile, just look how big the teenagers have got!

The animals get through a lot more water in this weather and for the first time this year I had to use the hosepipe (it is allowed for this!) as most of the collected water has been used up. Trouble with a hosepipe is that piglets just can not resist playing with it!


As the temperature climbed into the 70's and the sun beat down, the piglets made their first ever wallow.

The return of Mr Mow-tivator
At 11:30 today this arrived back...Mr Mow-tivator.

By 8:30 this evening, I'd achieved this...

Perfect pathways in the potager

One hundred trees mulched with the accumulated clippings of the day - a convenient way to dispose of a mountain of grass cuttings, and a friendly way of protecting the saplings from weed competition without using nasty chemicals.

The Great Escape.

One more job before I could put my feet up and relax. The nightly round up of G'nea G'nea. Sue was at her community choir tonight, so the job was infinitely more tricky.

But not as big a problem as what was still to come, for I heard the familiar click-squeal sequence of a piglet encountering an electric fence. Problem was, all my piglets were kept in with wooden fence and stock fence. Only Daisy was hemmed in by an invisible force field ... until now.

Two of the piglets were in with her, and three more were outside all the fencing!! Thank goodness all that was on their minds was getting back in with their brothers and sisters or their mum. Two braved pushing under the electric fence to reach the safety of mum, but not before they got a bit of a shock! The last one, I showed through the secret gate at the back of the pig pen. I had been thinking about reuniting the piglets with Daisy, but not before I'd strimmed the grass and lowered the electric fence. Oh well. In the fading light I took down the partition and allowed the last two piglets through. Daisy was very excited to see them all, though I think she's forgotten that she had ten before. Let's hope they're all still there in the morning.