Pumpkin Carnage

These pumpkins obviously know what's coming.

 

Wednesday 7th November 2012

This is my Halloween equivalent of Christmas Tree recycling. Any unwanted, scary carved pumpkins gratefully received.
Considering that I recently almost sliced off a chunk of my finger trying to get into one of these, Daisy's powerful jaws chomp into them with astonishing ease.



No piglets were harmed or scared
during the filming of this horror movie!

Pumpkins flee for their lives.

Pinky, Perky, Punky, Polka, Pesky, Porky, Spot, Dot, Smudge...

 

 

 

Tuesday 6th November 2012
It was an icy welcome for the newborns.

No! They are not getting names!

Not much else to say really. All eleven piglets and mum seem healthy. For now they're just to be marvelled over and enjoyed.

I have managed to count at least six girls though, which is good news. And at least four boys. Little blighters kept moving and it's a bit hard to recognise which ones have already been checked!

Anyway, enjoy the piccies.

ELEVEN little piglets!!!



As the sound of fireworks echoed in the distance yesterday evening, an altogether different drama was unfolding in the stables. Having spent the day constructing her nest, Daisy was now giving birth to her third litter.

Some time between 6 o'clock, when the builder arrived, and half past seven, when he left, Daisy had started popping out baby pigs! As was the case last time, the first out did not make it. By the time I got to the scene, it was lying peacefully in the straw breathing its last few breaths.

Now, the next bit may seem a bit cruel, but Daisy actually seemed to help it on its way as gently as she could.

 

The second one out almost came to the same fate. She gave birth to it standing up but, not sure which direction to crawl, it ended up on the wrong side of Daisy and got snapped at as it stumbled past her snout. Eventually I picked up the slimy bundle and placed it on the teat side of Daisy. At this point she rolled over slightly to offer it milk.

Daisy clearly finds the first one or two babies a little stressful, so we retreated to the farmhouse to let her get on with things on her own. She seems happy for us to be present, but is clearly uncomfortable for a while and a little tetchy. Can't blame her really!

 

Maybe next time we should try some soft background musci!

The next time I tiptoed out to the stables I found three spotty pink piglets
huddled together in a hollow in the straw, which Daisy had nuzzled out for this purpose. A fourth was suckling greedily.
Then out came a fifth.
To witness this is a real privilege and a humbling experience.

It's amazing how quickly the tiny, slimy bundles become active, clean, spotty little piglets. Poor Daisy looked absolutely knackered and one of her teats looked very sore indeed. Newborn piglets have razor sharp teeth.













It wasn't much later that I entered the cold of the night to check on progress, and this time Daisy was up to ten and had passed the afterbirth. What a remarkable coincidence that she should end up with ten piglets for each of her first three litters.

But I was mistaken, for an eleventh litle critter spluttered into life and clambered over her back leg to jostle for a teat upon which to suckle.

Daisy had taken just over 3 hours to give birth to eleven babies. Now that her labour was over and all seemed well, I retired for the night, hoping that the live squeaky toys, for that's what newborn piglets are like, would survive the coldest night of the winter so far.

The pig that built a nest



Monday 5th November 2012

Sunday 4th November 2012
It never stopped raining.
Not what we needed.



and this...

Todays' post is dedicated not to what I got up to, but is instead the story of what Daisy got up to today.

There was lots of this...

Lots of this...
... 
and this...

For today Daisy was nest building. This consisted mainly of snuffling around, picking up mouthfuls of straw and repositioning it. She seemed to be sifting through it too, maybe taking out the spiky bits and any food remnants.
 
In between, she would lie down and have a rest. Those teats are looking heavy now. They almost reach the floor!
 
Oh, I forgot. She decided to reposition the Mexican hat water trough too.
 













Once the straw quality was to her satisfaction, she then proceeded to shape her nest.

I distracted her with some apples while I rigged up the heat lamp.

So let's hope something even more exciting than the fireworks goes off tonight!

3 Months, 3 Weeks and 3 Days

 

Saturday 3rd November 2012

3 months, 3 weeks, 3 days. That's the gestation period of a sow. Nice and easy to remember.

Now Daisy and Gerald got it together on Friday 13th July (easy to remember again), so by my calculations I had 5th November in my head - easy to, well - Remember, Remember!

So I was a little surprised last night to find Daisy lying down puffing and panting. She looked decidedly ready to give birth. But surely this was too early.

That got me wondering...When they say three months, precisely which months are they talking about? The ones with thirty-one days or the ones with thirty... or even the one with twenty-eight?

Cold nights.
Not ideal for newborn piglets, as they cannot regulate their own body temperature.
This is why I have brought Daisy into the stables.

So a quick search of the interweb revealed the magic figure of 114 days (+/- 2 days). A quick bit of reverse mathematics told me that those three months must be thirty day months, despite the fact that this would be impossible with the months in their current order!

And the +/- 2 days bit meant that my original 5th/6th November estimate needed to be revised forward by maybe 3 days. Last night!!!

Like an anxious expectant father, I tiptoed into the dark every hour or so to check on Daisy. But by 11 o'clock she was calmly asleep, snoring.
And today she was back to normal, though she has been spending a lot of time asleep.

Maybe it will be 3 Months, 3 Weeks and 3 Days. 

Luckily I'm not expecting loud explosions from fireworks in the immediate vicinity.

Harvest in a nutshell

Friday 2nd November 2012

Today was a momentous one.

Two winters ago I planted fifty fruit trees, including five hazelnuts (filberts), a very expensive walnut tree and an almond. Nuts are wonderful, but expensive. They can completely change the character of a dish and are one of nature's real treats. The birds and animals know this too, but fortunately we do not, as yet, have any squirrels around here.

I was not expecting a decent harvest for a few years, but I have already had success. For today I took my first nut harvest. And here it is...

 



Yes, this one almond!

I'm waiting to find a really special use for it. 

Burning wood - carbon friendly energy explained

Thursday 1st November
After a stormy and very wet night

 

Several times I have noticed the same car travelling very slowly along the back road. I can see it across the fields from my land. Today, with the aid of my binoculars, I managed to find out what was going on. For leading the way, about 20 yards ahead of the car, was a Jack Russell. Yes! You've got it. This is someone's way of taking their dog for a walk!
I've still not got to the bottom of the other car which drives up and down beeping its hooter. If the air is very still I give a concerted yell to SHUT UP. Twice it has worked! Although it's about a kilometre away, I know that I can hear my guinea fowls calling from there, so I reckon my voice can easily travel that far on a light westerly breeze.

I'm not sure what the point of these two stories is, I just wanted to tell them.

Onto the serious stuff.

When I was at University, quite a few years ago now, I became very aware of environmental issues. This was at a time when you were considered mildly bonkers if you spoke about the greenhouse effect, global warming, acid rain, water conservation or heavy metal pollutants!

How much things have changed, though how little things have changed too.

When I used to do a lot of conservation work, we seemed to be endlessly removing hawthorn scrub which was encroaching on more specialist habitats. Passers by would always ask how chopping down trees could be an act of conservation.

Today, I burn wood for energy (of course, I never did this when I lived in London as that was a smokeless zone). And people ask me how sending all that smoke up the chimney and burning all those trees can fit with my environmental beliefs.

So here goes. My attempt at an explanation. (No complicated chemistry, I promise!)


Basically, we need carbon in the air, but not too much of it.

If you think about it, most living things are made of carbon. In effect you, me and the trees are storing carbon, keeping it out of the air until we go up in smoke.

So, again, how can burning wood be carbon friendly? All that smoke, all that carbon going up the chimney.

The answer is to look at the dirtier choices:

If we burn coal or oil, that's basically carbon which has lain buried deep inside the earth for millions of years. If we didn't extract it, it would stay there causing no harm to anyone. But as soon as we bring it to the surface and burn it, up goes all that carbon into the air.

Wood, on the other hand, has spent its whole life taking carbon OUT of the air and converting it into ... well... wood. So when we burn it, all we are doing is putting that carbon back where it came from. We are making use of all the sunshine that has been stored by the tree during its life to give us energy.

Of course, this does not work if we go chopping down vast swathes of virgin forest, but if the wood has been grown deliberately for purpose and if it is replaced by young trees, then all we are using the trees for is to store the sun's energy and carbon until we need it. And while they're storing all that carbon (think how much a tree weighs), then it's not in the air.
Of course, there's the added benefit of the beauty each tree provides and the habitat it offers.

So there you have it.
In a nutshell, burning wood is carbon neutral.

Pumpkins for Halloween



Wednesday 31st October 2012
Is that a pumpkin appearing in the sky?



Stuffed pumpkins - delicious!



Pumpkin and Bacon Soup bubbling away in the cauldron!

 

Well, it just wouldn't be right not to eat pumpkins on Halloween would it?

The only nightmare today though was the howling, and surprisingly cold, south-westerly wind.



And if anybody comes by trick-or-treating I'll eat one of those Hundredweight pumpkins! It's a cold, dark night out there and we're a long way from any reasonably sized habitation.

 

So, outdoor jobs for the day were limited. The main one, which I accomplished on my own and with astounding efficiency, was moving Daisy up to the stable blocks where she can hopefully give birth to her next litter in about a week's time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

She is familiar with the route now and just followed me all the way into the stables, where she settled in very quickly. It is a bit boring for her in there, but it is the safest place for a gang of newborn piglets.

 

 

 

The other job for the day was somewhat more traumatic, for I needed a haircut. In fact, I have needed a haircut for quite some time now, but I do like the wild Crusty The Clown look! Anyway, today I was well and truly shorn!

SCARY hey!

Ash Bark Beetle



Tuesday 30th October 2012
Full moon to the West, rising sun to the East

Three days ago, when it was still British Summertime, the gloves came out, along with my best woolly hat, complete with woolly flaps that go round and under my chin. Give it a couple of months and I'll have acclimatised.
I actually quite like winter. The rawness. The crispness. The instinct to snuggle down in the safety and warmth of the home. The woodburner heats the lounge to toasty warm, while the luxury of the electric blanket awaits up in the bedroom.

On a still day, the smell of wood smoke wafts through the air, somehow warming the heart.

The trees we have planted on the land are not quite yet earning their keep, but long term we will harvest them for wood. Another step towards self-sufficiency.
In the meantime we rely on oil and coal, since mains gas has not reached these here parts. We've bought in some top quality, seasoned oak logs too, but using these is a luxury. Sadly, coal still works out far more economical.
But we do manage to scrounge some wood every now and again. Sue has enjoyed using the electric chainsaw to chop up the Ash which Don gave us earlier in the year. Ash is reputed to be one of the best woods for burning, particularly as it burns pretty well while still 'green'. It coppices well too and we have planted a fair stand of it at the bottom of our land to heat us when we are old. (Actually, by coppicing we should start getting something back in a few years.)
 
So, a couple of days ago, I collected in baskets of wood to store on the hearth ready for the cold winter nights which are upon us. Imagine my horror when I noticed that all of the ash logs were riddled with holes!
I brought some into the house anyway, but by early evening there were little beetles crawling out and venturing across the carpet and up the walls. We carefully obliterated each and every last one, fearful that we had unwittingly just opened the door for woodworm to infest our house. But something was nagging at me. Surely woodworm prefers older wood than this, and why were no holes visible in the core of the wood? And if this happens to logs when they have been stored for just a few months in the stables, then how do people ever use wood as a fuel source without their homes being eaten away?

For a while it seemed that my long term plans for growing wood for fuel were in tatters.
 
However, a quick search of the internet explained everything. This was not woodworm, it was Ash bark beetle. Well, that was a relief.
Still not great, as we don't particularly want armies of tiny beetles crawling out of our firewood every night, but not the disaster we thought it might be. We'll just have to store it near the back door and get it in as we need it.
 
At least the ash seems to be burning as well as people say it does.

There is an old rhyme, almost mandatory to quote when discussing wood as fuel, which goes:

 

Beechwood fires are bright and clear
If the logs are kept a year
Chestnut only good they say
If for long it's laid away
Make a fire of elder tree
Death within your house will be
But ash new or ash old
Is fit for a Queen with a crown of gold

 

Birch and Fir logs burn too fast
Blaze up bright and do not last
It is by the Irish said
Hawthorn bakes the sweetest bread
Elmwood burns like churchyard mould
Even the very flames are cold
But ash green or ash brown
Is fit for a Queen with a golden crown

Poplar gives a bitter smoke
Fills your eyes and makes you choke
Apple wood will scent your room
With an incense-like perfume
Oaken logs, if dry and old
Keep away the winters cold
But ash wet or ash dry
A king shall warm his slippers by.

 

Next week I'll try to explain why burning wood is good for the environment.

For now, I'll leave you with today's stunning sunset.