The Year End

There is a strange disconnect between the world I see around me on the farm and the calendar.  Outside the grass is still growing, most of the trees still have all their leaves, there are raspberries on raspberry canes and roses around my window.  Yet, at the end of this week, the farm closes for winter.  November is only a few days away and yet I frequently see our volunteers out and about in short sleeved T-shirts.
Closing the farm to the public always creates a mixture of feelings: the end of another year; the beginning of the big tidy-up; a time to look at what we do and why/how we do it; time for a break.  Of course, the last of these really only applies to me - as the majority of my work revolves around the shop - serving, cooking and stocking up.  The rest of the farm, like all live stock farms, carries on as before  - the pigs still need feeding, Gigi and Grace (our pet goats) still need daily cuddles and at some stage presumably the weather will deteriorate and the animals will have to be moved under cover to avoid the worst of the winter.
But today - no need to think of the winter gloom.  The first visitors of the day are arriving. I better head to the shop and open up.

No angel

I am one of Gigi's greatest fans.  From the moment I saw her it was love at first sight.  Her mum, Geraldine, was my favourite animal on the farm and as she died giving birth to Gigi, I think I just transfered my affections.  There is something about Golden Guernsey goats that I don't get from other goats.  They are serene, gentle and very curious about humans.
However - Gigi was trying my patience yesterday.  She spent the day showing Grace - her half-sister - all the best places to nibble greenery.  I was too late to rescue my palm - it is now a stump.  All the sweet pea pods (that I had planned to pull off, dry and plant next year) have been eaten. And I seemed to spend the whole day carrying Gigi or Grace out of the shop.  In fact, even my extremely laid back cat was getting annoyed and could be seen batting Gigi whenever she came by.
So she was already not in my good books when I ducked into my flat to grab some paperwork only to discover she had relieved herself all over my leather sofa. YUK!
I suppose it serves me right - I shouldn't have left the front door open.  You would have thought I would be wise to the perils of an open-door policy on the farm, after the piglets came in and ate all the cat food.  But some people never learn!

Dear Old Mrs P

I woke this morning with a feeling of melancholy.  Looking out the window I could see a few early "autumn" leaves being buffeted about by the breeze and it brought home the realisation that summer is nearly at an end. All our "babies" are growing up and all except the baby goats have now been weaned.  The ducklings still do not have the right kind of feathers to make them waterproof - so they aren't on the river yet - but other than that the piglets, the lambs, the chicks now look like miniature adults rather than babies.

I was also still thinking about Mrs Pugwash - one of our old favourties.  Mrs P, as she quickly became known, was a Large Black pig and had been with us for nearly 14 years.  She had had many litters of her own  but in recent years, when it was no longer possible to breed from her, had taken on the role of a surrogate mum.  We were never sure if she actually fed the piglets that seemed to cling to her or if they suckled from her for comfort.  But she seemed to be happy to have them around and they would often have "sleep overs" in her ark. 

But over the last few months she had seemed unsettled and lost her appetite for normal food and often had to be coaxed to eat - she would finish her food provided she could see a treat such as fruit or cake to finish with. Finally even these treats couldn't tempt her and the vet  confirmed what we feared - that she had an inoperable tumor.  

We will all miss her - even those who feared her grumpy moods (she had been known to try to nip a couple of the people who worked here).

So perhaps I feel melancholy today as it feels like the end of an era, as much as the end of summer.

Cuddling goats

Gigi continues to be clingy, huggy (and with a taste for nibbling hair).  As I walked around the farm yesterday, I can't tell you how many times I saw her sitting on someone's lap or trying to get in a push chair.  A couple of times she ended up in the shop and had to be carried out.  But she is so gorgeous, I noticed that there was no shortage of people who were prepared to carry her out (and have a bit of a cuddle on the way!)
However, this morning her aunt, Ginger, gave birth to a beautiful little kid (a nanny).  They are both in a pen in the tunnel at the moment.  But once we have made sure they are both eating well and healthy, they will return to their paddock. Gigi will then have a friend and maybe, just maybe she will stop following people around the farm and start kidding around with her own.

Please may I park my goat here?

                                                                              Photo Karen Steel

Gigi seems to be going through a clingy stage.  Orphaned at birth, we have got through the first few weeks when we just had to hope she would take to the bottle, where we worried that the long birthing process (that proved too much for her twin and her mother) would have left her with insurmountable health problems.  Now it is clear she is a healthy, happy goat.  But she is a bit clingy.  Three times yesterday I had to physically separate her from different groups of visitors as, having latched on to them, she had followed them around the whole farm and finally ended up in the shop. And then, just as I was heading up the stairs in the house I heard her bleating behind me.  Shops and houses are no place for a goat - even one that walks to heel better than our dog, so I carried her out and tried to shut the back door.  But no sooner had I started to close it, than her little nose poked around the door edge. I tried carrying her further afield but she ran back to the house more quickly than I could.  It was becoming a very tiring game!
In the end, the only solution seemed to be to find someone who could take over as mum/entertainer.  And so it was that I found myself in the orchard asking a very nice lady, seated on a bench, if I could park my goat next to her.  She readily agreed and the deal was done.  She stroked and petted Gigi and I legged it back to the house, closed the door and was upstairs before Gigi realised what had happened.  In fact, all of us were delighted by the transaction - Gigi had an attentive audience and "Grandma" landed  the prize that her grandchild so desperately wanted to find.  "She is going to be so jealous" the lady said "She left me on the bench while she went to look for Gigi and yet I am the one that has ended up with her sitting on my lap!"

A lesson learnt

It was good to see Neil had learnt from experience..... Last week he decided to rearrange his bees.  As usual, he wore bee-proof clothing on the top half of his body but only his normal work trousers on his legs.  Unfortunately his work trousers keep getting caught on the fencing and end up with holes in various (and often quite revealing) places.  But the pair he wore for this bee work just had one hole, the size of a golf ball, at the back of the knee.
The work he needed to do involved dismantling part of the hive and taking out and checking each of the frames.  So within 5 minutes he was surrounded by frames and bees.  It didn't take long for one of the homeless creatures to find the hole in his trousers.  It took even less time for him to call his mates.  So within a few seconds Neil had a rather large number of bees exploring every nook and cranny in his trousers and boxer shorts.  And, of course, as soon as one of them stings, it releases a pheromone that brings even more bees and even more stings!
Realising what was happening, but with the safety of his bee colony at stake, he couldn't just run, shedding his clothes as he went.  He had to put the frames back, one by one - whilst pulling handfuls of bees from his pants!
As he flew through the bedroom door, pulling off the remainder of his clothes he shouted "Check me- are there any bees left?"  I looked around - about 8 bee-stings but only one bee (that quickly found the window and left).
So this week, guess who's wearing nice new, hole-less trousers to do his bee work!

Wooly piglets?

On Sunday we had our annual sheep shearing and wool festival event. As usual we had a really nice group of spinners, weavers and felters - all happy to show their skills and help our visitors develop theirs.  The sun shined, the visitors came and everyone enjoyed themselves but there was one complaint.  The spinners normally have the complete run of the covered  area of the farm to spread out in - to set up their wheels, display their finished products and allow the visitors to mill about.  But this year, because of the four litters of pigs born within the week, they had to share their space with Pippa and her six piglets. However, they all agreed she was a very well behaved mum and her piglets were completely adorable.

Our thanks to Lavenham and Diss Spinning Guilds and the individuals that took part and our special thanks to Jen and Zoe for taking on the role of felters, in the absence of Helen, our regular felting guru.

What a day!

Yesterday showed all the signs of being a normal, relaxed day. Yes - all the animals needed feeding; Yes - the absence of rain meant the farm was looking more like the Serrengetti than pasture but the sun was shining, a reasonable number of visitors were walking the farm or enjoying coffee and cake and there were no signs of any goats about to kid. But then, mid afternoon, everything changed and the peace of a tranquil afternoon was gone.  One of the visitors came into the shop and announced that she had just seen a piglet being born.  This was strange (and highly unlikely).  None of our pigs were pregnant - except perhaps Wilma and her piglets wouldn't/couldn't be due for another couple of months.  I called for Neil (livestock manager, farmer and general man-for-all-crises).  He headed out to the field - expecting to see something that could - at a long distance, with the sun in your eyes - look a bit like a piglet.

However, what he saw was shocking, completely unexpected and de-railed his plans for the rest of the day/week.

Out on the field not just one, but two pigs were farrowing.  One, was a Middle White pig, called Polly.  She went on to have 11 piglets.  The other, was Wilma, the Kune Kune we had been trying to breed with Sam (also a KK) and she eventually, had 7.

So it was all hands on deck.  We had 4 volunteers in that day - Josh, Georgina, Katherine and Katie.  They assisted with the births, fed the rest of the pigs - to keep them out of the way  of the farrowing mothers, cleared and cleaned the farrowing stables, and finally set out the stables so they were equipped for pig and piglets.

While Neil was crawling around on all fours, making sure the mums did not roll over on to their young and that the piglets latched on to the teat he had time to reflect on what must have happened (apart from the obvious!).

At the beginning of the year we had 3 Middle White piglets - two sows and a boar.  We knew we could not provide a home for a boar (as we normally only keep one or two sows from each breed and would not want to keep their brother for breeding).  As we hadn't found a buyer, he was destined for the butchers.  However, he clearly planned to live it up a little before that.  Despite his young age, he obviously mastered the art of jumping the electric fence and he used this skill to visiting the surrounding sows.  More unusually, he obviously worked out that he needed to jump back again into his own pen to ensure no one knew what he was up to.  So if he was out and about, whenever he could, it was likely that he had visited the other sows in the area.

So once the farrowing was done, Neil then checked the other sows that had been out on the field in February.  And, sure enough, two others are also pregnant and expecting any day now.

We are a small farm.  I don't think we have ever had more than 15 piglets at any one time.  And now we have 18 and probably, by the end of the week, will have 30 to 40!

The first two litters have now been transported to the farrowing stable (in a wheelbarrow).  The other two pigs are now under close surveillance so that we can get them into proper accommodation before they start having their litters. 30 May 2011