Minty wants to show you her new friend. She is an old friend to us but new to Minty.
Wait, stay right there my new friend is around here somewhere. 
Now where did my friend go? I know I have one. 
Mama said not to wander too far. But.. is she over there?
Here she is. Look it is Charlotte. Charlotte! See Miss C, here is my new friend. Can I keep her? Can I? Can I? Mama said it was OK but I had to ask you first. Charlotte called me a poo bum. What’s a poo bum?
They have talked me into keeping Charlotte a bit longer. I have not been very successful in finding her a new home anyway. I don’t know many people here.
Sheila and Charlotte are generous with their affections.
No-one minds their snuffles and investigations anymore.
Sheila the naughtiest piggie in the world keeps trying to climb into my lap. I am ok if I am sat on the ground, she will just try to roll me over to see what bugs I am hiding under there, but if I sit on my stool, she wants to sit in it too. A pig in ones lap is most uncomfortable. They are not called pigs trotters for nothing. There is no way Camera can capture the funny sight of me sitting in a paddock and Sheila with her two front feet in my lap trying mighty hard to get her short little back leg up. And me trying mighty hard to shove her back off . I have little black bruises on my thighs from that sharp little Shush. Plus her feet are NOT clean. Poo bum indeed.
Good morning. Today we will be doing more weeding. Though I would be grateful if Ton Ton would stop retrieving the weeds as I throw them out into the field. I walk along pulling and throwing, and at the end of the row I look back to find all the grasses returned neatly to the garden.
I went to buy more pig food yesterday, along with Daisy’s oats and barley and they were out of my regular stuff. When I looked at the ingredient list of a new bag they offered me at the feed store, I saw that it had animal products in it. How disgusting. No thank you, I said. My pigs are vegetarians. I am not going to feed pigs to my pigs. The girl agreed because I am the customer and the customer is always right and is ordering more of my good clean pig food.
Have a lovely day. I am yawning as I write this morning. Up too late last night. My 5 – 9 job kept me up until TEN.! Horrors!
celi
PS. Yesterday I missed the introduction page from a year ago.
And today a year ago my brain went on the blink. I am not sure why I was surprised. There is a conversation in here I might lift out and store in the Farmy Book folder. We might work it into something.
The day my brain went on the blink
c
The Kitchen's Garden 
61 responses to “No thank you, my pigs are vegetarians!”
HA! Does it mean we’re getting (gasp!) old, that we suffer if we’re not in bed by 9? I prefer to think we’re just Really Busy.
Sheila’s cute now, but 800 pounds of sow trying to climb on you will be much less cute, and much more painful…Maybe now’s the time to teach her to fetch?
GASP! and funny you should mention teaching her to fetch, if Sheila sees a stick she will pick it up and run with it, I call her and she will run to me with it and drop it, but she only drops it because she forgets she has it and will not chase it when i throw it .. yet! I need to attach a sound to it i think! c
When I worked on a sheep farm, the bottle-fed lambs behaved more like dogs than sheep. They’d clamber over one another to get to us, and they tried to climb fences. It’s so funny how habituation completely changes who they are. If I were able, I would take Charlotte.
I am sure she will travel well and she promises to be good if she can live in your laundry. She is house trained! c
Aww how can you not keep the dear thing? She makes sure everyone gets love! And I could picture the other trying to climb in your lap lol. Pigs are one of my favorite animals, and would love to get to spend more time learning what they’re like, etc. So I love reading your blog also bc of them!
morning ashley!! c
The Merck Veterinary Manual says, “Diets based on corn and animal-protein byproducts (eg, meat meal, meat and bone meal) are inferior to corn-soybean meal diets” but can be supplemented. I’m with you, I’d rather they didn’t eat meat products. They don’t in the wild do they?
They are omnivores. They will eat small animals and even dead pigs when they run in the wild, but mainly live on forage, barks, seeds, berries, insects, nuts. I just find it uncomfortable to feed them animal proteins especially when I cannot identify where it is coming from and the health of whatever animal they are turning into pig food. My pigs do not chase rabbits or eat the chickens who live in there with them.
Wonderful piggy story – one for the farmy book I think, or the children’s in fact! Interesting to read your summer’s day post from a year ago, things were considerably less hectic back then! You’ve evolved very quickly within this farming life! With all that goes on in your day (not to mention being on the cusp of heatstroke!), I’m surprised you don’t have more ‘Blinky Brain’ days! Definitely a story for the book!
Christine
yes we are a bit busier, no more lying under the peach tree!
Timely. I just found a direct source for good honest feed close to home of all places. Getting all my info and plans in place before I take the animal raising plunge. Getting closer..
Have a happy day.
excellent, I can’t wait to see what happens next.. c
uh oh..pretty soon we will hear you saying….how could i ever have lived without 2 pigs? i, for one, am relieved though i don’t have them trying to sit in my lap! today is the day that my first ever batch of homemade sauerkraut is ready. i am in heaven. this is the best sauerkraut i have ever tasted. i am about to be making lots more! that is too funny about ton ton retrieving weeds!
oo, is the recipe up today, John makes his with whey.. but i want to see yours.. i will pop over! c
Good morning, c, and all the farmy critters! Raining here; 14C. We had warmer days in January. I’m pleased that you’re not turning your animals into cannibals. If ever a lesson was learnt, it was learnt in the UK (and Europe!) with CJD. It’s an awful concept.
I do remember that, horrific, all those animals slaughtered.. c
Yes … Mad Cow and Foot and Mouth are devastating diseases for the stock farmer. Pleased to hear the Shush Sisters are not disbanding yet 🙂 Always love your beautiful pics of the Farmy animals, you will have plenty of illustrations for all the books. Glad to hear it is a bit cooler your way at last.
Laura
Morning Laura,it is lovely again today too, i have closed in the coolness already. c
Who knew pigs could be so friendly? Not me, having grown up on a dairy farm. Best teach them to behave now before they try this sitting on the lap trick when they are larger, much larger.
i tell her to get down and she does, i hope it is just piglet high spirits! c
Thank you for letting us catch up on the early posts: I looked at my “follows” and I’ve been following you since last December, though I’m sure I visited for quite a while before that.
Hot water: We lived for two years without hot water in Seychelles, and a cold shower on a tropic-sun-warmed body is sheer torture.
I’m glad you won’t feet the pigs on animal products: isn’t that what started CJD in the first place? I thought they’d stopped all that malarky after the mad cow scandal.
I was surprised too, though I have heard rumours. It is all about fattening cheap and fast. I prefer to grow meat not fatten it at the expense of mine or my animals health.. c
I am sitting here with my late morning coffee, reading this with a smile. C.; I don’t envision you to be very large; my guess is this little Shush sister will out weigh you by summers end ~ not a lap piggy for certain.
j
It is true, like you i am not a big girl, and that piggy is going to have to learn that she is not a cat!! c
Too funny that Ton-Ton retrieves your weeds for you. He’s a good old dog.
he thought it was some kind of new game!! But recovered after I sent him to find his frisbee.. c
Minty sure has grown! And now she has a friend. Awwww! I would love to see a video of Sheila trying to get onto your lap. Max still thinks he’s a 10 lb. puppy and is forever trying to get onto my lap, despite his 80 lbs. That’s nothing compared to Sheila, though, and you’re going to have to break her of this habit. Like a previous commenter, I can’t believe they are still feeding animals to animals. I though we’d learned our lesson and stopped the practice. What will it take?
Have a great day, Celi!
I guess pigs are different, lets home there are no ‘animal proteins’ in the cattle feed .. this si why mine are all fed food i can recognise! c
There is something completely wrong about feeding pig to pigs. And fish to fish. Etc. Wrong. Crazy. Bad. I think she might have thought you had a point about that nevermind customer service! TonTon is such a good dog to retrieve it like that! Maybe you could use a bucket to collect them all up so he doesn’t need to be quite so helpful! 🙂
Maybe I could train him to put them in the bucket! c
Ooh, that would be good. 🙂