The great escape (didn’t we do this already?)

Yesterday started out like any other but turned out to be a bit of a bother.                      Daisy is almost definitely not pregnant. Which means I will have to milk her through the winter (sigh) and then breed her again in May/June next year.  I do not want winter calves. It is too cold.                                                                                                                         Do you see this. This is Charlotte demonstrating why I should not have trained them to follow me through gates.                                                                                                                            The beans are almost ready.  Once they are so dry that they are colour of dirt, the harvester will come and fill my house with dust.  This is what they do.                                  Good Morning. Yesterday I had come inside after all the morning  work was done, ready to make my coffee, then realised I had left my little pail of milk out in the barn. So off I trotted out the door and down the steps and there was Charlotte. Yes Charlotte the pig standing in the flower garden at the bottom of the steps, waiting.

Charlotte, I said gently, what ARE you doing? You are meant to be in the fields in the morning.

She looked at me sadly, she was quite still and she said to me. I have lost Sheila.

Where is she, I said. Well, said Charlotte, miserably.  Is that a rhetorical question? Because if I knew where she was. I would not be all alone.  I would know where she was then, wouldn’t I.  And when you asked me Where is Sheila -I would say, right here. But she isn’t and I don’t, so I guess we won’t. Find her that is. She is probably lost forever. See my tail, it has gone straight with worry.   A fat pig should not have a straight tail, I read that once.

Oh, I said. I looked about and sure enough Sheila was nowhere to be seen. Followed closely by Charlotte, I looked in the gardens, through the fields, in the chook house, and around the barn.  Charlotte very sweetly showed me how they bashed open a side barn door and then knocked over the pail of milk  and drunk it off the floor. Then they wandered out the front doors and that is when they were seperated.  We discussed the merits and demerits of drinking off the floor as we looked in the sheds and under the porch.   I called and called and Charlotte grunted and barked throwing her ears up as she does, trotting along behind.

In the end I said to Charlotte we are going to have to put you  in the Winter Quarters and then I will go and call through the beans. We don’t want you getting lost as well. So with fat Charlotte panting from her walk, still dogging my heels and TonTon dogging hers we went into the Winter Quarters through the open gate. As we rounded the corner who should pull herself up out of her night-time piggy bed, shaking straw out of her ears and yawning,  but Sheila. She had set herself free then gone straight round to the open back gate and put herself to bed. She was tired and had to have a wee lie down.

Those piggies.

I have had enough of the chickens pecking at each other in their run, and moulting everywhere, so their doors are now opened. They turned on one of my Easter chickens yesterday so she is in Fort Knox, the crate I keep in the run  for injured birds.  Chickens are not always nice to each other. The gardens are about finished and we harvest the grapes this weekend so they may as well begin their winter freedom early. I will put a smaller door back on so they can come and go at will with the big  doors shutting at dark and opening at dawn. It is much cheaper to keep them when they are fully free range.

Good morning darlings. It rained yesterday, what a treat. But I was being a baby and felt.. cold. Even though the temperature gauge told me it was lukewarm. I hope I am not catching Pseu’s lurgey.  Then I would have to go to bed with a good book. And have a wee lie down too. What an interesting idea.

Today I am making Dutch Apple Pie for The Old Codger. So stand by. If it is good I will share the recipe.

Have a lovely day.

celi

On this day a year ago Seven deadly sins