But thats ok. I left the gate open for them.
Queenie is not amused, but in all honesty Queenie is very seldom amused. She is a solemn cow.
Have you ever looked up and realised your day is almost gone and you have not even Thought about dinner. Well Dinner was not my main concern yesterday there was too much to do, but this ability of time to speed up and slow down is definitely most unsettling.
Yesterday it just zoomed past and off it went into the distance, disappearing in a wee poof of cloud. 
And you are left thinking .. what just happened.
Until I put the Shush Sisters into Stalkers Garden. Then things got more exciting. This garden is designed to be cleaned up by the pigs. 
They eat all the greens, root out all the old vegetables and chomp on those, eat any bugs hanging about in the soil, dig into the dirt and generally get everything ready for next year. Sheila tends to pick up stalky debris and carry them away which is useful. 
They have a toilet in the adjacent field so they also leave the garden clean and sweet smelling. I will leave the gate open for a few days. They say it will be warm until Friday. Pigs are very useful little workers on the sustainable farm. They have also been hard at work turning over the turf in the rat house paddock, in the spring John will finish the job with the tiller and we will sow a good mix of grasses and legumes. As you know each field is re-sown every six years so this work is ongoing for the Shush Sisters.
And even better, now you can feel good about the state of your kitchen gardens, because I have get the pigs in to clean up mine! 
We seem to be in a warm wet weather pattern.
Good morning. I had better quickly post as we are in the midst of a lightening storm with heavy rain and thunder and the electricity is going on and off. Yikes!
I will pop in again later.
Love, love celi
The Kitchen's Garden 
74 responses to “The Pigs Are in the Vegetable Garden!”
are you glad you have both of the shush sisters?
I think so, it is nice to have two, and charlotte is better at soccer than Sheila.. c
What wonderful animals pigs are, so useful. I hope your storm has gone now.
Yup, blown over, just enough to need my big dryzabone for the walks to and from the barn.. bother, i just remembered I left the milk in the barn, back in a mo! c
Ooh, that doesn’t sound at all pleasant! I hate thunder storms. Those pigs are incredibly useful. 🙂
It was a rowdy one too! c
They are a very attractive little cleaning team, those pigs of yours. I love that landscape with the crisp, tiny detail on the horizon under the cloud – beautiful.
It is an appealing landscape.. thank you roger.. c
Farm question:
Are you buying piglets each year and growing till they are ready for um..gulp…. Harvesting.
Or also trying to make your own little piggies.
We have friends whose male and female have decided eating and lying around is more fun than making woohoo. Now the two are huge and probably couldn’t even if the mood struck. They are also not up for tinkering around with the turkey baster. x
Last season I bought a couple from down the road. (very easy) This season I hope to get Charlotte enciente. I will take her to visit a boar for a month or so.. hopefully he is more energetic that your friend’s! These are heritage pigs so the gilts will be sold and the others will be .. gulp harvested! c
Maybe some champagne and oysters to rouse the libido:-) I’ve looked at some Tamworths but they are pricey. Keep us posted.
Wish you were closer, these herefords are so darling and i will have a bunch of them in the spring.. fingers crossed.. c
That’s an interesting variety of cow. It’s quite…short! 😛
Well, shorter than what we have here…
She is a Hereford.. lovely wee cows.. very round.. c
Oh I LOVE those shush sisters. Did I ever tell you I fell in love with a farmer in South Dakota. I was very young and sort of screwed things up but I might easily have ended up my life living there or near his family in Walnut Grove Minnesota (farmers). He first introduced me to pigs. I read your blog because it’s like reading the story of my own might-have-been parallel life. And because, well, I think it’s required reading for everyone! I pass it around liberally… Which is another way of saying, I read your blog because I love it. Thank you.
Walnut Grove does sound like a romantic spot though where youa re living now is so beautiful, and thank you so much for loving the blog, you are very welcome.. c
I grew up about 20 miles from Walnut Grove, the little town on the prairie childhood home of author Laura Ingalls Wilder. I love the prairie and was just 10 miles from Walnut Grove this past weekend helping family members make horseradish. I’ll be posting about that soon on my Minnesota Prairie Roots blog, a name which honors my roots in the Minnesota prairie.
we look forward to that post Audrey, make sure I don’t miss it.. c
Oh I am so nostalgic now for my pigs!
Morning Julie! c
Evening Cecilia! j
ni ni julie!
ha!
Please send pigs urgently – plenty of work opportunities here in our little corner of England for them!
Excellent, i shall consult with the Post Mistress. morning tanya.. c
Wonderful piggies to pitch in and do some work for you.
Every pig has his day. Love the cloud picture.
I am imagining that the pigs are just as happy as you are with their job. Such tasty grubs and bugs and greens!! How fun that they can help you out in such a pleasant way for everyone!
Queenie *is* a stoic little thing, isn’t she? But sweet-tempered?
(Can’t let those piggies get ALL the attention this morning! 😉 )
Have a great day!
Queenie is very sweet tempered, completely over shadowed by big bossy Daisy but does not seem to mind. c
They sure did miss this week’s forecast, didn’t they? We were supposed to be warm and sunny, with rain to the north. Ha! It’a warm all right but this is rain forest weather.
You should incorporate. “Shush Sisters Landscaping”. I bet they’d be booked full with appointments. TonTon must’ve been busy. I see his stand-in starred in the daily photo.
I hope the storms pass and give you some sun today, Celi. 🙂
WE have had SO much rain lately, it is brilliant. I can just see our specially built trailer, zooming about the countryside, Charlottes ears blowing in the wind as we go from garden to garden doing the ‘landscaping’! hilarious.. c
So many people think pigs just lie around and do nothing.. but this blog proves they are good farm workers… love this post…