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!”
that is nice that the animals can help out with the land also!!!!
Morning terry!
Hi Celi and Chgo John – laughed over the “Shush Sisters Landscaping” – it would be easier to let them do the preliminary garden /landscaping work. ( and avoid poison ivy exposure)
I actually knew a farmer who had goats he loaned/leased out in the spring to a Girls Scout camp. Brush, vines, and poison ivy grow a lot in this climate (which brings snakes and critters of all sorts). The paths, unit meeting shelters, and individual tents seemed to disappear in the forest growth after summer activity ended. Shortly became a jungle. So before the camp opened goats who would be tied to each tent’s front step for a day or so to create a little clearing in short time. One goat was kept to rotate around the camp munching as needed. But you didn’t want them tied up to a tent during the night…the goats felt they earned the right to sleep on the beds…on top of little girl campers.
He’s lucky they didn’t eat the tents!
So true! That’s not a joke – we had to steak them carefully and keep the tent sides rolled up high out of reach! Goats had to be monitored and moved frequently to keep them from running out of preferred plants to munch…and possible boredom!
That is hilarious, maybe i should get a goat for the front path, very soon i will not be able to find my way to the verandah with all this rain and warmth! c
What happy little pigs and poor Queenie 😉
! I wish I could have a little piggy – it wouldn’t go to market it would go the allotment !
I can sympathize with the day being gone. Yesterday I looked up from paperwork and it was 1:30. Yikes! We hadn’t even had dinner yet. I love being able to have the pigs do clean-up and turn over. They are excellent workers – better than some people. The daily view is really changing now. We have also started losing many leaves but it’s still beautiful here. The oaks are starting to change to a deep red.So glad for your rain. I love thunderstorms! Have a great day!
After reading and looking at the images in this post, I want a pig or two. They would make vegetable gardening so much easier. I wonder if there’s a farmer around here that will lend me one. Our old, rather small, barn used to be a sty for pigs. Now it houses the tractor and other gardening tools. Seems to me pigs might be a more efficient use of it. 🙂
Oh absolutely, push that tractor out and let the piggies in!!
I want to borrow the Shush Sisters! With my husband’s health issues over the past year (he’s MUCH better now, thank goodness!), our raised beds went unplanted. So it’s “maybe next year” for us, although a winter crop of greens would be nice if we can get our act together. I would love to know sometime how you learned all about farming. Maybe it’s in the older posts?
A good question. I came from the beach not a farm, a lot of farming has to do with common sense and i am a prolific reader and decanter of info.. I am most certainly still learning.. c
Ok..I now have pigs on my list……1. a dairy cow….2. bees……3. pigs…….hmmmm
Tell me, do they get “stuff” in their nostrils ?? All that “rooting” !
Love having the blog to wake up to each day !!
They do get pretty filthy but with all that huffing and puffing and grunting they seem to keep their nostrils clear! c
Please do you rent your pigs out? I could use them for an afternoon or two… 🙂
A favorite expression in our house – when something is done well – “that will do pig, that will do”. Once a year or so we have a “Babe” night and rewatch the two movies on dvd. We love the segment in “Babe” when the garrulous farmer does a jig to cheer up the ailing Babe. So to the Shush Sisters for the gardening clean up “that will do pigs, that will do”. Virginia
My have wet you are! I enjoyed the pigs in the garden, they looked like they enjoyed it also!!!
Linda
http://coloradofarmlife.wordpress.com
http://deltacountyhistoricalsociety.wordpress.com
I wonder if the Shush Sisters could do a number on my son’s room.. wait, no, I think he is the pig? So he should do it himself? That sounded harsh, he’s not a pig, but he has piggish tendencies. That’s not right either, because pigs clean up after themselves.. Oh, I give up. xx
I see your problem, the shush sisters looks suspiciously like teenagers right this minute, fast asleep IN the raised beds! giving new meaning to the term raised bed.. c
Hahaha.. you’ve made my day! xx
I had no idea that piggies were do useful; do they clean house too?
The view is looking more and more winterish; we’re expecting 22C on Friday.
Going off on a tangent (but that seems to be a speciality of mine!), have you read Time Warped by Claudia Hammond? If not, that is a BRILLIANT book for talking about how we perceive time’s merry little jumps and pauses. 🙂
No honey i haven’t but i am adding it to my list right this minute.. I LOVE to read! c
Such happy helpers those sister are … well done. Good afternoon c. Bon appetit, Shush Sisters!