In my Kitchen

Timatanga Moana the KuneKune Pig walks about the house squeaking like a badly oiled door. You know the one. The Hitchcock Door.  The Virginia Wolf Door. The elongated Footsteps Man squeak as it opens and the bad guy creeps through.  Accompany that with the pitter patter of four little hoofy feet on the wood floors and then a small purry noise, a crikk, crikk, crikk when she finds my bouncing foot.  A woodish sound like a tree in a wind.  This is a noisy baby. She wants food – lots of it , So far she eats apples, peanut butter, peas, broccoli, yoghurt, milk, rabbit food and hay.  You can imagine the state of the snug.

There is absolute silence when she finds the wood stove because she is laid in front of it; fast asleep.  There is no way I can describe to you a pig sleeping in front of the fire in my sitting room.  At no time in my life did I wake up and think to myself, “You know what?  I want a pig who will lay down and sleep in front of the fire.”

But she is like a two year old in the kitchen. Everything is upturned, pushed about, investigated, tasted and played in.  And the moment the dishwasher opens she is running from wherever she is to the kitchen. It is her favourite thing. (Other than smashing down her dog gate). But she is too short to climb inside the dishwasher and spends some considerable time squealing in frustration trying to haul her fat little body up onto the door,  until I lift her fat ront feet back off the door and shut it. There now I say, Off you go. No babies in the dishwasher.

Here; I will show you 5 minutes in the kitchen.

Oh speaking of kitchens! At the beginning of every month our friend Celia hosts a page called In My Kitchen.  I am almost never organised enough to show what is in my kitchen at the beginning of every month. But this month! I am! In my kitchen is a pig!

This is not a set up. I was on the phone talking to the man about feeder  pigs and there was a crashing noise and Tima had knocked over the bucket of milk.

There was  not much in the bucket so only a lick of milk spilt..

so she crept into the bucket to get the last drop.

Then she tried to climb into the dishwasher for a spot of clean-up.

Marmalade, sittiing at the kitchen table, made sure we all knew that he was absolutely not involved in any way with these piggie antics in the kitchen! At all, thank you very much.

Celia keeps her In The Kitchen Column open until the 10th if you want to join in.

We had torrential downpours and high winds yesterday which was fine with us barn animals as it was sheltered and lovely in  there and I got heaps of work done. I even found a sitting hen in the peacock palace!  Speaking of peacocks we will be going to that animal market place again (we go the first Sunday of every April) this Sunday to see if we can find a peacock for Tui and Pania. We will never forget Kupa, but I would like these girls to have a mate.  I will try very hard to ONLY come home with a peacock.  Of course last year I came home with Boo.  The year before it was Kupa.

Sunday will be busy because the feeder pigs arrive that day too. These are two pigs that I will raise for the family freezers.  This year it is hard to find piglets to raise, they are very expensive, due to the virus that is running rampant through American and Canadian piggeries. And I am a working farm. I raise food here. I feed people.  I like to feed people.  If I could not grow my own meat I would not eat it. Especially now. For me it is very important to know where my food comes from. This is why I have this little farm.  This is why I do what I do.

Have a lovely day.

Your friend on the farmy

celi

c