Though that is not exactly what I mean. Not like “oh no here we go again”. More like Right, lets begin again using all the stuff we learnt last season. Farming, like many lifestyles that are governed by nature, runs in cycles, lifetimes, seasons, weather. Nature is definitely the Guv’. Spring has its familiar steps. It is time to begin the gathering of the firewood again. We burn the wood to cook the food and keep us warm all winter and now the farmers are trimming their hedges, before they get out there to plant their fields, so out we go and get more wood to burn again next winter.
Meanwhile it looks like Tima is training Ton to carry the bowl. She has learnt another very important command. If you had said to me a month ago that I could train an 8 week old piggie to pee on command I would have laughed. But in fact I take Tima out onto the verandah where there is a dog crate filled with straw, I direct her into it and say “Have a pee Tima, go on have a pee”, and she does. EVERY time. Even if it is just a tiny one. I am still shaking my head in disbelief.
Random shot of the cream coming to room temperature before I churn.
Daisy on her way out to the field for a little walk.
Queenie’s Bobby running rings around his mother. Literally. He is such a sturdy wee chap. There is no real growth out in the fields yet, but yesterday I let them out for an hour just to have a good walk. But the ground is still quite soft and so it was just for an hour. Waiting for the pasture to grow is one of my least favourite parts of the spring cycle. But if I let them graze too early it will not last.
It rained last night and there is talk of snow then in the next few days we are getting cold again. But just for two days. Then we will slowly warm up. Just a little warmth after the rain will help the fields burst into life.
Good morning. Daisy’s milk was clean all yesterday. I shall milk and massage her three times again today then we should be done for this round.
I hope you all have a lovely day.
I am going to light the fire with some of this new wood. Just for another couple of days!
Your friend on the farmy
celi
The Kitchen's Garden 
64 responses to “Beginning again”
That is one clever piggy that’s for sure! It’s great that you’ve learned so much from the past years, it must be very satisfying to be able to accomplish so much on the farmie. That is a very cool churner thingy you have, is it home made? Will you be making butter out of it? How long does it take to churn by hand? Yes, our temperatures are falling quite swiftly too and there is talk of snow, but I have stopped listening or perhaps I can’t hear them because the wind is howling unbelievably loudly.
I make butter every three or four days and all up it takes about 40 minutes. I have three butter churns and theya re all antiques! Two work very well. I think our snow is on its way up to you.. I hope it will miss us.. c
Oh NO…please divert your snow the other way…please.
Beautiful Celi. Such a smart little pig ..house trained already. 🙂
The post title brought the song “Poor old Michael Finnegan, Begin Again” straight into my head… I love going from one season to the next, anticipating the new but knowing the old, highlights and low, will come ’round again. It feels right to be governed by cycles, seasons, light rather than artificially managing them or not being in touch at all.
True, very true, c
We are in the firewood collecting stage as it is autumn here. Now I see what I am doing wrong! I need a pot bellied piglet to train the dogs as they really have no intentions of listening to me (note to self “put pot-bellied piglet on the shopping list…Stevie-boy won’t notice…surely…). Where you are welcoming the warmth that spring brings we are lusting after the rain and the slowing down of the season that autumn navigates (all too slowly in my opinion) to our neck of the woods. Here the heat has been the Guv all summer long and has dried everything to prunish brown…not a colour you can find in the Pantone range I am assured (I know, I asked…I figured “why beat them…join them!”) but something that we had to learn the hard way as we watched all of the hebes on the property sucumb. We had our little triumphs and we learned what will and won’t grow in the desert (my new planting guide. If it will grow in the desert it should grow here 😉 ). I love this time of slowing down as I get to read all of the blog posts of you northerners launcing into spring and have a bit of a break of all of that heat, rug up and just enjoy that slow crackling of the wood burning stove 🙂
Goodness, growing in the desert must be hard work.. this piggie is a kunekune from New Zealand! i will let you know when i have her trained to stack the firewood!! lovely to see you/. c
I live pretty close to New Zealand so I might have to avail myself of one of these magnificent little babies as the dogs have been most studious in ignoring my fervent commands regarding the collection of firewood. Sticks…yes…firewood…no and even the stick collection appears to involve negotiation of the “throw” kind. Bring on the pigs!
Tima is taking the first steps towards becoming grand champion of the sheepdog trials. Well, Babe did it!
With a long day of deliveries and unpacking ahead for two weeks of holidays [we have ANZAC DAY next week as well], I am so glad to begin with a big smile on my face – what a charmer Tima is turning out to be ~ has Boo for a ‘resting’ and playing partner and now does not even have to carry her food bowl with Ton seemingly happy to oblige!! Would we all be so lucky!!!!
Hi, we have 3 wk. old triplet lamb babies and one of them has had to be bottle fed since birth. He has struggled, but seems to have been doing fairly well; however, more recently he has been bloating and it seems she may have a hurt leg. She seems to want to lie down frequently and almost always after eating. She seems to lack energy from time to time and spends very little time walking around the pen. Do you have any suggestions?
Hmm, I am sure you are feeding her little bits frequently. Does she get up when you come into the barn? Does she run to the bottle? In my experience of bloating lambs they do not move about as much. So I feed them 4 or 6 times a day. Smaller feeds more often. I am sure you have checked her hoof for anything stuck in there and felt her leg for heat. Hmm. If she is not doing better tomorrow let me know and i shall pass the question on to some of the other sheep breeders. Have you given him a bose injection? Or Vit B paste? Keep in touch Lynn.
You’ve mentioned that TIma led the dogs around on invisible leashes and now she’s got one carrying her feed dish. This little piggy is destined to rule. I just looked out to see snow falling. At least none of this will linger more than a day, if that. Let’s hope this is the last of it until Christmas Eve. This is the first I’ve seen of your butter churner. I’ve seen a similar one at an antique store ages ago in Michigan. I had no use for it then but, if I see one again, I’ll be sure to grab it. I hope this snow stays north with us tonight, Have a good night, Celi.
It is snowing.. sigh.. but like you say it will melt fast and hopefully today is the last of it. Fingers crossed.. c
I have always known piggies were very smart and this just proves it. What a sweet day on the farmy.
This is a particularly smart breed.. well of course.. it is a New Zealand pig!! morning teresa
Pigs are smart… but this wee one almost seems to be an old soul of sorts. I love Tima’s way of knowing. She just knows! What is this snow? WE had snow flurries in southwest Oklahoma for about an hour this morning… crazy! Tonight we will have a hard freeze. After several weeks of sun and warm and lovely green trees emerging and grass and weeds popping up, here comes Old Man Winter back with his icy, chilling breath. I did not put my garden in yet, but I will lose other tender plants that are just coming up. Alas… I will lose my fruit crop again – six years in a row a freeze has ruined the crop. I’m not too fond of Old Man Winter.
Oh no, miserable that your fruit trees were already budding, I hate to lose the fruit. Ours are barely moving so hopefully the next few days in the 20’s overnight will not kill the crop.. Though -22 for such a long time may have killed a couple of the trees.. c
if you only have a few trees and they are small and you know a freeze is coming put a sprinkler in the tree then run out and turn it on high about 4 in the morning.. weirdly this will stop the frost from freezing your tiny fruit. We used to do this in the orchards that had overhead watering put in for just this purpose. We also brought in helicopters in the early morning, to mix the warm air down with the cold freezing air, but i think that might be overkill for your wee orchard!
Hi Celi, just a couple of thoughts on mastitis … we also have some cows that have recurrent mastitis. Our vet told me never to feed a heifer calf mastitis milk, as research has shown that this could cause mastitis in the heifer once she calves and starts giving milk – just something to remember for the future in case you start raising another one. We dry our cows by inserting a long-acting antibiotic into each teat on the day we stop milking them. This antibiotic stays in there for 56 days. We dry our cows 60 days pre-calving, so if they calve early, we can’t use their milk until the 56 days are over. With the number of bovines we have on the farm (500+), we can’t get away from using antibiotics. I understand that you would probably try to avoid antibiotic use, but this is just a suggestion for when you dry Daisy next time. Good luck with fighting the mastitis, I know how it is!
If I do get a little heifer to grow this year I shall heed this very good advice and they will not get Daisy’s milk.. I did dry Daisy off with antibiotics but not the kind you are using.. what is that called? I may be able to find something like it out here. I am not adverse to antibiotics to save an animal. Not at all. Hers is a low grade chronic infection but I milk her infected side into a separate bucket so it does not get to the house. The pigs get it.. c
I use Cepravin DC, manufactured by Schering-Plough Animal Health. The active ingredient is cephalonium, so maybe you could ask your vet (in South Africa, it is only available through a vet) for an equivalent if it is not available as ‘Cepravin’ in the US. I’ve had some good results with Cepravin, but of course there are no guarantees. On a different note, don’t you need a break? We used to work 7 days a week non-stop, but now we take a weekend off every 5 weeks, and we absolutely love it. My husband had trouble persuading me initially, because I thought the farm could not survive without me, but now I’m the one who does the bookings (we go to a guest farm 15 mins away from our own farm, so we can go back if there’s a crisis) way in advance!
That is one amazing pig you have. You need an animal like that to keep you smiling on those rough days. Maybe this will be the last we see of the cold. We can hope, right?
Ton is such a sweetheart….every Spring is learning again, isn’t it? We have all the lessons of last year which have sat there fermenting during the winter. Glad Daisy’s milk is ok. Have a great day, Celi.
reading through some of today’s comments, i came across this gem from you Miss C “One of the most empowering things you can do is say “OOPS. That was not the right choice.” and head back to the fork in the road. ” Wise, affirming words indeed.
Ah, piggies are so smart — I love them! I would very much like to someday have a pair of pigs, just as pasture pets. Although we have some field that could really use turning so that maybe I can plant crops there, and I’ve heard pigs are quite handy at that sort of thing.
I do that also, I put the pigs in the field that i will resow the following spring.. though they do tend to pack down some areas too!.. c