Be a Dog

Imagine if we were like a dog. Not an actual dog but Like a dog in that whenever we felt even a little tired we just lay down on the floor wherever we were and slept.  Angling our bottoms onto the boards with our bellies following suit, then paws sliding – flat out on the floor, head down, big sigh, close eyes and sleep. Immediately. Everyone would just step over our prone bodies without comment, carrying on conversations and work around us.

Until suddenly we would lift our heads sniff the air, stand up,  move ten paces to the left (or posssibly the right depending on the wind) and collapse flat out on the floor again, then head down, big sigh, close eyes and sleep. Again.  Ah, to be a dog. 

On Wednesday Poppy (Hereford sow) is due to be moved across to the West Barn, she should come into heat a few days later. Until then we need a very strong gate so that they can see each other but cannot get together and fight, once she is in heat and they want to get to know each other better I will open this very strong gate (with me behind it) and she will go in with Manu. My reading tells me that you put the sow in with the boar not the other way round so she goes into his territory. Especially with a young virgin boar like Manu. And a bossy sow like Poppy. My job is to make sure she is in heat before putting them together and that they are calm. I don’t want a big fight. And I want his first experience to be a good one. 

But I have never put a sow in with a boar before so I am feeling a little apprehensive, they are both big animals.

John is going to hang the gate today.

She will stay in the barn next to him for a few months just to be sure she is bred and to be company for Manu over the winter until she comes back to the home barn to farrow and the girls go over to the West Barn.  Musical pigs.

Once Poppy leaves the Home Barn Molly and Tahiti (Molly is above) will go in with Sheila until it is time for them to visit the boar. As soon as the second suite is finished I plan to keep at least one other pig in the West barn to keep Manu interested in girls and for company for him.  Not with him, just close by.

That is the plan anyway – and we all know how these plans go sometimes.

I drive up to the airport to collect Amanda today, you will remember her from the summer, she is back for a winter visit.  I am very much looking forward to her visit!

I hope you have a lovely day.

celi

ps Thank you so much for your Christmas memories yesterday. Like many of the farm posts the Lounge of Comments is the place I love to visit all though the day.

Here is my story: When we were children we went to a little school on the beach only a few blocks from our house. Every year we would make Christmas Presents in class. Paintings or cactus saucers or driftwood carvings, cigarette boxes turned into dolls house furniture – this was in the days when smoking was not frowned on (except by my mother who abhorred smokers and cigarettes and the stink of ashtrays she was the only mother we knew who would not let my fathers friends smoke in the house.  She had even made Dad give up when she married him. )

Art in schools is huge in New Zealand, every week for years we all do art and crafts.  Almost all the presents we gave our parents through our primary school years came from these classes.  This one year we were doing pottery.  Everyone in the class made something, usually cups or bowls, saucery things.  Strange sagging jugs. I watched another girl make a saucer and with her thumb make a dent in the lip.  I thought this looked cool so I made the dent in mine  too. Our pieces were glazed (mine was a shiny greeny blue), fired and returned to us in time to be wrapped for Christmas.

I was so proud of my little wonky plate that might be a bowl.

It was always just our family at Christmas. Mum’s family lived on another island and Dad was an only child so our celebrations were small and intense. When Mum unwrapped her present from me on this particular Christmas day her eyes widened in shock. She looked at her funny bowl for the longest time then smiling in the way that did not show her teeth, said thank you Cecilia, and reaching up placed it on the mantel and it was never referred to again. It sat for years in the seldom used Front Room, on the mantel above the fire. It was dusted every week but unused.  I could not understand why she never used it for cookies or anything at all. It was such a pretty colour.  But my mother was not the type of mother you questioned about such things so there it sat and was forgotton. It was only much later when I was a few years older that the penny dropped and I realised what it was I had made for her and why it was not allowed to leave the Front Room.

With complete innocence I had given my mother an ASHTRAY.

I still laugh about that!

c