THE BRIEF

Lots to do today and I want to start early so I will be brief.

First a tiny scream of frustration: I am thinking of deleting one of my social media streams lest I discover a war being declared over a twitter feed. Or something else completely outrageous. The news reels from one thing to the next making us all seasick from the twisting barrage of hyperbole.  Twitter has become a force to be reckoned with. How did that happen? And I want to stop reading the news app. But if we stop bearing witness does that make us safer? Is knowing what people are saying in tiny fifteen-second bites actually helping make us safer – keeping us informed. Must I be informed  of all this to be a responsible citizen of the world?

I have deleted from this post more than I have allowed. But you all know me well enough – you all know yourselves well enough  – to read between the lines.

And I think the answer is yes. We must stay informed – we are citizens of the world – we have a responsibility to seek the truth, be informed and use this information to promote the greater good, to be good though I admit the truth is getting hard to find.  And is often cloaked in opinion. Objective so very hard to find.

Anway.  Sigh.

There is a delicious lack of news on the farm front.  Things move much slower and with less hysteria in the natural world. The cows brought their calves up to the barn at dusk all by themselves. Molly is still waddling about looking enormously pregnant (unless something happened in the night). The chooks laid about forty eggs. The one pig escaped again and again – she can get OUT under the electric fence but not back IN so she stands on the other side and waits for me to lift the electric fence so she can easily run under. I have put the fattening pigs onto free feed as they are getting too big for me to feed when they are hungry and I am working alone.  It was a comedy attaching the feeder to the Rat House barn while they were all knocking at it and investigating it, even though it was as yet empty, chewing on my boots, huffing at each other around my feet.

I have put the free feeder into the big pens field. It has a hopper that i keep full and a little lid at the bottom that they open and feed from.  I can hear it opening and closing as I write. It was a comedy attaching the feeder to the Rat House barn while they were all knocking at it and investigating it, even though it was as yet empty, chewing on my boots, huffing at each other around my feet.  There are three reasons for the new feeding regime- the feeder has a little lid that they open and stick their heads in to eat. This means that the wild chooks don’t get as much of the feed. Secondly, if they eat when they are hungry they don’t tend to gorge. Thirdly I work alone so there is a safety issue.

I have two fields of pigs. Six in each. So I have a perfect opportunity to do a proper trial and see if they really do eat the same amount when the food is always available. That is the theory anyway. Though I am certain they will eat a little more but steadily. I will take a picture for you today.

Today I will set up the calf creep.  You know what a creep is right? A space that only the little ones can get into where no big cows are allowed.  It is in the barn. They have their water and extra feed in there – and I fill it with deep warm straw, often the calves use it as a safe space to sleep.

Alex is still sleeping her baby,  Rainbow,  right down the back away from the herd. Often I find the calves on the outskirts of the sleeping herd. Cows are big. It is safer for babies to be slightly removed. When the mothers bring them up to the barn they are tucked into corners so it is quite natural for the calves to use the creep as a safe space.

I hope Molly is still in one piece as there will be hammering involved.

I never know what I will find when I go out to the barn in the early mornings when I have a sow this close. I checked her about midnight and she was fast asleep.  Giving birth to that many babies takes hours.

I hope you have a lovely day.

Love celi

WEATHER: Still beautiful. 

Monday 10/02 0% / 0 in. Partly cloudy. High 81F/27C. Winds SSE at 10 to 20 mph.

c