Practise Makes Perfect?

Pigs loaded during one of the practise runs.

This may be one of those posts that you don't read if you do not want to know how those charming piggies you love to see running around, wind up on your plate as pork chops or sausages. Yes, I am afraid Mapp and Lucia came to the end of their particular road over this weekend and are now handed over to the slaughter-man and butcher, Webb's in Castlerea. You'll know from previous posts that as they came up to 6 months old and had achieved live weights of over 90 kg, we started to prepare for the end game. We had built the pig-race to run them up from the pig-paddock to the trailer, and now needed to get them used to trotting up and down the trailer ramp.

Breakfast in the trailer.

I was looking to do this at their breakfast times on the Saturday and Sunday, so that they might be ready to go for real on Monday (this morning). In the event, we hit a problem on Saturday morning, with Mapp taking to the new feeding location like a duck to water, but Lucia stubbornly refusing to go up the ramp despite a good half hour of cajoling and coaxing. Liz had suggested doing all meals that way, and that, in fact, is what we had to do, and it worked well. You would have laughed, though, at our amateurish fumblings on the Saturday.

Mapp was done and dusted in no time, but Luc' was still not playing, so I ended up hooshing Mapp out so that she'd not distract her sister, then climbing into the trailer myself where I sat rattling the feed bowl under Luc's nose, tempting her to put one, then two, three and finally, finally all four feet onto the ramp and then into the trailer. All the time I was cooing to her softly and tickling her ears and neck and flanks so she'd relax and know it was safe. We got there in the end. For supper that day I adjusted the height of the dolly-wheel so that the floor of the trailer would be slightly sloped, but the ramp at a more gentle angle, and then there was no stopping them. Supper and all three meals on Sunday went like a dream and the pigs were as good as gold, so it was looking bright and optimistic for this (Monday) morning. I even shut the ramp on them each time so that they were briefly caught in the trailer, so they'd not spook on the big day.

It had been a tense couple of weeks coming up to 'the day' and I'd invented in my head all manner of imagined problems which might go wrong - would the trailer break? Might the pigs not load? Would I suddenly lose my ability to reverse when I got there? Now I'm not a religious bloke though I suspect that, in common with many, I keep what faith I have in the back pocket like an insurance policy, pray occasionally under duress (There are no atheists in the trenches?) and avoid 'dissing' any deities just in case. If I am anything, I am (low) Anglican so when I get involved at all with any of the local Catholic activities I always feel a little fraudulent and awkward. None the less, Liz and I happily headed off to local RC Holy Centre and icon-gathering, Knock Shrine, which is only about 45 minutes drive from here. Liz needed to look in the book shop for a specific gift item for a friend, but wanted to light a candle too, in the special roofed area for another reason. I decided that I would too, for a similar reason but also to pray for a calm, respectful, painless, stress free end for the pigs and a problem free run for us on the Monday.

Feel free to mock if that is how it takes you. We will never know whether the car dying through a flat battery on the Thursday morning after our Knock prayers and needing the local garage called out and a new battery was "the guy upstairs" answering to help us from having no car issues on our Monday! When my two brothers and I were teenagers, we used to love the Welsh rugby-based comedian Max Boyce and had a recording of his song "The Lord, he said, doth often move in Strange and Wondrous Ways!"

Anyway, enough of this waffle - this morning went sweet and smooth and the pigs were as good as gold, loading in minutes so that I could shut the ramp on them and Liz and I could push the trailer across the damp grass to the hard standing and the car. We hitched on by 08:00, grabbed our (Pig Movements) paperwork and the money, checked the trailer, the hitch, lights etc and headed gently for Castlerea, about 20 minutes away at that nice gentle pace. I easily reversed onto the butcher's 'driveway'. the pigs trotted happily down the ramp and slowly into the lairage pens. We did all the paperwork and Liz talked butchery, mincing, sausages, roasting joint sizes and so on with the man. The ladies will apparently be killed today but samples have to be sent to a vet in Kildare to rule out the infectious pig disease Trichinosis before the butcher can cut up the carcasses and give them to us. He has never yet had an infected pig, but if they are, the whole animal must be dumped as Trichinosis can cause blindness in humans. That would not be good!

We did not, in the end, need to avail ourselves of the help offered by Simon. We had him on standby waiting for our panic stricken phone call, but as it all went without hitch, we were able to text him at 08:30 to stand him down, but thank you very very much, Simon for being there for us. As I said, these were nervous days and it was very reassuring to know that another pair of hands could be brought to bear.

A  very welcome gift. 

There's a focused post for you, now! 7 paragraphs all on the same subject. Pigs seem to have taken all our attention lately, but there have been some nice distractions. With the car dead on Thursday and no shopping possible, we were, as Liz wrote in one of her posts "just resigning ourselves to NO WINE when a white van turned up bearing superb gift from a heavenly creature". Thank you, that very generous and timely donor, you know who you are.

Tall 'new' fridge/freezer, short-leggedy
cleaner!

And finally, with the huge 'crop' of pork meat imminent, we needed to start up our fourth freezer, this one a fridge-freezer hand-me-down gift from Steak Lady (Thank you SL!) who had renovated her old kitchen in Portmarnock just before deciding to move house completely. Thanks to Mr Silverwood also, who hauled it all the way down here in his big people-carrier; there was no way it'd fit in our little Fiat Panda. We did that job on Saturday, swapping it for the shelving (which is now in the Tígín) and giving it a thorough nut and bolt clean before setting it running. We are now ready for our Pork.

Underfed?

Snout in the trough....

I was getting a bit concerned there for a while. I am feeding my pigs with what seemed like a decent amount of food, based on the "by sight" principle of "do they hoover it all up in 20 minutes?" If it's all gone then you may not be feeding enough, if they leave some then you are feeding too much. Well, these young ladies seemed to be hoovering it up in about 15 minutes and are always ready (often squealing their desire!) for each meal. I was feeding by the 1 litre yogurt tub, one each for breakfast, one split between them for lunch and one each at supper. At each meal there is also fruit, so for example an apple and a tomato chopped up between them.

A contented Tamworth almost 4 months old?

There was nothing for it - I needed to refer to 'The Bible', Liz Shankland's (Haynes) Pig Manual. Liz S advises that you feed pig nuts by weight according to age, basically at 0.1 kg per pig per day per week of age, so that a 16 week old pig should be on 1.6 kg of nuts PLUS any fruit or veg you can add to that. She does not advise substituting fruit and veg for the nuts and hoping that your pig will put on weight based on a bucket full of knackered old cabbage and potato peelings.

I love the ginger bristles on these ladies, glowing in the sun

I needed to check the weight of food I am feeding, so a quick experiment with the yogurt pots told me that a pot is equivalent to 850 g. On that basis, Mapp and Lucia's 2 and a half tubs per day is over 2 kg of nuts! I am over feeding, if anything and the girls squealing for more are just lying (telling me porky pies?). In fact, Liz Shankland has pork animals (rather than 'baconers') on the 1.6 kg only UNTIL they are about 20 weeks old - after that you actually cut down to 1.4 kg to avoid the pig laying down that thick layer of fat all round. I am going to have to sneak the volume down a bit without Mapp and Lucia raising a written complaint to the Management!

13 healthy babies

Did I ever give you a final score on the Buff Orpington babies?  13 chicks was how we did; all now in the brooder box under Infra Red (though for the picture, I carried them to the sunlit window so that they could admire the front lawn and you could see them in the natural light). When I say 'final' score, I refer only to the hatch, we expect about half of these chicks to turn out to be roosters who will not be added to the flock, but the hens are very much part of our future as small holders, all being well.

In an earlier post, I was possibly a bit disparaging about the "lacks-a-daisical" time keeping of Kenny, our sheep man. I think it would be safe to include our "fincing" man, Paul in that category too. We have done a lot of business with Paul and we have long ago learned not to hang about waiting on his returning calls, coming up with quoted prices, or showing up to erect fencing when he says. When he arranged to have the woodwork for the post and rail fence round the front lawn delivered "on Monday" we fully expected it to arrive on the Thursday, and when he left us on that day saying he'd be "back next week" (now this week) to put the fences up, we both mentally decided to believe that when we saw him arrive with tractor, fencing wire, rammer, monkey strainer and all his other gear.

The geese and goslings race home to supper,
from orchard to their house

In fact, it has not been a problem, because a) time is a commodity of which we have plenty here and b) it has given us a chance to take advantage of a cheap offer in the Irish DIY chain 'Woodie's' for some 'Forest Green' fence paint. We have been able to unpack the rails and posts, dry them in the sunshine, and larrup a good old layer of this paint onto them prior to putting the fence up. Painting downwards onto fence rails when they are all in one place is always easier than working your way along 54 m of fence painting the bottoms of rails 'upwards'. If some of the rails have to be cut, we can always nip round and paint the grain ends after the event.

There are not many apples in our orchard this year but
this Bramley cooker is looking good so far.

What else is there tonight? Young 'Pirate' is now well settled and getting quite cheeky with his waiting out front of the house and sometimes yowling for attention. He can hear us when we retire to the terrace furniture for a coffee and a chat and will come round and jump up on the table, un-bothered by the objecting shouts of the dogs indoors. He then finds a lap and gets himself comfortable; the only problem being that he is one of those cats who 'knead' you with their front paws while purring, so your belly gets a bit lacerated by those claws through the thin summer clothing. That's about it for this one.

Mapp and Lucia

Welcome aboard, Mapp and Lucia. 

A big adventure today when we are scheduled to head for Ballymount in Co. Kildare  to collect our pigs, 2 Tamworth females ordered back in February before they were even conceived, to be taken as 8 week old weaners in due course. Due course turned out to be the 5th June and our pig area, house, feed and water were all ready and in place.  It's a bit of a hike down to Kildare from here - 2 and a half hours in the car but Charlotte had asked to come along for the ride so we'd even had to practice fitting 3 people and the dog-crate in the car. Charlotte is an experienced and knowledge-able pig handler so we could definitely use her help and support and then another good reason arrived - she was invited to collect a fancily-marked 'special' Dutch rabbit from a breeder near Mullingar, not far off our route.

Mapp and Lucia cleaned up for the journey. 

The pig breeder is found by typing FreeRangePigsIreland.ie into an internet search but appears as 'Piggy Wiggy' on the website. They (Therese and Michael) are lovely, helpful, cooperative people who could not do enough for us even when our arrival coincided with them taking a delivery of fresh concrete being pumped from a lorry into a prepared hole in the ground - those guys do not stop if you are not ready; you end up with a quickly setting heap to deal with, so it is all hands on deck. We were sent for a wander round to look at the pigs on offer, while they leveled the wet concrete into the shuttering - a new piece of car park. They actually sell Tamworths, Kune-kunes, 'Iron Age' pigs and Berkshires. Only after that were we loaded and documented, our two pigs having been scrubbed up clean for their journey, possibly because they knew we were collecting in a private car.

Back on the road by midday, the two pigs were safe inside our dog crate on the back seat of the car with a dog blanket to lie on if they chose to. They actually lay down as soon as we were in motion and spent the journey home fast asleep, occasionally twitching or moving their mouths in piggy dreams. We had decided to bring a picnic although I'd been worried that the pigs might not enjoy the run and we might have to get home as quick as possible and eat the picnic on the run. No need to worry. We parked under some dense trees to shade the car and the pigs slept on like children in car seats, apparently unaware of the break in the journey.

We wouldn't let Charlotte sneak this tiny
Kune-kune piglet into her pocket.

We made our little diversion to Gainstown to collect the rabbit at an agreed rendezvous outside the National School. Charlotte checked it was the colour mix she'd ordered, checked it over for general health and then quickly sexed it to make sure it was her 'dream boy'. She is a keen breeder and favours the 'Dutch' strain of rabbits, and this boy has Show winners in his blood line. Back on the road then and up through Lanesborough and across the Shannon to Strokestown. Home again we left the still-sleeping piggies in their crate in the car while we relieved the dogs and fed any poultry which was noisily and hopefully greeting us (Hubbards and Geese mainly) and collapsed briefly with a cup of tea.

Snuggling down into the straw.

Next job was to carry the crate down to the new pig house already well stuffed with straw. I had read that if you put 2 tiny piglets into a big area they don't get very comfortable - it is better to put whole straw bales around the edges to give them a smaller 'well' in the middle in which to make their bed. These pigs are not much bigger than our Westie dogs and the ark floor is just under 6 by 8 feet. I had put a bale at either side, intact but with the strings cut and taken out, and then broke up a third bale in the middle.  This seemed to be met with porcine approval and when we left them to it and went back an hour later to check on them, all we could see was straw shaking about disturbed by invisible pigs well snuggled down into it. Charlotte tells us that they are not great travelers and will probably feel a bit queasy and exhausted after the car run so will just snuggle down in there for the night to recover. Tomorrow they will wake up inquisitive and ravenous. Good night little ones. We will come and find you in the morning.

11 keets now dried off and up and about.

Meanwhile, I was going to give you a Guinea Fowl update. We had a burst of 11 eggs hatching over the 24 hours or so of the main event. These guys are dried off and now up and about, rescued to the brooder crate with the Infra Red heat lamp. After a pause, a 12th tried to hatch but came out with a wad of un-absorbed yolk sac outside its body and lost a lot of blood. This one did not make it through the night. The remaining 4 eggs are doing nothing and now, on candling, appear to have the too-big air space which is a sign of a dead embryo. This is quite normal, to have all the 'good' ones hatch in a burst. Any that do not come out then are probably weak or poor in some way. 11 good ones, though, out of 16 eggs rescued from a wet hedge-bottom and incubated in an unsophisticated incubator is still a brilliant result. We are delighted.

We have had a third gosling hatch and this one is doing well, so we have a rather dysfunctional looking family wandering about, with George Junior, at over 2 weeks, looking huge and robust alongside "Very" Junior who is only 2 days old. The other female adult is still hanging in there, sitting on the 6 or so eggs which still remain. It's all 'go' isn't it - pigs, keets, goslings all in the same week, and soon, the bees will be arriving.

Mapp and Lucia

I named my first dog 'Megan', my current boy-dog 'Towser' and our Rooster 'William' but usually it is Liz who names the animals as they arrive here. She seems to have an inexhaustible fund of names based on fictional characters, characters from films and names from funny radio shows. Our 2013 sheep were Constance, Dora and Florence, named for Lord Emsworth's sisters from PG Wodehouse. Last year's first three sheep were Larry, Curly and Mo, the geese were Goosey, Goocie and Gander and the Guinea Fowl are Henry and Min (from the Goon Show).

Bramble jelly from the freezer blackberries.

The pigs we are likely to buy this year are still open to debate but Liz rather fancies 'Mapp and Lucia'. Liz is much wider read and has seen and heard more films and radio shows than me, and these two names were new ones on me - another gaping hole in my education! I felt I needed to at least know who Mapp and Lucia were before I could realistically name our first pigs for them, so Liz nipped to our extensive library and pulled a paperback from the shelves, "The Complete Mapp and Lucia (Part1)", written in the 20's and 30's by one E.F. (Fred) Benson. If you know these characters you will know that they are not pleasant at all! The books are very nicely and cleverly and amusingly written, but Miss Mapp and Mrs (Lucia) Lucas are just awful people.

Kir Royale, Feigh style; Prosecco and home made Cassis

Lucia is the self-crowned Queen of her village and seeks to control and lord it over all social events and who gets invited to what, like a nasty child in the playground. She is nosy, pretentious, manipulative, devious, cunning and such a snob. Mapp, living in a fictional version of Rye in Sussex is just plain nosy and seeks to know exactly what everyone is up to, who is seeing who, what all her friends are about to wear to parties so that she can out-manouvre them, engineers herself into being the focus of all the juicy gossip and dumps horribly on anyone who she imagines has crossed her. Ideal role models, then, for our two impressionable, baby piggies!

Nice marketing idea, Heart shaped Coeur de Neufchatel.

Valentine's Day arrives and we are nearly 'kiboshed' on our plans to create a special romantic meal by an extended series of power cuts born, we guess out of the recent wind storm damage and snow in the skirts of Storm 'Ruby'. Our land-line phone chirrups in its 'You have lost power' way at around 01:00 but I ignore it thinking they normally only last a few hours. It is still out in the morning and we phone around and find that Carolyn is calling it in. Power comes on mid morning while I'm out at neighbour Una's but only for ten minutes. It is lashing rain and blizzarding snow but we are delighted to be visited by an ESB Networks guy in Hi-Viz clothing who wants to look at the power lines that run to the north of our property, He (in a van) is joined by 2 other lads and 2 more vehicles, who scurry around working heroically in the bad conditions. We get power back at midday for 2 hours, then again properly at 4 pm. The Valentine's Day meal is saved and we know we are really very fortunate. There are people out there, especially around Galway and the south and east coast counties who have been without power for days, we only had 13 hours; the freezers stayed frozen and our candlelit supper was by choice.

Home made ice cream made with home made lemon curd.

Meanwhile 2 pieces of news concerning boys called Henry. Henry the Guinea fowl had injured his leg somehow but after a few days of decided limping and looking sorry for himself, suddenly recovered and is now back to full strength and a full compliment of working legs. Our other Henry is 2 years old today (Happy Birthday little fella) and son of Carolyn of the Miniature horses. We are invited down to the house for the party, where an army of friends and relatives have gathered while he is having his mid day nap. He wakes up as bemused and dozy as anyone who is fresh out of bed and copes very well with his house being suddenly full of people plying him with presents and party food. He gets into his stride as the present opening gets into full swing - he's mad for anything car shaped, he loves a big petrol pump to go with his sit-in pedal car, but the winner on the day is definitely a junior-sized but fully equipped drum kit with stool, bass drum with pedal, snare drums and even a cymbal. He is soon whacking 7 bells out of all this lot and doting rels are videoing him on their smart-phones. Brilliant! When we last heard all the grown ups were retired, exhausted and Henry was still going strong. He should sleep well tonight, bless him!