August 2005

This month is was the turn of the pigs to give us a veterinary lesson. In spite of being outside, a couple of little pigs threw a temperature. We brought them into the barn, mainly to separate them from the "well" ones and make it easier to administer treatment. The first one curled up her toes as soon as she'd settled on the straw, the second one constantly escaped the nice warm pen we'd made for him and dragged around the front yard rather limply. Homoeopathic remedies were not doing the business, so we called the regular vet who said "this pig is sick, don't know why, let's give him some broad spectrum antibiotics!" Seems to be a panacea in the animal world. Well, 2 shots of a 5 shot course later, he also passed to the great pig sty in the sky :-(( The good news I guess is that we now know how to inject a pig should we need to do that in the future. When a third one lay down in the pig arcs outside and started puffing and panting with a high fever, Lorraine went a lay down beside it. She was promptly jumped by a number of little grunting ones, puppy-pile-style! This one we gave homoeopathic Belladonna to. Actually, she was so hot and poorly that we weren't expecting to see her again the following morning... but not only was she up and about, but, if we hadn't known her as the very black one, we couldn't have picked her out. She was eating and drinking and grunting and rooting around with the rest of them. Thank goodness.

Summer being in full flow, the Ixworth eggs are hatching and we have a collection of some 20 little ones under lights in various parts of the house and barns! Mrs Chicken and her friend, have decided to sit on about 30 eggs that have been laid on the hay in the barn. It all looked a bit precarious and as they started to hatch, we rescued about 20 eggs and put them in the incubator in the house. We have hatched 13, they have 6 to look after at the moment.

The fox is trying to have a field day and has managed to take off a couple of turkeys. We have had some sleepless nights and on a couple of occasions, actually heard the fox in the paddock and been out with torch and gun. We can't find where or how he's getting in and keep increasing the number of electric strands and upping the level of difficulty.

We said a fond farewell to Fabienne, who had spent 7 weeks with us. Being raised on a farm in France, she knew more about tractors and farm equipment than we did, so we learned a lot and wish her well on her continued studies. Her place was taken here by Mathieu, a very tall French WWOOFer. He found us a recipe for Toulouse Sausage, which we made and are adapting for the English palette. Should be available on our Farmers Market stall soon!

And last, but by no means least. This month we welcomed two new horses, Milburn (very big) and Blitzen (very, very small... in fact a miniature Shetland!) and their humans Emma and Foz, all very nice and friendly and cute!