Christmas Eve 2011

Christmas Eve 2011, originally uploaded by Sue_Solberg.

The tree has been decorated for some two weeks, courtesy of a certain fairy, who might otherwise be known as the Spawn. Now there are even presents under the tree. Darned near froze my toes wrapping 'em out in the garage too. But there will be happiness on the morrow for us all three. And rain. I wish as much to everyone, except for the rain.

Not for the faint of heart...

but pig skulls make some truly wonderful broth! I actually thought about posting a photo, but decided that perhaps posterity didn't really need that image. At any rate, if you take a pig skull, the usual veggies, a bit of salt and pepper, and maybe some thyme, cover it with water in a Very Large Pot, and let it simmer and simmer and simmer. Well, in a word, yum! The stuff can hold up a spoon when it's been chilled too. I'm quite happy we'll have three of the things (from our own pigs) to play with soon. It turns out you can also make things (other than head cheese) with the other parts of a pig's head. Who knew?

So yes, the farm proceedeth in a farmly way. Which is to say, exceptionally frustrating at times. The garden, after we finally got things planted, has suffered from slugs, now under control, and moles, now content to go dig up my rutabaga seedlings in the winter garden. The field mice now, they are a problem. I've read that mice find chocolate delicious but poisonous and have just scattered a bag of chocolate chips in strategic places around the garden. Places such as the broccoli plants they haven't finished devouring yet. It's too late for the sweet potatoes. Those were probably a lost cause anyway though, given the extreme cabbage yearness of it all. The Irish potatoes seem to be doing fine, after a rocky start. Slugs again.

Current livestock count--still one llama, three young sheep (soon to become meat), three extremely large pigs (also soon to become meat, after we sell the last one), seven hens and one rooster (Jersey Giant and a sorry specimen at the moment), five turkeys, and twenty-two Ancona ducks. The ducks are my personal favourite. I mean to say, they eat slugs, what's not to like? But they're also much more enjoyable to deal with than chickens. We had, for two days, twenty-five blue-foot chicks. Then some small predator had them. The shed has been hardened and we'll try again once the Better Half is back from his hike. Not blue-foots (blue-feet?) though.

The state and county finally got their heads into position and the soil remediation is actually in process. In other words, they've dug an enormous hole in the front pasture (allowing me to see lots of cool soil stuff), removed the contaminated soil and spread it all over such of the pasture not occupied by hole. Then there's the pile of clean dirt, which was a wonderful but temporary playground for the Spawn. Also a largish pile of horse manure, to be mixed into the dirty dirt. Nitrogen apparently speeds the breakdown of petrol. Plus the dirty dirt is subsoil from two to four meters down. It's going to end up being our new pasture topsoil and needs all the help it can get.

Erm. There more, I'm sure, but the hour advances and I have to be up in time to open the gate for the excavators tomorrow. And, of course, since I'm solo parenting and solo farming this week, I'm fighting a bug of some sort. Murphy.

Ah, that weather....

La Nina (how DO you do a tilde on here, anyhow?) is a right one, she is. She dumps rain where we have plenty and withholds it where it's needed. Or so it seems to me, being here in the middle of "we have plenty, thank you very much."

Lambs!

Last night we heard sheep noises of various sorts. This morning...two small and quite cute lambs. I've decided we can call them Mouth One and Mouth Two. The Better Half was suggesting Eenie and Meenie, but the Spawn broke the deadlock by preferring my name choices. She has good taste. She probably would even have gone for Lamb Chops and Crown Roast.

Meet Pooh!

Pooh has changed, no? The Spawn likes to pretend our woods are the Hundred-Acre Wood. She usually presents me with some leaf or twig or some such and declares that it's Pooh (or Owl, or...you get the idea). Today I happened to find this fine piece of steel peeking out of the mud near some of the most impressively fallen trees. She immediately declared that it was Pooh and Pooh it remained for the next hour and a half outdoors. It should be noted that Pooh is useful for breaking up sticks and for digging in the mud. A multi-purpose Pooh, in fact.

Oh, and I planted some strawberry spinach and some corn salad. Yesterday it was magenta spreen. Can you tell I'm on an alternative greens kick?

I have to say...

I always rather wondered about Lord Emsworth and the Empress of Blandings. Well, pigs really are quite soothing, it seems. At least, ours are. They're still young enough to be somewhat playful (though given that they've at least doubled in size since we got them, they only play with each other). And they are so contentedly single-minded about the search for food. They grunt and nose around and then grunt and nose around again. They are so joyful when receiving the kitchen scraps. I'm actually rather surprised at how well the whole pig experiment has gone so far. It will be interesting to see if they've actually torn up the ground enough for us to get grass growing in the back forty.

In other news...it's raining. Surprise, surprise, surprise. We've had almost double the "normal" amount of rainfall for March. This puts us well over the year-to-date average rainfall too. Our puddles have puddles. We have come to the conclusion that this winter we HAVE to get the ground covered. The crimson clover we planted last fall was planted too late to do the job well. Had the weather last year been more usual, it would have been fine. But it wasn't. So this winter we're going to try non-green ground cover and should actually get some knock-down cold frames built too. Just more to add to the monumental to-do list.

And now...pigs!

We just got these three little castrati today. Mighty cute, in a piggy way, though they can scream like tormented demons when they want to. We'll see how it goes. They're an experiment for this year and look set to be extraordinarily useful.

They're Tamworth pigs and few and far between in these parts. They're supposed to have nice dark, tasty meat. I hope that's so.