Autumn.

Autumn has returned to the valley and for Leven River Farm autumn is a time of plenty. The warm wet summer season has left us in a good position with large quantities of green grass standing in the paddocks for winter. We have picked and stored the pumpkins, dug the potatoes and shucked the corn.  Our raspberries are almost finished, the apples at their peak, and the veggie garden supplies a seemingly endless supply of tomatoes, carrots, parsnips, onions and other goodies. The first frost hit last week revealing the last of the fresh tomatoes for this year.

At long last the zucchinis are finished and only the pigs didn’t get sick of them. The pigs are partial to mature zucchinis, relish pumpkin and sweet corn but their real favourite is an apple or two. If they spot you walking their way with a bucket of apples, they drool and foam at the mouth in anticipation of the ripe juicy apples.

Frost has knocked the vine but the tomatoes just keep coming.

The cattle have lost their sleek summer gloss, now dressed in their rough winter coat. They are down on the river cleaning up the overgrown grass and young willows that have threatened to overtake the riparian zone. We have just added a Guernsey house cow and calf to the herd. A little premature, we still lack a bail and protected milking area but that will come in time.  Monty, our Hereford bull, has returned to Leven River Farm for the winter, he has been away visiting with a couple of local Angus cows. He has taken up residence in the top paddock, every morning his mournfull bellow echoes over valley, a protest against his solitary existance. 

Cleaning up along the Leven River.

Taking Monty along to meet some new cows.

Most of our first two litters of piglets have left the farm for a new free-range home in Bruny Island. I weighed some piglets at weaning at ten weeks – average weight 30kg. No more weighing, they are getting too heavy and hard to hold, just a ball of wriggling muscle with a high-pitched ear-piercing squeal. As far as I can determine thirty kilograms at ten weeks is about as good as modern breeds in a commercial piggery can achieve. I suspect hybrid vigour from the Tamworth - Wessex Saddleback cross has boosted growth rates. Maybe there is a real future for these old breeds after all.

We didn’t wean the piglets until they were ten weeks old, I kept waiting for the sow to wean them but when she seemed content to let them suckle I forced the issue. The first night five piglets braved the electric fence to return to mum, on the second night only one went through, after that they settled contentedly into their new home.

Perky is almost hidden by her twelve piglets. They are only five weeks old.

Before we sell any more I will have to build a suitable loading ramp. Loading thirty kilo pigs  into a crate by hand is no fun. We have kept seven; three or more kept as breeding stock with an unrelated boar and the rest for our own use. I have kept all the ginger ones, four with a white saddle and three without. They are distinctive animals with a black skin under a glossy ginger coat. They all have the long lean body shape inherited from the Tamworth and don’t appear to be getting over fat. It will be interesting to see how they dress out in about ten or twelve weeks.

Prosciutto. She is stretching out in the hope of getting a belly rub.

The Tale of Twenty-One Little Piglets

Just too cute.

                                                                                 

Yes I know another story about our new piglets but how can I not write about them when they are so cute. It’s more of an excuse to put their photos on here than anything else. This weekend they will be a month old, my goodness how time flies. They are all doing very well and growing fatter every day. Petunia and Pinky are still feeding them and the information about how Wessex Saddlebacks are happy to feed their own and others is very true. The piglets usually go to the right sow to feed but sometimes they will head for the nearest milk bar open for business. You can really see just how much they have grown because now the sows can stand up and feed and the piglets can easily reach the teats. 

Look I can feed while Mum is standing up now.

                                                          

At around two weeks old we started them on the dry feed the sows eat. This is a lovely mix of grains and Cadburys Chocolate. Yummy!  It didn’t take the piglets long to know that when they see me coming with the blue bucket it means tucker time. Sometimes it’s hard to walk as they crowd around my feet. There are some who love jumping into Mum’s trough to get a good mouthful of food. Mum doesn’t take too kindly to this and sometimes will shove them out of the way with a bunt of her head, which makes the piglet scurry up and over the side of the trough in a great hurry and with lots of squealing. They are also cunning little buggers because when they have finished their food they race on over through the fence to see what’s left at the Tamworths feeding area. 

Out and about with Mum.

                                                                               

They love investigating outside the fenced off pig boundary area, always in a group and at the first sign of something strange they race back with ears flopping and all of them grunting. It’s a very comical sight to watch. Pigs are nature’s bulldozers turning the earth up without effort and these little fellas are no exception. When the creator of all life was handing out noses they sure did a good job with this one. It’s a perfectly positioned and designed piece of equipment and I was amazed at how quickly the piglets put it to good use not many days after they were born. Mud is a great place for bulldozing with the nose. Another funny sight was to see these tiny little ones just a couple of days old having a scratch against a door or wall, a miniature version of the adults. 

Me in the pen with Mum and Babies when only days old.

                                                                                   

The Sows have been very good mothers and very careful with the piglets. Before the Sow lies down to sleep or feed them she carefully checks with her snout every area of the bed of hay just to make sure the piglets are not underneath a pile of hay, as they like to burrow under it. Then she carefully bit by bit lays down her body, it’s a great thing to watch. This sort of experience is just one of the many which makes me more enchanted by these wonderful intelligent animals.  When John was talking about having pigs a long time ago I said no way they are smelly dirty animals. I couldn’t have been more wrong. I didn’t know much about pigs then only that they looked kind of cute. As soon as we got our Saddlebacks they wormed their way into my heart with their cuteness and funny little ways.  Can’t wait for the Tamworths to have piglets too. Now the Tammies are a little bit different to the Saddlebacks personality wise. They are a very vocal pig and are always ‘talking’ to you and very loud. Sometimes I call them whingers because it sounds like they are complaining about something. They are a lovely pig and love their share of attention too. It will be interesting to see if the Tammies will let us in the pen while they are having their piglets like the Saddlebacks did, they didn’t mind at all. Time will tell.  Next story I promise no piglets.

Michelle 

Proud Dad Fergal.

                                                                            

Piglets return to the paddock.

Observation and experience are great learning tools when raising pigs and I have learnt a lot over the past week. Luckily our inexperience  didn’t cause any problems and we now have twenty-one fat noisy piglets back out in the paddock with their mothers.

Fat and healthy.

We kept the sows and their litters in separate stables for the first three days and then let them return to their paddock to raise their young in peace. They’re all in robust health, having great fun exploring, tiny snouts rooting up the wet ground and meeting the other pigs. Fencing is meaningless, they are small enough to dart through at will but they always seem careful not to stray to far from mum. The other pigs in the adjacent paddock have shown no aggression at all towards the piglets, they all tend to freeze when the piglets get close and don’t move again until the piglets have cleared the area.

Getting into mischief is so tiring.

 I have learnt that either sow will feed any piglet. The first sow to lie down to feed will end up with twenty-one piglets squabbling noisily over the available teats. They are all fat and healthy so none are missing out.  The piglets all managed to double their birth weight in four days and the older litter have gained better than two kilograms in their first week. The two mothers are both eating their way through about nine kilograms of lactating sow feed a day and turning it into milk. Makes a change from two weeks ago when they were increased to one kilogram each a day. 

Too many piglets - not enough teats.

Before our next sows are due I will make some changes to our stables. The individual stables all need access to their own outdoor pen so that the sow and her piglets can roam and forage in a secure environment. At the moment the two maternity stables both open out onto a common area. This time it didn’t cause any problems as the piglets were only a day apart and formed a homogenous group with both sows sharing the feeding. I suspect that if the piglet litters were even two days apart the older piglets would quickly monopolise the available teats and the younger piglets would suffer.

We have one more Wessex Saddleback to farrow quickly followed by the three Tamworth sows. Won't be long and we will have lots more piglets on the ground.

Twelve more piglets.

 

Sunday morning the two saddleback sows still to farrow were not sleeping in their pen, as is their custom, so I went for a walk to find them. Pertunia was settled into a large grass nest, completely covered with grass with only her head visible. Perky was in attendance and must have been the one to totally cover her sister with a thick layer of grass. A quick trip to the maternity ward and four hours later the first piglet arrived. Petunia delivered twelve healthy piglets, a pretty good effort for a first litter. The boar is a registered Tamworth and his genetics are shining through, some of the piglets are black with a white saddle like their mother, others are ginger striped like a Tamworth piglet and four are ginger striped with a white saddle.  They are all lively healthy little animals and it is hard to keep track of them but I think there are two or three males and the rest females.

Safely in the nest with attendant at the ready.

A real mix of colours.

Today has bought cloudy wet weather so I have switched on the heat lamps for the piglets. It only took about thirty seconds for the first piglets to settle under the heat lamp, curl up and sleep. The heat lamp also provides a sheltered area where they are not at risk from their mother rolling on them.

The two sows feeding regime has now changed; they were on eight to nine hundred grams a day while pregnant increasing a little in the last week, now they have as much as they want, around six kilos a day. I am told they need the extra to provide lots of milk for the piglets and it makes sense, ten piglets will gain around twelve to fifteen kilograms a week in total and all that protein can only come from the mother’s milk.

On a sadder note the little runt from Pinky’s litter didn’t survive. At only 420 grams I think she was just too small. The other nine seem to be doing well and have gained around five hundred grams in three days, now weighing in at close to two kilograms. They are supposed to double their birth weight in the first week so these are on target. I don’t think I will try to weigh them again as they now wriggle and squeal way too much.

Piglets are go.

The first of our saddlebacks, Pinky, has ten piglets, cute little babies the spitting image of their mother. Not bad for a first litter. On Thursday I noticed that she was starting to make milk and on Friday afternoon when I could easily squirt milk from her teats we decided it was time to move her to the maternity ward, one of the stables already cleaned and prepared with fresh straw. We were just in time as the first piglet arrived at ten on Saturday morning and Pinky had delivered ten by midday.  Some black, others black with the white saddle, and of course the runt of the litter.  The runt is tiny sow, weighing in at 420 grams, dwarfed by the other piglets weighing between 1300 to 1500 grams. She is active, alert and feeding well so I am hopeful but I also know her chances of survival are three fifths of bugger all. Competition for the best teats is fierce and what she lacks in size she will have to make up for with determination and cunning. The piglets should double their birth weight in seven days after which we can let the sow back into the paddock.

Another Saddleback, Perky, looks like she will be due in a couple of days.

At first there were two.

And they kept coming.

The runt and one of her sisters snatch a quick feed

while the others wonder where mum has gone.

More of the past. Golf Juliet Lima

The first aircraft I owned was a Piper PA22-150 Tripacer VH GJL.

The tripacer is an honest little airplane, a dream to fly, forgiving of all but the clumsiest pilot, but noisy enough to wake the dead. It has a few little quirks such as the glide characteristics of a broken brick, interconnected controls, master and start switches hidden under the pilots seat, brakes that are little more than wishful thinking, elevator trim that requires a third arm and a desire to roll inverted and die when stalled out of a full power steep climbing turn. Often referred to as the flying milk stool and treated with distain by those who will only ever manage to pedal her around the sky, she is treasured by those pilots who instinctively know that when mastered she is an aircraft without equal. 

GJL Archerfield  1991

 No one will ever describe a tripacer as beautiful; they already long obsolete by the time they were first built, a stubby, boxy little aeroplane thrust into a world of streamlined polished aluminium, the last of the tube and fabric era. Combining a genuine one hundred and ten knot cruise with superb slow flying ability and crisp control responses, nine hundred pounds of useful load with only a hundred and fifty horsepower up front, the tripacer remains one of the most underrated four seat aircraft around.

The log book entry for 26^th of June 1993 reads  Milo to Gooyea. engine quit.  I was flying home after a week away working, tanks full, gauges in the green, completely relaxed, thinking of other things when I was jolted back to reality by sudden silence up front.  I can guarantee there are few things that can grab your attention quicker than engine failure in a single engine aeroplane. Training kicks in without conscious thought and the responses are automatic, try to restart the engine and look for somewhere to land. The tripacer is a lightweight, aerodynamically dirty aircraft with a poor glide angle and without power the pilot has only one chance to pick a spot and set up for landing.

I was always in the habit of flying at four or five thousand feet on short solo flights and height translates into valuable time and options. The realisation struck me that the difficulty with crashing aeroplanes is that you never do it often enough to get good at it. I picked up the VHF radio mike and put out a radio call. "Mayday, mayday, mayday, this is Golf Juliet Lima. Fifteen miles north of Milo station, one POB, total engine failure". No response, as I half expected, no one within range had a radio on. I knew an ultralight drifter was mustering locally so I called him on the UHF, quick explanation and asked him to stand by. I called home on the UHF to arrange someone to come and pick me up, it was way too far to walk home, and set the aircraft up on a long final for a forced landing on a claypan. I had been flying GJL for some years and I had total confidence in my own ability to safely land that airplane precisely where I chose. 

Flying Quilpie to Longreach. Sure beats driving.

As I was descending the lycoming engine would occasionally regain full power for a brief second and then die again.  I had no idea what was wrong and nothing I did made any difference. At around two thousand feet the engine started to run again, albeit very roughly at around twelve hundred RPM. As I leaned out the mixture it settled into a steady beat at about eighteen hundred RPM.  Not quite enough to maintain height but enough to give me a few options.

Eighteen hundred feet, losing height at around a hundred feet a minute, fifteen minutes to home. Good safe landing site below me, nothing but tiger country on the way home, what option did I have? Common sense would indicate I should cut the power and land immediately but instinct was to fly that little aeroplane home and instinct is more powerful so I headed north. I like to think that if I had a passenger, I would have landed rather than put them at risk but I honestly don’t know. Instinct is insidiously powerful and the overriding urge when flying a stricken aircraft is to keep it in the air. The air is its natural element and while in flight the pilot still has options.

I reached the strip at Gooyea with a hundred feet to spare, tied the aircraft down and dropped the cowl to find out what went wrong.

The O320 lycoming in a tripacer has an updraft carburettor with a carburettor heat butterfly directly below. The shaft for the carburettor heat butterfly had failed and allowed the butterfly to suck up against the carburettor effectively chocking the engine. When the engine stopped the butterfly would fall away unblocking the carburettor and allowing the engine to run again. As it reached full power the butterfly would suck up and again choke all life from the engine. The air box with the butterfly and broken shaft went to Norm Kelly, an aircraft welder in Archerfield for repairs and I was earthbound for a couple of weeks to reflect on the fine line between skill and luck.

Sometimes it all goes wrong. Queenair crash 1984.

Looking back I am struck by the number of pilots who have died in aircraft crashes. Barry Hempel, the instructor who sent me solo in 1976 flying another tripacer, PJW, signed off my unrestricted licence in GJL and tail wheel endorsement in tiger moth UVB flew into the sea off South Stradbroke Island. Laurie Curley of Curley Air Maintenance, one of nature’s true gentleman and one of Queenslands great rogues, an engineer extraordinaire who maintained both my airplanes and stayed with us whenever he was in the Quilpie area, flew a Mooney into the ground at night near Roma.  I watched a Beechcraft Queenair crash killing the pilot at Trinidad, the property that I grew up on in Western Queensland, and two neighbours were killed in separate flying accidents. An oilrig I had been working with lost a crew in a Beechcraft Kingair crash near Adavale in Western Queensland. The instructor who taught me to fly a K7 glider at McCaffreys field lost his life in a crash on the same field. Other pilots, just casual acquittances, also lost their lives following their passion.

Memorial to lives lost in Kingair crash. Adavale.

For over a hundred years pilots have sometimes been called upon to pay the ultimate price for the privilege of soaring like an eagle and I expect most of them understood and willingly accepted the risks and ultimately been satisfied with the payments that can only be made in heartache and blood. Only those who fly can possibly understand the peace and contentment that comes when you are alone in the cockpit, the world has dropped away far below and you become one with the airplane and the sky.

That rare privilege will always be worth the asking price.

On the learning curve.

They asked me bout me Gramma

I told em she was dead.

They didn’t mention Grampa

But I told em what he’d said.

(snippet from “On the education road” author unknown.)

The last eighteen months on Leven River Farm have been a continual learning curve - the education road for smallholders.  

Before we came to Tasmania I had never kept beehives, now I have three beehives in full production with a fourth on its way. It seems a little counterintuitive but the best time to rob the hive is when the hive is a hive of activity – bees buzzing around madly. When I first tried robbing a hive I waited for a cool cloudy day when the hive had little activity. Big mistake – when I took the top off, bees spilled out everywhere and I couldn’t get them clear of the supers. When the hive is humming with activity most of the bees are out collecting pollen and nectar and those that are left are too busy to take much notice.

Clover honey and beeswax from one hive.

I robbed two of the hives a couple weeks ago, second harvest for the summer, and was rewarded with 28kg of honey. When conditions are favourable and the hive strong, the bees can fill a super in two weeks.

One hive yielded a very light delicate clover honey. In November this same hive yielded a moderately dark robustly flavoured honey.  This time last year it yielded a very distinctive strong flavoured honey the colour and consistency of treacle.  I have no idea what is different this year. The hive still occupies the same position, conditions have been similar, meadow flowers like dandelion, buttercup and clover are plentiful but the bees have obviously favoured a change of diet.

Two honeys, harvested from the same hive a month apart.

The other hives are up on the top boundary making the most of the blackberry blossoms and producing a clear light fragrant blackberry honey. If the summer weather holds I should rob the hives at least twice more before winter. That will be around 55 - 60kg of honey per hive for the season. By commercial standards a fairly low yield but I am a very much a hobby apiarist.  I don’t move my hives off the farm and I don’t feed the bees over winter, rather I choose to leave the hives well stocked with honey in autumn.

The Saddlebacks are due sometime after the 20^th of this month. They all display long swollen nipples hanging beneath huge bulging bellies, looking like they are ready to pop any time. We have prepared a couple of stables as farrowing pens where a sow and her piglets may spend the first week or so.  A protected corner in two the farrowing pens has been set up with a small heat lamp to provide heated sanctuary for the piglets so the sow can’t roll on them. The more I research and talk to people keeping free range pigs the more I am inclined to leave the sows farrow in the paddock during summer. It is vitally important that we get it right as we need to wean as many piglets as possible.  We hope to produce 70 – 90 slips this year, most will be sold and a few we will keep for our own consumption. We should have Tamworths available as registered breeding stock, I think the only producer of registered Tamworths in Tasmania.

Tomatoes, zucchini, pumpkins and sweet corn.

 We are starting to learn what grows well in the garden and still escape the attentions of marauding rabbits. We tried a few garlic cloves last year and they rewarded us with large plump purple garlic bulbs. Zucchini do exceptionally well in the short summer, as do strawberries, tomatoes, pumpkins, potatoes and sweet corn. I built a small portable greenhouse to provide for an earlier start for the frost tender plants. 

Pumpkins and sweet corn in the greenhouse.

I now have a much better idea what the geese require for a productive breeding season. Our results this year was a little patchy with the first three geese sitting on eggs failing to produce any goslings. When we provided them with protective nesting boxes the other four all hatched successfully with one sitting on fourteen eggs and successfully raised eleven goslings. In total we raised twenty-five goslings to maturity.  This year we will have eleven or twelve breeding pairs and with good nesting sites, a little planning and a little luck we should be much more successful. 

Monty the Hereford Bull

Our heifers have grown a bit since we bought them six months ago. No longer lightweight shaggy animals, they have grown large, fat and shiny. As a reward we have provided them with a little male company, a three-year-old Hereford bull called Monty. We bought him at Smithton and trucked him home on Friday. He has a very good temperament, which is important as Michelle and I work our cattle on foot. In  August – September next year we should have some calves on the ground.

Monty.

Lookin good.

Ruby

Blondie and Ginger

Catch that Swarm

Our two beehives have become four. I had been inspecting the hives early in the week when I noticed the queens had moved up out of the brood boxes and were now laying eggs in the supers. Even to a novice beekeeper like me, they had obviously started to outgrow their home so I ordered some additional brood boxes to enlarge the hives. The theory was good but Mother Nature had other ideas. The very next day the bees decided it was time, left the hive and created a swarm.

When keeping bees you learn new skills and acquire valuable knowledge, and the most important knowledge is who to ring when you need to ask questions. In my case that vital store of information is ‘Barry the Bee Man’ a professional beekeeper who lives up near Rowella. 

I rang Barry, it was all so easy - “just throw a large carton over the swarm, that’ll hold them until you get some boxes”

How do I get the bees in the new hive? – “Just dump them out of the carton in front of the boxes and they will find their own way in”, he said. “If they don’t go, just push them in with your foot”.  Could it really be that simple?

It really is this simple to get the swarm into their new home.

I am probably a little blasé when handling the bees but this time I got fully suited up, smoker at the ready – and it turned out to be a complete overkill. The swarming bees were easy to handle, crawled up into the carton just as Barry said they would, stayed there while we drove to Rowella and picked up some new boxes and when dumped on the grass in front of the new brood boxes, they immediately walked in to create a brand new hive.

I decided to split the other hive before they swarmed, transferring one brood box to create a new hive.  This involves pulling the hive apart to check for queen cells on the frames and making sure the new hive has a good number of healthy queen cells to ensure they can hatch another queen. Without a queen the hive will simply die.

Robbing the hives has become a relaxed chore, the bees are predictable, they don’t get aggressive and there is little chance of getting stung. Separating the brood boxes and inspecting the frames is a very different affair; no amount of smoke is ever going to calm the bees while their home is pulled apart. The sound of kamikaze bees hitting the bee suit is a little unnerving at first and while the determined bee can still sting you through the protective fabric, their sting is mild and little more than an occasional nuisance.

We should get lots of honey.

I set the two new hives up on our top boundary where we join some bush and forestry. The scrub is flowering nicely with lots of blackberry in bud so we should get plentiful honey production.

More of the past; Love at first sight.

I have never found it easy to write from the heart; it relies too much on the courage to delve deep into your psyche, to face your vulnerabilities and expose them to the world.

Some years ago as a mature age uni student I had to write a personal reflective assignment for one of my first year units, Communication and Case Studies. The premise was that engineers don’t communicate well and so all budding first year engineering students had to maintain a journal for a semester, not writing anything useful – nothing technical or valuable, just reflecting on their emotions and feelings as a first year student.

I commenced mine with the proposition that “men of my age don’t have feelings” and wrote quite a few pages expounding on this hypothesis. No way was I mentally prepared to become a SNAG (sensitive new age guy). I studiously avoided any reference to thoughts and emotions and in spite of this, or just possibly because of this, I attained a distinction for my efforts.

Now a little older, I realise it is time to try again , reflecting on life, love and happiness. If a man is lucky he has two great enduring loves of his life, one is his wife and the other is his mistress. A wife is forever and though his time with his mistress may be short and bitter sweet, nevertheless she will always remain an important part of his life.

At the grand old age of nineteen, I first discovered love; something that I hadn’t ever known was missing in my life. After working in the bush for a couple of years, I went to Brisbane for a short holiday and met a stunning young lady who took my breath away. She wore a yellow blouse with a small giraffe embroided on the left breast, a tailored black skirt and was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen.  Wide brown eyes, a mop of curly hair; I was in love! Totally gone. Our first date was with a couple of her girl friends in tow as chaperones. Obviously hopeless romantics, we went to see Rocky IV. Not too sure what it was about. I can no longer remember how but we managed to ditch our chaperones somewhere early in the evening and ended up at King George Square.  Nineteen eighties King George Square was light years away from the grubby concrete expanses of today, it was a parklike oasis in the heart of the city with plenty of quiet seclude spots for young lovers to while away the evening.

Michelle Stradbroke Island 1980

I wouldn’t call it a whirlwind romance; a whirlwind has connotations of frenetic wasted energy, rather it was an instant connection of the heart. For the first time in my life I bought jewellery, a silver chain and a small white gold heart with a diamond in the centre. Her parents were definitely not impressed.

Five days later I asked Michelle to marry me. There was absolutely no doubt in my mind that we were meant to be together. We kept it quiet for all of two days while I bought a diamond solitaire engagement ring and publicly announced our engagement on April fools day.  For some strange reason, nobody seemed to believe us – stunned silence would have to be an understatement.  The hardest part was ringing the girl that I had been going out with only a week earlier and telling her I was engaged. I may be mistaken but I got the distinct impression she may have been just a little miffed.

We were engaged for just over twelve months maintaining a true platonic relationship until we were married. Looking back their seems to be no good reason why we waited but at the time it was important to Michelle and if you really love someone, you accept, however reluctantly, their decision. I was also living over a thousand kilometres away, which made it a little easier, though for some strange reason I acquired a life long aversion to cold showers.

Getting married 1981

In over thirty years the passion has never dimmed, the flame has never flickered. Michelle has been my greatest strength and my ultimate weakness, my soul mate and lover as we journey through life, hand in hand.

And I must not forget the mistress – lets just say she was four years older than me, a dignified American lady of impeccable breeding. No one will ever describe her as beautiful; she was already long obsolete by the time she left Lock Haven, Pennsylvania in 1956, a stubby little tube and fabric aeroplane born into a world of streamlined polished aluminium, a deafeningly noisy relic of an earlier time, but she flew like a homesick angel and kept my young family safe in the air for many years - but that is another story for another time.   

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Nooooo........ It's Nesting Season

More on our geese and their nesting ups and downs.

They are so cute.

                                                                               

This is our first time amid goose nesting season and boy I don’t know if I want to go through it again next year. It’s drama upon drama and I’ve been on tender hooks watching out for the goslings all the time. I seem to be glued to the telescope and binoculars during the day counting the different groups of goslings to make sure they are all still there. We’ve got a few different hatching times which means there’s some bigger goslings and some very small ones. The smallest goslings belong to Hoppy (she hurt her leg awhile ago and has a slight limp) and her partner Mr Hop. They were the last pair to hatch their brood and I think they are first time parents. I am always keeping an eye on this family as she has already lost two little fellas. I hate it when animals die I get a bit upset. I remember years ago always bawling my eyes out whenever any of my poddy lambs died. I had little graves for them all over the place. Silly I know but what can you do.

Some of the sweet little darlings.

                                                                             

The first lot of goslings to hatch were Deloraine grey girl’s brood. She did a very good job and kept all six of them nice and warm and together with her. When it was time to leave the nesting box and take them out into the big wide world she had an entourage of minders willing and ready to help her keep them safe. These included three of last year’s male goslings and two other grey girls who each had failed attempts at nesting. They made their nest on a slope and they also co nested together. Every time they fussed with the eggs they’d move down the slope a bit further and some of the eggs would end up not under them and hence got cold. Every day I’d come outside and they wouldn’t be in the same place as yesterday.  Next to hatch hers was Mrs Quiffy, so called because she has a quiff of feathers on top of her head and it looks like a quiff hairstyle.  She outdid everyone else and hatched eleven little darlings in the corner of the chook pen underneath where the chooks roost. Thank goodness the chooks always stick their bums the other way when roosting so she never got poo rained on her and the nest.  She’s hatched a family before so she’s a good mother and she also ended up with some minders to help her and Mr Quiff out.

Out for a stroll. Mum, Dad, goslings and Minders.

                                                                          

Next lot of goslings to hatch were from Mr and Mrs Ostracized. I named them this because leading up to mating and nesting season this couple were always getting banished from the group. They nested nicely in one of the nesting boxes and had five goslings. They are a good couple and look after their brood well. Last lot of successful hatchings are of course Mr and Mrs Hop and their three. It’s amazing the size difference between the first lot and this last lot with just a matter of weeks between them. Now last but not least is the poor other grey girl who decided to nest in one of the chook nesting boxes. She sat for ages but for some reason she wasn’t successful. She was so desperate to become a mum that one day we checked on her and she had pinched one of the chook eggs we had put under the clucky chook in the nesting box next to her. We know it was from there because it had the date written on it. We felt sorry for her so we gave her some chook eggs of her own to sit on. We are now awaiting the outcome of this. We also have two other clucky chooks sitting on eggs on top of hay bales. We will be overrun by chickens soon. Oh no, not more poultry worry. Nahhh the chooks will be right looking after their own………….I hope.

One of the clucky chooks nesting on hay bales.

      

The unsuccessful grey girl now sitting on chook eggs in the chook box.

                                                                     

The Circle of Life

Mum with three girl and three boys.

The circle of life has completed with the hatching of the first of our goslings. One of our pilgrim geese has successfully hatched all six eggs that she was sitting on. We were a little concerned for the safety of the baby goslings with all the adult geese crowding about so we put a pen around the nest to provide some protection - we needn’t have bothered. The day old goslings promptly got out with the rest of the geese and when we tried to catch them to put them back with mum, the whole flock instantly came to their defence with a united display of aggression while keeping the new goslings safely hidden behind a shield of wings. No way is anything going to get too close to those goslings if they can help it.

Dad gives a warning hiss- Stay away from my family!

Pigs And The Small Farm

Pigs have to be one of the ideal animals to keep on a small farm. They are intelligent social animals that thrive on pasture when supplemented with a quality commercial pig feed. They quickly settle into a routine with ours coming in for a nap around 10 in the morning. They become very quiet and easy to handle with the sows learning to roll over and give a low rumbling purr to show their appreciation for a good firm belly rub. Even the boars are quiet though I think Fergal our Tamworth boar quite fancies Michelle. She thinks he just has a rubber fetish and is only interested in her gumboots but I am not so sure.

Exploring a new paddock. We last had pigs in here four months ago. The grass has grown back well.

Their reputation for being hard on fences is unfounded in my experience. They are however great escape artists and will never miss an opportunity to explore if a gate is left open. Some of our pig paddocks have a ringlock fence and for others I use a single electric wire about 350mm above the ground. In twelve months we have never had a pig even attempt to push through the ringlock fences. Electric fencing is a cheap and effective way to control pigs though some animals take longer to learn than others. The sows learn very quickly to be aware of the electric fence; they first investigate it very carefully with their snout, quickly discover it bites and never touch it again. The boar however is a very different animal. Fergal simply lowered his head and proceeded to push under the wire. An ear-splitting squeal later he was through wondering what the hell had just bit him. No way was he going back near that wire so I had to let him back in through the stables. When we rotated the pigs through a new paddock the process was repeated, again under the wire, again the ear-splitting squeal and again I had to let him back into his paddock via the stables. It’s a good thing he is so quiet and will follow you around like a dog, as I know from experience it is very difficult if not impossible to make a stubborn adult pig do anything it doesn’t want to.

This paddock will be pig free untill the grass has regrown.

Forget the oft-repeated statement that pigs stink. Properly housed free range pigs don't smell. Pigs are naturally clean animals and if allowed enough space to roam, will maintain a toilet area some distance away from their sleeping quarters. The secret is in allowing them enough space to establish their native behaviour patterns. I have found that it takes around an acre of quality pasture to keep an adult pig in feed. We leave our pigs in a paddock until it is mostly turned over and then rotate them to a fresh paddock. It takes four or five months for the grass to reclaim the moonscape once the pigs are removed.   Because our pigs have continuous access to quality pasture they require much less feed. In winter each of our adult pigs gets 1 kilogram of a commercial pig feed per day and this reduces to 700 grams in spring and summer. This equates to just less than 40cents per day in winter and 30 cents in summer.

The pigs and chooks on Leven River farm have formed a natural symbiotic relationship. Whenever the pigs are out turning over the paddock, the chooks are close behind. They have learnt the feeding is pretty good with a constant supply of worms and other insects as the pigs fall into their natural rhythm as a four legged plough.