Pigs # 16 - New Pigs Nearly Here!

This weekend I arranged with James at Morris Free Range Meats & Horticulture in Coedypaen to have 2 more weaners (Welsh Pigs this time) in the next couple of weeks.  Exciting!  As we're getting them at a much more sensible age (about 10 weeks instead of 16 & 20 weeks last time) they are obviously going to be much smaller, and James had advised me to go around the boundary of their enclosure again with this in mind to make sure it's secure for 'little pigs'.



An extra 'little pig' strand above the bottom!

The fence posts in the photo above are Yew - homemade and hopefully indestructible!  Hope to be reporting on their good condition in 20 years!

Back fence - scene of the last escape!

The house is cleaned, the fence is in good condition, just need to mend the leak in their water trough now before we're ready for our new arrivals.  Really excited!

An interesting and natural environment!

Our plan for these 2 pigs is to try to sell them as 1/4 or 1/2 pigs - check out our SPECIAL OFFERS for full details - if you are in Usk or the surrounding area it would be brilliant to supply you with some wonderful free range pork!  We'll keep the pigs until they are around 30 weeks old, so they should be ready late January or early February - can't wait!

Firewood # 7 - Silver Birch

Last weekend I had logged up the main trunk of the Silver Birch (see Firewood # 6), leaving what I estimated at about 5m more stuck in the hedge (!).  Today I thought I'd pull the rest out - until the we can make the smallholding pay enough to buy me a tractor, the hardworking Polo will have to do (see Chickens # 8)!



Cut end of birch sticking out of hedge!

The first thing to do was to hitch up the end of the tree to the Polo.  I use some 'salvaged' webbing straps for pulling and lifting tasks around the farm - amazing what gets thrown away!

Polo hitched up to the tree ready to go!

Ben & Jo came to spectate (Kate was asleep after a hard day helping Daddy to buy barbed wire, smokey bacon, woodshavings, and doing a lot of swimming!).

On the move!

It took a while to start moving, but the trusty Polo didn't let us down - the wheels were spinning at times, but suddenly it freed and off we went!



Out of the hedge!

I'd previously guessed that this section was about 5 metres long.  Now we can see exactly what we've got it is actually 8 metres long!  That means the tree was actually 20 metres (65ft 7 and 13/32 inches!) tall.  A whopper!

Have to deal with this next weekend!

There is a lovely fork in the tree about 6 feet up from the bottom.  I'd love to use this in one of our woodland cabins or yurts in the future (see Vision # 4).