Pigs #12 - Pigs Departure Part One!

The pigs were booked to go to the abbatoir (www.NSJames.co.uk) on Monday 25th June.  We had been away visiting Jo's brother & sister in law for the weekend, and arrived a bit later home on Sunday than we'd planned due to an accident on the motorway.  As usual I had left quite a lot of things to the last minute...The gate to the pig's enclosure is accessed through a former vegetable patch which now contains my bonfire, a vigorous patch of 3foot high weeds, the detritus of 20 years of farm machinery and many more interesting obstacles.  My plan was to mark out a walled 'pathway' through this to the yard so that I could easily lead the pigs the 25 feet or so through it and out to a waiting trailer, backed onto the opening of the pathway, up the ramp, nice and easy.

The first thing that went wrong was that when we arrived home there were no pigs!  We arrived home for a late children's bathtime, so it was half an hour or more before I was able to go and thoroughly search their enclosure.  Not a sausage (sorry!)!  A slightly panicked phone call to James at Morris Free Range Meats & Horticulture revealed that he had NOT come to pick them up a day early without telling me, and that they pigs were NOT with him.  A fairly panicked phone call to Roger (who grazes the land and kindly fed the pigs in our absence) revealed that he had seen them about 10AM and that they had been all present and correct.  It was now 8PM.  I decided to have a boundary walk with 2 saucepans of pig-feed before I gave in and took Roger & James up on their kind offers to help me to form a search party....  I could not see any evidence of escape when I walked around the perimeter of their enclosure, although with dusk starting to set in, the 3 strands of barbed wire at the back did look a bit low....I crossed them and, banging my saucepans together started shouting 'Pigs! Pigs!  I've got lots of lovely food for you!  Pigs! Pigs!'  After what seemed like an eternity I heard a crashing in the undergrowth and Big Pig came running up to me, not far behind Small Pig dashed up, panting.  If they had had the right kind of tails I'm sure they would have been wagging them!  A close examination showed that they were none the worse for wear and appeared to have had a lovely day exploring the quarter-acre of scrub / woodland behind their enclosure!  I then went back over the wire into their enclosure, poured one saucepan full of pig food onto the floor where they could see it, and waited for them to show me how they had escaped.  At least that was the theory, but after 5 minutes of pacing up and down the boundary they lost interest, turned their backs and charged back into the woodland!  At that point I ran back to the house, picked up the wire cutters, staples, wire tensioner (sound familiar?  If not have a look at [Pigs # 1]!), ran back to the fence and cut the 3 barbed wire strands to make a 3 foot wide opening.  More saucepan banging and frantic calling eventually brought the pigs back, and, after safely navigating them through the hole in the fence I tipped another big pan of food as far away as possible from it so that I could repair the breach in peace.  I decided just to make good the fence as it stood, and to give the pigs plenty of food and straw to try to encourage them not to stray 'til morning.

At that point our neighbour Mike walked up the lane, having had a call from Roger, to see if he could help.  I was very relieved to be able to explain that everything was OK now, and just to invite him in for a cup of coffee, as I've always felt a bit embarrassed with Mike after the ['Lamb-Police Incident' (insert link to future post)].

Anyway, the pigs were safely back in their enclosure, I had managed to calm down and the cold sweats had subsided (in hindsight I wondered if Roger had inadvertently let slip to the pigs what Monday morning had in store for them!).  The next thing to do was to construct the 'exit pathway'.  When I thinned out the row of 'Kentish Cobs' I saved a big pile of nice straight hazel branches of 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 inch diameter to use for just such a purpose.  I quickly banged them in at about 3ft spacing with the sledgehammer, and filled between them with various bits of board / fencing / sheeting.  The other side was a bit easier so I just stretched some barbed wire about 18" off the ground and tied some feed sacks to it so the pigs would be able to see it easily.

At this point I was quite tired, but relieved that the pigs were back safely and happy that I was prepared pretty reasonably for the morning.  As I sat down on my wood-splitting log, drank a cup of coffee and contemplated what a nice job I'd done on the 'exit pathway', Jo brought the phone out to me 'Its James' she said.

James was just calling to apologise that as he wasn't feeling well it would be his dad, Richard who would pick up the pigs.  No problem at all, I was just glad that someone would be coming and told James I hoped he would 'get well soon'.  "Just one other thing" he said, because Tymawr Farm is accessed down quite a narrow lane, Richard would prefer to drive into one of the fields and back up to one of the Alpaca sheds to load the pigs, instead of loading them in the yard.  "No worries" I said in my best 'light hearted' tone, heart sinking, with my best laid plans crumbling before my very eyes.  The Alpaca sheds are another 100 feet or so away from the mouth of the 'exit pathway', through a narrow gateway, through the garden - impossible to create a proper pathway.  I would just have to rely on them following the bucket!

At that point I went into the house, opened a bottle of homemade Elderberry, Blackberry, Blackcurrant & Sloe wine, drank a large glass and went to bed, fervently praying for well behaved pigs in the morning!

To be continued..............

Vision # 3: “Big-Farmer”

A large arable or livestock farm in this country can still look passably ‘green’ and even ‘pleasant’ from the outside.  I was reflecting on this and started to wonder what they would look like if their whole supply chain could be transplanted to the farm location.  The minerals and chemicals which ‘Big-Farmer’ (!*) uses to induce their poor soil to continue to produce would require a laboratory, chemical processing plant and a mine to provide their raw materials.  The tractors and other vehicles would require an assembly factory, and sub-factories probably to machine, heat-treat and paint.  Foundries, iron and aluminium smelting furnaces, and another open-cast mine to rip the ore from the ground would be needed to provide the materials to make the tractor parts.  The supermarket which feeds on the farm would take up 3 acres with steel, glass and concrete, the last two materials would add further giant factories, furnaces and mines.  The electricity used on the farm, and by its suppliers is most likely to be generated by coal or gas, which would require a power station, in turn these would require mines or rigs.  The oil or gas used to provide heat for farm and it’s suppliers would require an oil / gas rig (and an unusual mid-sea location, but there has to be a limit to the exercise!) constructed from energy-dense materials.  The numerous intermediaries, middle-men, and other parasites involved would require smart showrooms, offices and executive cars in order to sell the chemicals, machines and ‘utilities’ to the farm.

Suddenly the superficial view of a ‘green and pleasant’ pastoral business is replaced by the reality, a small commodity-production element, surrounded by vast, energy hungry industries, dependent on finite resources!

Taking this view, is ‘Self-Abundance’ really feasible, or is that a sham too?  Would we create a wonderful ‘shop-window’ in effect, but hide our dirty secrets far away in industrial areas where it’s hard for our customers to rationalise their connection to us?