Snapdragon's garden

Chickens scratching about the place

Its funny how easy it is to get out of the habit of blogging - it makes me realise that I am an all or nothing kinda girl. 
And the problem is that if I'm not writing a blog, I m not taking photos either.  This week I have taken no photos at all of the garden, no photos of the embroideries that I have squeezed in amidst children, indeed no photos of the children either.
It is just about dusk so I have dashed outside to get a couple of shots of chickens just to liven this up a bit.
Actually I am much better photographing chickens than the garden at the moment. The weather has been fine but so, so cold and everything is behind.  It is just stuck in suspended animation waiting for some warmth.
I don't blame it - this morning when I was picking flowers for subscription customers my hands turned blue it was so cold.
So the best thing in the garden at the moment is definitely the chickens.  This is Treela - the one who want to be a house chicken - scratching about in the bed which I am clearing for the sweetpeas.

And this is Chico - a beautiful puffy Light Sussex which is one of the chickens that hatched last year.

Rather excitingly Peblo - cuckoo maran and super-mum has become broody today - she is puffed up in the corner of the hen house like a feathery radiator. 
We have had problems in keeping ducks here - the last lot pined for their home at Craigievern, ran away the first week and then, after they had been brought back, refused to lay for us.  They were sent home to the Harrowers and immediately laid so it was obviously us.
Jane suggested that if we hatch out ducklings then they will settle much better.  I texted her as soon as Peblo took to brooding so, if Peblo is still settled in a couple of days, we shall put some duck eggs under her and wait for the patter of tiny webbed feet.
I can't wait for I love having ducks about the place.

Chickens

I don't know whether it is the springing of spring or the after effects of Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall's Chicken project but the world seems to be suddenly full of chickens.

Yesterday I saw some pecking about on the main road (possibly these are not long for this world!), others scratched about in the carpark at Balmaha and Zoe's music teacher seems to have acquired a small flock. A friend from Glasgow phoned to ask me whether I thought she would be able to keep chickens in her garden.

Jane Harrower, who we get our chickens from, is thinking about getting in meat birds as opposed to just egg birds as she has had so many enquiries.

Our own chickens are much happier now that there is intermittent sunshine - they are no longer poor shivering wrecks but strut about my flower beds scratching up mulch. We moved them to the main cutting garden, away from the mud of the pig field and put the electric fence around their house. They are not bothered by the fence at all but it stops Jasmine from eating all the eggs.

It is lovely to have them back.  It is also lovely to be able to make mayonnaise again (there is no spltting if you use really fresh eggs, you can glug the oil in and it doesn't split).

This is Treela - who wants to be a house chicken.

Probably not a post for vegetarians

Earlier in the year we got 2 weaner piglets to fatten up for the freezer.
I love pork but rarely eat it as it is very difficult to get local outdoor reared pork here and I am not prepared to eat meat from intensively reared pigs.
This seemed to be the answer.
It was our first experience of keeping animals to eat and I really wasn't sure how I would feel.  My Mum and brother think that I am a monster, my Dad is after some pork for his freezer too.
Not long after we got them the pigs escaped over the fields into a neighbouring farm where there were cattle.  One pig was kicked to death by a cow and the other ran home.  It was a great shock, I felt very guilty, it seemed somehow to be more wasteful then when we lose chickens to the fox.
Yesterday our remaining pig went to the abattoir - we decided to kill him when he was still light enough to go to the local abattoir.  we borrowed a trailer and yesterday morning at 6.30 Euan and I loaded him up and Euan took him to Dunblane, about 1/2 an hour away.
I hadn't known how I would feel - I had been aware of deliberately not bonding with him in case I ended up wanting to keep him as a pet.  We didn't give the pigs names - not even jokey ones like bacon and chop.  He was quite an aggressive chap and a complete bind when I put the chickens to bed trying to knock me over and eat the tags off my wellies.
Then last week he began to escape - My Mum and brother said that he had worked out his fate - he would go down to the river - walk along it for a few hundred yards and then trek back up the valley sides into our neighbours horse field.
She wasn't impressed - he spooked her horses - I came back one night to find her screaming at Euan on the doorstep.  He escaped 3 times - on the last 2 occasions she called the police. 

The upshot was that I spent more time with the pig in the past week than I did in the past 3 months- coaxing it across pitch black fields with a torch and a bucket of feed and, with the help of a neighbouring farmer, we made him a pen out of field gates so that I could keep an eye on him from the house.  He resented his smaller space so I fed him lots of apples and scratched his back a lot.
I wondered if I would have a problem seeing him go.  But in the end it wasn't like that.  He lived a happy life he went into his trailer happily, according to Euan he trotted ] off into the holding pens without a look back.
My only regret was over the tagging.  We had been advised to tag him just before he headed off as pigs are renowned for taking their tags out.  So, in the dark, at a ridiculously early time of the morning, I attempted to tag my first animal.  It is a plastic tag , it folds over the ear and a small plastic plug goes through the ear, locking into a hole in the other side.  It  has to be punched through the animal's ear with a plastic plier type contrition.  My friend Peter showed me how to do it in theory the night before.  And I did it - nice and smooth into piggy's ear while he was eating - he didn't even stop his chewing.
Then, once he was in the trailer, I noticed that the tag had disappeared, it was no longer in his ear.  He needed it for the abattoir so I had to go into the trailer (crouching down as it was pig and not human height) and re tag his ear.  Euan shone the torch through the sides.  By this time pig wasn't as happy, I missed his ear the first time and then I  got a bit of ear that was perhaps thicker than I would have chosen if I had had more space or light.  He didn't make a fuss, but he did notice and I felt rubbish.  It wasn't the way I wanted to leave him.
The next thing is to pick up the meat tomorrow morning and take it to the butchers.  I don't know how I will feel.

Pig

Last Wednesday we had the biggest disaster yet  in our attempts to grow our own food.

In July we acquired two Oxford Sandy and Black weaners to fatten up - they lived in the rough field and as well as being destined for the freezer they were meant to be clearing the land so that it can be planted over the winter.

The heavy rain that we have had made the soil boggy and caused a mini landslip at the far away fence line - the pigs were able to dig a hole under the fence and escaped, setting out on a jaunt over our 3 of our neighbours fields, ending up in a field of cows and calves.  They must have been irritating the cows and were attacked, one being kicked to death, the other fleeing home to the safety of his home.

I have not been able to write about this until today - it has been such a shock - we knew that we might have problem with the pigs escaping, everybody with pigs has tales of trying to re-capture them, but I envisaged this in terms of trying to herd them out of the cutting garden, not of them being killed by other farm animals.
The remaining pig stays close to the gate now - we have surrounded him with an electric fence so that he can't get to the fence line - and I just feel incredibly guilty at the waste.

Over on Snapdragon's Chat we are discussing Buying British cut flowers and the Gardeners' World programme.