The Great Piggie Escape!

Have I mentioned how much we love our piggies. They are ever so tame and easy to work with. However, the piggies discovered that the fencing in the large pen was not secured on the bottom. Actually, we had forgotten all about it. Unfortunately, once they realized how easy it was to escape, they kept forcing the issue, even after we fixed it. So, as much as we hate to do it, the piggies have gone into one of the smaller pens because the fencing is actually buried 12 inches into the ground. This means much more pig food, which means more money from us. James says this is all part of our 'tuition' into finding what will work for us. The lesson learned here is that if we don't want to use electric fencing (and we don't) then we need to spend the extra time and bury the fencing about a foot into the ground. Obviously something you can't go back and do once the fencing is in.

On the lighter side, our 6 year old son decided to try riding the pigs. We were surprised that they were rather accomodating! However, after tolerating this for a couple of days, one of the pigs (Tammy) has decided she will have none of it and runs away whenever he tries to get on her back. I took a video of Ben riding the pig, note his little sister chasing afte the other pig that just won't cooperate. The second pig (Ginger) figured out a way to get him off her back though...

Click here to see the video. If you do view it, please leave some comments as my son has been checking regularly to see if anyone finds it as hilarious as he does.

In other farm news, many of the larger crossbred heritage turkeys were consistantly getting out of the larger pen. So, we had to confine them to one of the smaller pens because the sides are much higher (6 ft). Unfortunately, two or three of them still seem to make it over. We may need to clip their wings again, which was really not a chore we enjoyed. This again means more feeding costs as they don't have the large forest habitate to scratch around for food. The lessons we have learned here are that we need to start them young to get attached to us and clip their wings early (before they start making it over the fence). Thankfully this group is growing well and will likely be ready to butcher in another month or so. We are keeping an eye on them though because I have enjoyed looking after them the least of all the critters.

Our food experiment with the goats has been very interesting. The two kids are doing really well. They don't get any grain inputs and are busy foraging in the forest all day. However, the two older does are persistant in hanging out at the gate waiting for food, unless we walk them into the forest. We are still giving them sunflower seeds while they are milking. Unfortunately I'm not thrilled with the condition of Bevanne so have gone back to supplementing her more. She's getting sunflower seeds and a dairy goat ration now. Toffee is still looking pretty good, so is only getting the sunflower seeds but I will keep an eye on her.

In other news, we took a different route home from the farm one day and noticed an abandoned farm with several apple trees. The trees are overflowing with apples and no one is picking them as the ground is littered with the ripe ones. We stopped by the next day and filled up two 25 kg feed bags with the apples. We took mainly the ones on the ground, originally with the intent to feed the animals. However, the apples were in such good shape that I have since used them to make apple sauce. Out of one bag I was able to make 12, 1 litre jars of unsweetened apple sauce. I left out all seasoning and sugar so that I could use it for cooking. Apple sauce is a good substitute for oil in most recipes, and much better for you then oil. I could type out all the instructions but I think it's better to just share the link to the website I found here. It has lots of information on many different things to preserve.