Down the garden path

In the 'Olden Days' - let's say up until the early 1950's - it was common practice for cottagers to keep a pig or two down the garden. The pig often formed part of the wages for a farm labourer; it would be 'given' in spring, fattened throughout the year and killed before Christmas. It would take three days to "put the pig away" with the immediate and extended family benefitting from good food throughout the long winter months.

Lucky the man who had a sow which regularly gave birth to a litter: his income could be bolstered by selling a weaner "down the garden path" to his neighbours.

The pig was a treasured element in the rural economy. My trips to market with our Provisions are greatly enhanced by the numerous pig-tales and incidents which the 'older' generation love to relate: there cannot have been many rural families which did not have a much-loved pig. And not just country dwellers: my own mother is happy to regale us with the story of her younger brother riding the family pig before school every morning (much to the consternation of my grandmother) and that was in the outskirts of a city, and in Germany! Small wonder that so much porcine terminology is embedded in our language: pig-headed, hog-tied, happy as a pig in muck, telling porkies, lucky pig, silk purses from sows' ears.......

Unfortunately, the practice of selling the pig "down the garden path" has long been outlawed - not least through changing tastes and Government regulation.

However, the habit of going "down the garden path" is far from dead"!

Delila's Little B's, such a quiet stay-at-home bunch until just a week ago, have brought a totally modern interpretation to the old phrase!

Having finally found their way out of Delila's confined homestead they rapidly tired of the immediate surrounds: even the driveway and its verges soon lost their appeal.

On my way to pick apples in the orchard last Friday afternoon, I chanced across Linda who asked:

"How far are you happy for the piglets to roam?"

In saying which she looked down towards the field where the horses were grazing.

"Funny" I replied "I couldn't find them this morning when I took the dogs for a walk and assumed - after looking hi and lo - that they must, after all, have been piled up in the corner of their ark out of sight!"

But clearly they were not.... for there they were, plain as day, running around between and

among the horses, trotting up to see all their aunts and uncles and cousins, popping in to the chickens en route and then, with a sudden "whoops" of realising they were perhaps a little far from home, off they all scampered through the dense rusting leaves - back to Mum. Since when it has become a common sight: piglets mooching along the garden path in front of the house, down the path beside what used to be a rock garden and via the path past the summer house via the top of the orchard and down the track to the field........

And just yesterday, perhaps tiring of going down all our paths, they decided to go down via the bridleway path to say "hello" to the bantams in front of the garage and to Ginger and all the chaps at that end of the Reserve grounds.........

"Where next?" I ask...... I suppose there is always the path up to the Village........

Now, that would give the neighbours something to talk about......

It's a Good Job we've got Gunner to round them all up and see they get to their Proper Place at the end of the day (or any other time, come to that).....