Lazy hazy days of summer.....

"Move over Samson - it's my turn" said Delila

Lazy summer afternoon....

Nothin like a wallow.....

Just like London buses, all our summers have come at once. Twelve months ago we were coping with flood and storm whilst this year we are 'enjoying' the hottest continual spell of sunshine since 2006 (which, oddly, none of us can recall being all that hot). With temperatures hitting a very un-British 30 degrees or more for day after day, the countryside (and perhaps the towns & cities too - but we don't know about them) is taking on a decidedly continental air. Sandals, shorts, skimpy tops are the order of dress - which is quite unusually shocking for this part of the world (and even quite scary when seen in some of its manifestations in the marketplace....). Much hay is already made & stacked away for winter.... combine harvesters can be heard thrumming away in the distance; pea viners have been seen (a month late this year apparently owing to the coldest March for 100 years) trundling along the roads at dawn & dusk.... grass is turning decidely brown and crops definitely (pale) gold..... 
Mad dogs and Englishmen are staying well out of the midday sun (as far as is possible) so any activity is compressed into  the first and last hours of daylight. This probably happens all over the hot world but here it is quite quite uncommon.
"And what of the curly coats?" you ask. Well; the pigs are happy.They have nearly finished their moult so are feeling relatively cool - regular readers will know that Delila was the only one of them to lose her coat last 'summer'. Being grey-skinned they don't worry about getting burned by the fierce heat of the sun - although they do seek shade where they can and spend an awful lot of time in squashing into, or taking turns in, their wallows.

..the broccoli wall

Ironic that we have spent the past eighteen or 20 months complaining about all the mud everywhere and now the ground is rock hard and we spend an hour or more each day just refilling the mud-pools which serve as wallows! We also spend much time refilling water containers because they either get tipped out into wallows, get paddled in to cool trotters or, if any water is left, it is too warm to enjoy drinking!

Me go out in the Mid-day sun? I should coco

Farmers are faced with interesting challenges this year too, the current one being the 'broccoli wall'. Owing to the cold spring, this vegetable was late to get going but conditions have been ideal for the past fortnight and all the plants have come on at once. Pickers have been working round the clock to get the crop in - the mobile vegetable factories which can be seen around the fields are capable of processing a head of broccoli from field to 'packed' in 60 seconds! Apparently, the wall has been scaled and the situation is now manageable. Our pigs have been enjoying the excess - it is probably their most favourite vegetable - they get really blissed out when tea-time comes around and heaps of the best fresh greens land on their plates! Even the dogs (not sure if it's good for 11 wk old pups but we'll soon find out!), horses and chickens enjoy crunching on the stuff - so everyone's pretty pleased.........
The prognosis is the "heatwave" will continue yet a while.... most of us here are not complaining and making the most of the lazy, hazy days..... who knows when they'll come round again????