Thanks to the dry spell....

Sadly, the dry spell is about to end: for the past three weeks or so things around here have become progressively more bearable. We humans no longer slip and slide or, simply, get stuck in the mud and mire. We can walk about freely without having to scrub our wellies every half hour or so! Linda is down to less than 7 layers of clothing......We are almost clean at the end of a working day!  The chickens are equally relieved;  able at last to bathe in dust - one of their favourite past-times - these bantams, for example, snuggle up to each other and flap their wings to raise dust over each other....

During the dry spell, The Ides of March have become bolder from day to day; it is no surprise now to find them on the bridleway, down the bottom of the Church Field, over by the greenhouse, up around the house ------ anywhere. The fact that there are 9 of them darting to and fro lends all the more humour to their antics..... It is impossible to be in a bad mood when being confronted by a herd of gruntling little swine!

They're into food in a big way now so we can get them to go more or less where we want just by positioning their feed bowls in the appropriate place. In this way in a couple of weeks they will be ready for weaning - they won't even know ... one day they'll be eating their breakfast from their bowl in the barn and one of us will simply shut the door. And that'll be it. Andromeda won't miss them for several hours or maybe not till next day. By then her hormones will be persuading her to think of big boys not little chaps....

Also, thanks to the continued dry spell we finally managed to turn the Hogmaneigh boys out into their pen this afternoon- it was far too deep in mud for them till now. They've been inside for 5 weeks or so and had quite forgotten about 'outdoors'. First thing they had to do though was run across and get acquainted with their cousins in the adjoining pens.There was a bit of a ruccus for a few minutes but peace soon decended and off they went off to explore their new house and, joy of joys, found their feed.....

By the time I went out to shut up the chickens at dusk all the boys were tucked up in their arks - probably having worn themselves out with introductions...... peace and quiet everywhere.
Thanks to the dry spell everything is almost back to normal......   it won't last long though - we have three litters due imminently.... consecutively if not contemporaneously!!!!  Mrs Merkel, Delila and Ginger ----- our diary tells us which order they're supposed to farrow in but their waistlines tell us a different story: -
"Up to 36 piglets running around together" we all decided this afternoon could be beyond enough!!! We put it down to the dry spell.......  it makes everything go a lot faster........ or something.....................