A Porcine problem.

23rd November

‘Big Face’ the male pig has had a reprieve.
After much pleading and arguing by Tom, we have come to an agreement. In a complete reversal of fate, the female pig is now the one going for slaughter, and dear ‘Big Face’ will live on as half of our breeding pair. Our original intention was to keep the female (who incidentally has no name) as a breeding sow, to use Big Face for meat and to buy another male to breed with her. Big Face is her brother and so we couldn’t keep them both for breeding. Thomas argued that he is by far the nicer temperament of the two and as we had grown so attached to him we should switch the plan. We had to admit that he had a point. We would all have been sorry to see him go. The only slight hitch to this plan is that the female is not yet big enough to go to slaughter and we may have to wait until after Christmas; so no Christmas ham…unless we buy one from the butcher of course.

The next problem is to find a way of separating them before she becomes sexually mature. I don’t think we have long! I am hoping that sometime this week we can get over to the field and rig up an electric fence and a couple of corrugated iron pens underneath the apple trees. They would love this as they have completely obliterated their ‘garden’ next to their pen which means they have no vegetation to munch on, except for what I throw them. Ok, so along with their pig granules I am throwing them copious amounts of apples, but it seems so much more natural for them to forage for themselves.

With regards to home edding, the children have had very little input from me this week as we seem to have been plagued by visitors almost every day. However, Thomas found plenty to do on his blog sites and websites which he is constantly creating and updating, and Francis, when asked, said he has been editing films. They are both also working on a new business idea which they are sure is going to make them loads of money! It’s something to do with games sites and graphics for games. They did try to explain it to me but I’m way behind them in this area so I can’t explain it to anyone else!

I can see why parents get worried about what their children are doing on line. It has more to do with the fact that parents don’t really understand what their children are doing on line which makes us nervous! The best we can do is to be as informed as possible, take a healthy interest in what they are doing (even when we don’t understand it) and then make sure that the children are aware of the dangers around. I’m always popping my head around the door and saying “Hi, how are you getting on/what are you working on at the moment,” and they are usually very happy to tell me, even if I don’t have a clue what they are talking about!