29 June 2013

The menagerie is growing.

We were given two turkeys, a male and a female, seen here eating green stuff with the chickens.   We harvest edible weeds and vegetable matter for them when their camps have been denuded.


The turkeys add a wonderful dimension with their different sounds.   Apart from his belligerent koeloekoeloekoeloe they converse with musical little tweeps which I find very endearing.   Soon they will be separated from the chickens, because we have plans to keep geese and ducks in a large camp with them, with a dam and nesting sites better suited to their size.








How many cups of coffee does it take

to raise a piglet?

This is the equation that came to mind today, a week after I removed piglet from the sty a second time, while I was boiling the kettle for a hot water bottle for her for the umpteenth time.   Okay so I don't fill up the bottle with coffee, but living alone I boil one cup of water for coffee about four or five times a day.   Now I'm boiling at least four or five cups every four hours on average, except when she is cuddling up with me at the computer or on my chair in the evening when I watch some TV.



I realised the importance of contact when one evening after a particularly long day out on the farm, I couldn't get her to open her eyes or eat or drink at all.   I sat with her in my arms until I was ready for bed, and then she made little grunts when I put her in her box.   I didn't think she was going to live but when she was hungry the next morning, I resolved to have more contact and she is much livelier now.

Seen here attacking a slice of papaja...

Piglet now eats on average most of a small avocado pear and almost half a medium paw-paw, both sprinkled liberally with growing mash, in a 24-hour period.   I read that they need to be fed a wet mixture of growing mash and milk with a teaspoon, but she gets it coming up through her little snout and then she has difficulty breathing, so I just put the mash on the fruit because she sucks it up with the fruit.   I don't know where she puts all that, judging by her size, and her tummy feels nice and full, yet she does not seem to be growing at all.   The siblings are now more than double her size.

Perhaps I'm destined to end up with the smallest miniature pig in history...

Ever

Oh yes, the coffee story.   If I make her a hot water bottle five times a day that equals 25 cups.   Today was the eighth day, that means 200 cups so far.

T h i s   i s   o n e   i n d u l g e d   p i g   I   s a y.


23 June 2013

God planted a garden east in Eden

and put man to work in it.   That's what we read in Genesis ch 2.   A garden.   Think fruit trees, herbs, seed plants..  today we call it permaculture.   Everything grows together with everything else, living off the soil which never gets ploughed to damage the structure thereof, worms and microbes can grow, feed and aerate the soil, and the biodiversity of the garden prevents the prevalence of one insect or pathogen or nematode over the other.   The whole works like a well-oiled machine, dying where they grow, dropping leaves and turning into humus for other plants to grow on.

This is not Eden I know, but there is a lot of food for thought right there in that tiny piece of scripture which immediately pales in significance beside the rest of the story which is about the snake and the fruit and the woman.   What we also seem to miss is how God went on to say that everything that was in the garden was for man's consumption (for free mind you), the berries and the fruit and the herbs and everything bearing seed etc, because we home in on the one tree they were not supposed to eat from.

This is what I tried to teach budding pastors at Back to the Bible Training College for a couple of years, until my own vegetable project became so huge I had to give up teaching there.   Nevertheless, without a tractor, without fertiliser and without one drop of insecticide, just replenishing the soil with veldgrass mulch and horse manure,
                                                                                    take a look at the size of the
cauliflowers and chinese cabbage we produced..


We had fun



  Would-be pastors learning about farming
God's way

My theory is this, that if one person could be found, only one, out of each extended family in Africa, who would be willing to plant a garden no matter really how small, from which to also keep 10 chickens fed, healthy and contained, there needn't be hunger anywhere in Africa.   Four or five tomato plants, two runner beans, 20 onions, 30 beetroot, 30 carrots and 5 cabbages repeated every month, a lemon tree, an orange tree and a nut in the back corner to share with neighbours, some papaja and banana along the back fence for privacy, and sweet potatoes on the sidewalk will keep a family in perpetual supply of good nutritive vegetables.   

A rooster in the back with 10 hens will provide a minimum of 6 eggs each day, and if each of the hens sat on 12 eggs only once a year and produced 10 new chickens, that's 100 chickens for slaughter.   Each year.   That is about 2 chickens a week...!   The eggs and chickens come virtually for free, given the excess from the vegetables that they can be fed on, together with cooked foods like rice and porridge and so on, which they love.   In return the chickens will provide manure for feeding the vegetable garden again - speak of the circle of life!

One of the pastors-in-training took the concept to our local township Umjindini, where he ministered at a church on Sundays.   When the unemployed youths got together and planted a garden, they not only had fun doing something together and looking after it, they had heaps of fun harvesting it and handing it out to the aged in the community.
The kitchen team harvesting at BBTC.

There is something to be said for planting a garden. 




Piglet turns out to be a girl...

Yesterday Piglet's energy levels sank really low for the first time since they were born, so I removed him once again to try and make sure he gets all the nourishment he needs.   We guard them at the troughs, defending them against Pickles and Pork who eat as if there's no tomorrow, and then he eats, but I have never been able to establish whether he suckles at all.   Initially he was not that much smaller than the rest but they have grown so much that suddenly he is half their size.

Today, wisely, little Miss Muffett (MM) asked me whether Piglet was a boy or a girl, so I quickly checked and discovered that he is a she.

At that moment her fate turned from 'bacon' to 'mummy'.   She will probably live to a ripe old age on this farm, bearing other little piggies for us to slaughter because the way she's going she is not going to go to slaughter.   She makes the cutest little squeals when I try to insert her into her box with her hot water bottle whenever she has been fed, preferring to rather fall asleep in my arms before being put to bed.

I ask you.   I'm warmly tucked into bed with my laptop right now, with piglet wrapped in a towel tucked under the blankets beside me...   Every now and then there's the faintest little grunt of satisfaction emanating from the bump under the duvet.

How does one go from that to serving her up for dinner, ever?


Meanwhile Chocolat has also been busy


not so much with the murderous (read manly) exploits of her brother FJ, but let's just say the more feminine creative exploits which are to be expected of a budding chocolatier.

Chocolate brownies individually wrapped, so delicious!

But her talents stretch further than chocolate goodies alone.   She bakes the best buttermilk banana loaf, seen here with the decadent brownie and a jar of peaches.....

The peaches defy description.   Try to imagine a fleshy white peach tinted pink on the outside from having been poached in red wine, not too sweet, definitely spicy, reminiscent of Christmas, but much more daring than the Christmases of your childhood...   Think gluwein, the best you ever had... think cassia bark, cloves and all spice, think rich and textured, think layers of taste...   leave this delectable jar of temptation on the shelf for a month to marry all the layers more subtly and thoroughly.   Serve with creme fraische.   Top with grated chocolate.   Wait for the explosion in your mouth... and your dinner guests' praises!



16 June 2013

Who doesn't just loooove a good scratch?

Pickles does.   He changes from a rough, gruff, snorting, compact, shoving piece of machinery into a blob of jelly if I reach over the fence with a stick to offer a scratch.   Watch ...
Laying down expectantly

Keeping a beady eye out to make sure I don't move away..

Rolling over to get as close as possible, making sure he's serviced both sides


And finally, when I scratch around the ears and eyes with my fingers, he falls fast asleep!

What a pig's life it is on this farm!

15 June 2013

Early morning sun, coffee, and the blue wildebeest that just kept on giving...

It took us two days to break down the carcass by hand, and slice out all the best pieces for the biltong all the while putting aside the little pieces for mincing down to make the sausage



Finally the biltong is hung out to dry.



Then we started on the sausage.   

                  Little miss muffett decided if she didn't come to our aid we would never finish making the "wrosie".    
                                Spreading the mince over a layer of diced fat                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               
Little hands spreading another layer of fat over the red meat
Tirelessly turning the handle to feed the mix into the casings...





                                            We made thin little ones for drying (never again), 
                                   big flat ones also for drying, and fat round ones for the braai.




How proud she was of her "wrosie" and how proud a granny am I!!!




There 
is a theory 
that to allow little ones 
to help in the kitchen preparing food
is such a confidence booster, the author
of the article went so far as to say that it is a hedge against 
substance abuse in their teenage years.   

Not only does it foster self-worth, 
it makes them aware of what is good for eating, 
and therefore what is good for their body, 
helping formulate better choices 
concerning the body 
and how 
to look 
after 
it 



11 June 2013

So much of possessiveness ...

As predicted, that smile has not left FJ's face yet.


Not only that, he is so possessive over his 80kg+ gnu, I wanted to take it to a butcher to be broken down and the biltong sliced and the wors made but he was having none of that.   Sore strapped elbow and all, we were going to do all the work ourselves.    My rubber arm got twisted ...

It took all of Friday and most of Saturday, but it is with great satisfaction that we could stand back at the end and say with confidence, no butcher can be paid to go to as much trouble as we did, trimming the meat and lifting out the sinews before carefully checking the grain and slicing the meat.   It just wouldn't be fair.


As for FJ placing the slices perfectly so that the scattered spices would reach everywhere absolutely uniformly - you had to be there!


10 June 2013

Just one of FJ's many talents...

... is making homemade pasta.


Pasta making is one of those deceptively easy looking exploits that can collapse your dinner party or make your meal into something memorable.    

Perhaps I should leave you to find out why...   
                                       
                                                                        Suffice to say there's a reason why Italian mama's are usually robust, and also tend to spend their entire day in the kitchen.   

The picture above shows a wide, hand cut pasta called papardelle, a particular favourite of mine.


2 June 2013

If chickens could be happy


How much emotion do animals really feel, in human terms?   I have opinions within my own heart that fluctuate between thinking they feel emotion just as we do, and howbeit rarely, the other side of the spectrum - they feel nothing.   That's when they act up, act stupid or show no mercy one to the other and I am angered into thinking they're hardly better than an inanimate thing and they 'feel' nothing.   Perhaps it is because I care for animals that I want them to care too, and then disappointment pushes me to the other extreme.   Neither opinion is completely true I'm sure but if chickens could be happy, mine would be.    They have enough additional feed and a roof over their heads when they want to be dry and safe, they have nesting boxes full of grass...






... and they also have freedom between sunrise and sunset to scratch around out of doors.   What more can a chicken ask for?   The eggs are delicious with perky stand-up orange coloured yolks which attest to the fact that they always have fresh green stuff to eat.   I have constructed numerous small camps around their nighttime bedroom and egg room, because I found the wide outdoors does not match up to their scratching ability.   They turn it to desert in no time no matter how big it is.   The smaller camps are opened up to them one by one to give the greens time to recover so they always have fresh greens to peck, and scratch in for grubs and insects.

Before the pigs came they also got all the excess greens and other vegetables from the kitchens and vegetable gardens.   Now the other vegetables goes to the pigs but they still get lettuce, spinach, leek tops, citrus and capsicum all of which the pigs believe it or not, don't eat.   And here I thought pigs eat everything.

The chickens are called Boschvelders, which is an African breed - go figure.  They look like Nguni cows to me, in all their gloriously different colours.   Someone should come and paint them.





There is something deeply satisfying about collecting the eggs in the afternoon, knowing that they are fresh, organically produced, and that the hens have not been tortured in the process.   

I once bought hens that were reported to be better layers.   When they arrived I was devastated to find their beaks had been cauterised (read burnt off so that they would not hook on the small aperture of wire frame through which they are supposed to eat).   The bottom was longer than the top so I suppose what they actually do is scoop the food up.   That was not the end of it.   I shook out a bag of freshly-picked and then also finely chopped in consideration of the state of their beaks, greens next to them.   They didn't know what it was, didn't even give it a second look.

Then I took laying mash and poured it into troughs about a meter away for them to eat, only to find they expected the food to come to them, they apparently didn't know they had to walk there.   In the evening they still sat in the same place on the bare ground with the open door and perches just inside.   I picked them up one by one, all 150 of them, and sat them down on the perches and they just kept falling off.   Eventually they mostly slept on the floor, with just a few sitting on the lower perches.

I persevered.   Hunger drove them outside and to the troughs first.   It took about a week before they slowly started responding to the green stuff which we kept taking to them every day.   They recovered.   The beaks grew back some of the distance so they actually can peck again.   They sleep on their perches and fly down like normal chickens in the morning and run between the open camp with greens and the troughs with laying mash, not wanting to miss out on anything.
 

As for being better layers, that part is not true.   When they are treated like the Boschvelders (read not kept under lights 24/7 and fed incessantly and never exercised) the two breeds are on a par with each other.   Except the 'fancy' variety's eggs were tiny for almost all of the first year.

FJ has been to egg producers and seen what the state is of chickens that have become commercially redundant, and especially how they are treated when they are taken out to be sold for slaughter.   I shall say no more.   He has seriously urged me never to set foot in such a place.

What we do to animals for production, high yields and money is disgusting.