The Idler

A Country Diary: 59

30 October 2007

DISASTER WITH THE pigs. Over half term we went away for a week to visit relatives, and we left the pigs in the charge of our neighbours. When we returned there was a rather stern note on the kitchen table from one neighbour telling us that the pigs had undermined the foundations of the other neighbour’s garden, he was not pleased about it and she would now hand responsiblity back to us. I took round a bottle of wine and apologised. The other neighbour told me that there would be a cost as he would need to repair his wall. It seems that he and a friend had been in the pig pen moving a fence in an effort to try to stop the pigs from causing further damage. Strange, we thought, that these things happen whenever you go away. The last time we left the pigs in the care of a housesitter, they escaped from their pen. Well, Bernard had the answer. Bernard is the Rayburn man and comes from an old Devon family. His dad used to keep pigs. And by chance, Bernard had been fixing our Rayburn here during the pig panic, as he called it. He said it was a simple case of the pigs being hungry. If they had been well stuffed, they would not have bothered uprooting the wall, in their search for worms to eat. He was right: I inspected their living quarters and they’d eaten every last scrap of their bedding straw, meaning they must have been absolutely famished, Well, I have now put up an electric fence along one side of the enclosure. You just run the wire a few inches off the ground to prevent the pigs sticking their mighty noses under it. I don’t think there was any real danger of them undermining the neighour’s garden any more, but at least he can see that I am considering his wishes. And there are only two weeks to go to slaughter, so it’s time to start stuffing their piggy faces with grub. By the way, did I mention that we have named them, Gnasher and Rasher?

THE COCKEREL had also disappeared on our return. As had the last remaining rabbit, Felicity. The back yard is now an even lonelier place than when we left it. No chickens, no rabbits. I wonder if the predators can somehow sense when the owners are away? Next time, we’re going to get a housesitter and not impose on the neighbours. What makes it all the worse is that one of the neighbours is vegetarian. Otherwise we would have been able to give her a lot of pig products by way of thanks and apology.

THE DEATHS on the farm have led us to consider bringing in a dog. One neighbour advised that a dog might act as a deterrent to the fox, and I’ve always rather fancied a lurcher. In fact, lurchers are the only dog I really like. All other dogs seem pathetic and whingey to me. But the noble lurcher, as long as we trained him to keep away form the cows, might be a useful addition to the menagerie and a good companion. And a dog might encourage us to get out a bit more: sometimes days pass and I barely leave the house, which is crazy as we’re surrounded by some of the msot beautiful landscape in the country.

IN THE GARDEN I mulched one of the beds with a nice thick lay of old straw from the henhouse. I remember reading in Fukuoka’s The One-Straw Revolution that he maintains the fertility of his fields simply with straw covered with a little poultry manure. We picked the last of the purple beans. The cabbages are growing, but very slowly. There are a few sprout-like objects appearing on the Brussells sprouts plants. Overall the thing still looks a mess and I resolve at least to smarten up the pathways this winter. I also resolve to make the veg patch far more productive next year. I am told that the answer is slug pellets.

ENDS