Piggy enjoyed rooting in the deep snow for snails. She spent most of the time asleep in a deep-strawed loose-box; I did envy her.
I had some good snow-savvy wwoofers to help. They found Piggy charming. They didn't have to get her moved from straw to orchard and back twice a day! - though they did help a lot with the difficult first time into the dark, fusty, but well-provisioned loose box. Her diet has been nearly all locally-grown barley and peas. The local expert says that peas make for hard bacon. We'll see.
The sheep are well-covered, don't mind weather, but were fed up at having to eat that dull late hay instead of being able to find small nibbles of grass. The half-bred lambs, the start of my "primitive" flock to take me into a low-input, low-output future, are doing really well on rather meagre rations. Now the snow has gone I have begun feeding them a little rolled oats, partly to make it clear that I am one of the good guys.
More snow pictures . . . . . it really did look gorgeous, until the animals and I began treading it down and churning it up with the underlying mud. Getting around the fields got harder and harder.The wwoofers and I were snowed in for several days; eventually they walked the 7 miles to Monmouth to get a lift to their next stay, while I finally got out five days later.
It's quite an art not to run out of anything, and there's always something that gets overlooked. This time it was the biomass pellets, so the wwoofers had to use electric heaters in their bedroom. It doesn't often happen, I promise!
Next month: it really will be the saga of the pigmeat.
