Life

I just went down to give the chicks - destined to be butchered in a few short months - some water.

I feel so compromised. I'm enjoying looking after the animals here more than any other part - the pigs are friendly, fun, interesting animals to be around, and the hens are always entertaining. While I don't find the chicks quite as cute as my fellow intern, I'm really enjoying seeing them grow. They are so different now than a week ago. They really do look like beautiful fluffy chicks, but you can see the chicken-ness of them too - the way they drink, the way they eat...

We were planting out onions grown from seed today. That was fine, though it tends to make my back ache because of all the bending over. Onions don't have much in the way of roots at this age and size, being just a single green stem-leaf going down, often as a single root. Fiddly to plant. And of course they are alive, living things in my care. But... it's just not the same as scratching a pig and seeing it enjoy the attention, seeing it be curious as you come over, seeing it hoover up plants in a new enclosure...

But of course - of course - raising animals involves harvesting them in the same way as plants are harvested. If you have annual plants, you kill them when you pull them from the ground in the same way as the meat chickens will be killed. If you have perennials, parts of the plant will be taken, excessive spreading will be stopped (as in the raspberry canes we cut back, or the strawberries we dug up), in the same way that you might remove a kid from a nanny goat to keep her producing milk.

Life leads to death; it is the one sensible outcome of it. Nothing else. I know this.

Maybe I just need to grow up and accept it. The funny thing is, I'm not afraid of doing the actual killing - I'm not that squeamish. It's just the fact that the 5 little pigs are destined to become bacon not lovely old-aged boars (well, they get more boorish as they grow, I guess!)... they feel a little bit like friends, like a pet. I keep needling Tony when he eats bacon - oh, what was this pig called? Not in spite, just to get a clearer understanding of how his mind works with this.

I can visualise me keeping a herd of goats and a flock of chickens a lot more readily than I can see me planting rows upon rows of onions. But how can I do that if I don't want to eat meat?

It's a conundrum.

Dinner time!

Life on the farm seems to revolve around two things: Breakfast and dinner for the animals. And they really appreciate being fed, too - especially the boar who salivates from the minute he sees the bucket of food heading his way.

It's been all change this week; the 5 piglets are on their own, and their mum is in with the boar (making him extra pushy, and feeding them hard work - get your snouts out of the bucket so I can tip it out, please!). The red pig is much better after her dreadful giving birth, but probably destined to be sausages in a month or two - good if you like sausages in buns at farmers' markets!

The laying chickens haven't moved, but they seem to like me better now - sometimes 6 or 8 of them will stand and look at me when I'm in the barn. I assume this is because I bring them food... Anyway, we also have about 27 chicks which area meat birds, currently living in a large plastic tub. They smell odd - not entirely unpleasant, but not entirely pleasant either. A sort of sweet stench. Tony's dad is redecorating the kitchen, so actually going from the chemical paint smell in there to the natural animal smell in the conservatory is quite nice!

And as for us, well, dinner time comes after their dinner times. Yesterday it was pizza (but because the pizza shop was shutting, they only had pepperoni, which of course I won't eat - so I made do with carrots from here and houmous, some cheese, and corn bread... yummy! Oh and a bowl of cereal after, heh).

And every day we're working on things that will go into other people's dinners throughout the year. Today, more dessert, actually - transplanting and weeding strawberries.

Yum yum yum!

Sowing seeds

It feels so good doing it. I'm actually here, mulching, raking, hoeing, and sowing! In Ireland we'd, all 40 of us, stand round and see a 5 minute demo of hoeing. Here, I have to hoe the polytunnel, rows of spinach and kale that have overwintered, sow lettuce and tomatoes and peppers and and and...

I don't even have to think, too much, about what I'm learning because it's all going in bit by bit, by body action (though I am making notes - less relevant here as I'll only be here a month, more where I'll be for most of the season).

The red sow who was having trouble.. continued to have trouble. Tony gave her penicillin and helped remove stillborn piglets from her, but she managed to tread on and kill the remaining live ones. Such a shame, as at least 3 looked good for a couple of days. She seemed very unwell for a while but is doing much better now, thankfully. The other mother is doing fine and is up and about, looking dandy, with her litter of 8. And the older 5 are getting more curious and entertaining.

I am, however, having thoughts of veganism. Not that the animals here are kept badly - they aren't, at all. I'm wondering if keeping animals in cages, ever, is really the right thing to do. Do I really think keeping a cow in milk production is right/fair/natural?

It'll take me a while to work this out, I think. I love cheese. I drink milk in all my hot drinks. I'm eating a lot of eggs at the moment, too...!

On Friday we have some meat birds coming (as day old chicks - I can't wait to see them!), and are trying to get one hen to incubate a clutch of eggs, so there's plenty going on here!

My Life as an Organic Farmer: Day 3

What a day. I'm on Tony's farm near Uxbridge, Ontario. Tony has lots of vegetables, chickens for eggs (with meat birds coming this month), and pigs. Three sows and one boar, one sow ("Cow" - yes, that is her name) with 5 two month old piglets, one that was very heavily pregnant and almost unable to stand (I'll call her Red) - and expected to give birth shortly - and the other that wasn't expected to give birth for another 3 weeks (Blondie).

Well. Red made a pretty poor mother, and probably accidentally killed 4-5 of her piglets with one stillborn - leaving her with 5. Tony was in with her this morning, trying to help. I went down to feed the boar and the other two ladies, but was surprised to find Blondie not that interested in her food.

So as I was coming back up the field I went round to have a look in her sty to find that she'd given birth too, and was making a much better mum than Red! She had 9, one of which died, but leaving 8 suckling piglets (though 3 have cuts on them from where they have been trodden on my mum - this is normal, I believe, though sows seem to learn from doing!).

So Cow is now a grandmother (Red and Blondie being her children), and Tony is a lot happier - he was rather sad with Red making a bad fist of things, but cheered up when I told him what I'd discovered!

In other news - the weather here is beautiful, and I got sunburned a bit on my first day. There was a party last night, with a bonfire outside though later it got windy and the fire had to be put out. I've been feeding the pigs, chickens, planting out and potting up, amongst other things.

It's really lovely here!