Castration

Yesterday's Activities:

• None. Well, none on the farm. It was an enforced day off because Leslie and Jeff were taking a first-aid course, and Ali (my only other ride to the farm) was sick.
  

Today's Activities:

• Chores. See below.
• Transplanted lots of tomatoes. Seeded melons.
  
• Lunch.
• Mixed the rest of the compost in the greenhouse into potting mix. Moved it all to the front (the heated portion) of the greenhouse. We had cleared a space the other day when we moved the brassicas outside. We now have a small area to store potting soil and a seeding area. See this diagram:
  
  
• We cleared out the unheated area of all the seeding stuff and then hosed the soil down in hopes of making a bit more workable.
  
• I sorted a few baskets of rutabaga into largish and smallish so that the largish ones could be sold in the farm store first.
  

Okay. This morning's chores came with the added excitement of helping Johann castrate the piglets. We began by separating the mother, Greta, from the piglets. We did this by luring her away with food. We enclosed her in a nearby pen, and Johann warned that she may get pretty violent once she realises that she can't get to her babies. Then we cornered the piglets in their pen and I kept them cornered whilst Johann did the dirty deed one piglet at a time. About half way through Greta escaped from her pen by busting the door open.

Suddenly both Johann and I were in a rather peculiar situation. It was if we were both stranded on an island with dangerous fish swarming the waters around us. The island was the piglet pen, of course, which we had locked ourselves into to protect us from the dangerous fish that was Greta. She was... livid? She was almost barking. Johann managed to maneuver out of the pen we were in and slowly force Greta back into her pen. I braced the door of the pen whilst Johann singlehandedly finished with the piglets.

Still cleaning...

Today's activities:

• Seeded several trays of lettuce, fennel, flowers and tomatoes.
• Collected maple sap for the last time. The sap is flowing pretty regularly but it's been consistently cloudy for the past while, and the sap from certain trees tastes very... green. And by that I mean, much like how willow or grass tastes green. When the sap runs clear it tastes pretty watery and plain.
• Spent a long while with Jeff scratching the top layer of fungus laden soil off of the onion trays. The fungus appears either dark green, really dark green, or orange (when it has dried out), and makes the top 1-2mm of soil stick together and resist water. Scratching it off often reveals quite dry soil underneath which is a big problem if you're a... you know... water gulping seedling.
• Lunch.
  
• Met with the Jeff, Leslie, Ali, and Jarrod out in the barn by the new piglets that were born Saturday morning. This is to be a regular meeting time to discuss any issues. The only real issue was sorting out that Jarrod would no longer be doing chores (feeding the cows and pigs, milking, mucking out the milking area, watering the chickens, and collecting eggs), and that I'd start doing that for a bit in order to get the hang of it.
  
• The rest of the afternoon Jeff and I worked on cleaning up the disaster area that is the main shed. Part of this shed will eventually be used as space to process (wash, sort, and bunch) the produce from the fields.
  

Watching the piglets was a bit of a mixed experience. They are pretty adorable creatures. About the size of a loaf of bread (and with similar proportions), these eight little dudes spent most of the time clambering to find a nipple, or sleeping for 20 seconds at a time by resting their heads on another feeding sibling. The mother, the size of a small sofa, just lay on her side grunting occasionally and snuffling distractedly.

Actually, one piglet was away from the action, right by the mothers head, laying on its side and obviously dying. How so? It had glassy eyes and twitchy breathing and was occasionally pawing around at the air in a pathetic way. Over the course of our meeting I watched it slowly become less and less active until eventually its mouth hung open and it wasn't moving really. Between you and me, I silently repeated a little prayer for it. Maybe we'll meet up on its next go 'round, or mine.

I checked back just before I left and discovered a bit of gruesomeness. There were now only six piglets feeding (originally there were seven plus the sickly one). There was one piglet which was dead and only the remains of another piglet (just the ear and a bit of something). So it goes. I was told that the male pigs are kept away from a new litter because they'll occasionally eat the young ones but, as I found out today, in some cases so will the mother.