Little porky, does not give lots of Gaaassss!!!

The digester bag... almost full!!

So far the summer heat has been good for the digester.. extra sunshine, and hot days = more gas production!...

Unless of course your animals get a thrill out of chasing each other round the garden... This was the case last weekend, and what happens then? Well dogs plus cats most often spell disaster, and since ours have a very love/hate relationship, the dogs chased the cats under the plastic which we use to cover the digester, and then.. Pffftttttt!!!!! Someone misses their footing, and punctures the bag. Luckily we found the hole, and managed to patch it. :)

Have gas - will cook!

Jan was not impressed at all though, and we have decided to close the sides, and top of the digester as well.. We don't mind that our beloved pets create extra work and hassle for us.. :-P

Anyways, we fed it a little more cow manure, dog poo, and grass clippings, and by the next evening the gas production was well underway again. :) Now we just need to actually close the top and sides so that it does not happen again.. The gas has come in very handy over the past 2weeks.. our oven is on the blink, it has a loose wire, and we need to have that fixed.. so as it was tripping the power all the time we had to switch of the entire oven/stove. The guy who was supposed to come and fix it for us, hurt his knee, and was therefore delayed... but he was very concerned that we couldn't cook, so Jan told him not to worry as we produced our own gas! LOL!!!! this statement led to a myriad of questions as you can well imagine, but the short version is that we have been cooking solely off the biogas for the past 2weeks and counting (the even/stove is still not fixed), and even tried baking bread in the solar cooker!

Kevin Bacon... heh.

Other news is that our piglet, Kevin, is getting big now.. well big in organic pork terms.. heh. He gets broken mielies, and kitchen scraps, and for a treat we give him some of our fallen pears now.. He LOVES apples and pears.. and we were talking about what our plans were for him..

We have decided that going the piglet/breeding route will be to intensive for us, and logistically we are just not ready, and may never be.. so for now we will raise him to slaughter weight, and then do him chop chop.. lol. And this will be how we do pigs from now on. We will get two, raise them and slaughter when they are the right size. It will probably be a very sad day once he has to go, as one does get attached to the livestock on ones smallholding, but that's life! And like with our chickens, we raise them consciously, and with a knowledge that they are 100% organic. They have a good life, and that way the circle is complete. I have a lot of respect for our friends who actually farm intensively with pigs and can manage to keep their farms organic... its lots of hard work, and takes a lot of thought! But at the end of the day its more rewarding, and at least you know that the meat you get, is pure... no antibiotics or hormones, no GM feed, and so on. :) And that my friends is what makes it all worthwhile in the long run!!

Rub my snout...?