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...?

Newest addition to the homestead

Kevin enjoying a milky

Last month (December 2011) we got out first little piglet. He goes by the name of Kevin Bacon, or just Kevin..lol.

We got him at four weeks of age, so he still needed some milk, and we had to do this by hand with a bottle. Poor thing was the last one of his litter to survive after his mom had laid on the rest. He comes from our friends, Pierre and Carmen Nykamp who live in De Hoop in the Bo Kouga.

Yum... I get little sleepy..

Such a small guy. We got him some salve for his wounds, and pretty much got him settled in quite quickly. He does love his food though, and his favourites are fruit like apricots and peaches, apple and basically any kind of waste from the kitchen, so he gets a nice variety of stuff. He has also not at  about 7/8 weeks started to grovel with his snout for titbits in his pen. He is just such a cutie, and has grown nicely already, his wounds are all healed, and he has a very nice skin now.

ooohhh... what are these ??

So this being our first little chapter in the Animal Husbandry of the homestead, we wanted to introduce Kevin to everybody. :) Our plan is to get a sow soon, and to let them have piglets twice over the next two years after which we will slaughter Kevin. He is a Landrace (the pink ones) and will just grow to an unmanageable size if we keep him. So when his two years are up, he will literally become bacon. :) But we have made peace with the fact that although we will get animals here, they have to work, and serve a purpose, otherwise there is no point really..

Rene the farm animal whisperer!

The kids know this too. Rene our eldest has been a good example to his peers this holiday. He has taken not only Kevin under his wing, but has really helped with the lone roosters too. Feeding, giving water, socializing.. We are very proud of him. :)