Hey all, I'm sorry I've been so entirely off the ball with posting lately. I think the exhaustion of finals never quite got resolved. Bleh.

Anyway, my week at the pig farm was fabulous! I was in Berwickshire, which is on the very Eastern edge of the Scotland/England border. If you've ever read The Hobbit, the Shire is a good description of the sweet, green village. The farm I worked at was run by C (the guy I've been pestering for ages, and who has been quite patient) and D (his wife, who is amazing in about 500 ways), and there is a variety of farm staff who help out.

Upon arriving at the several hundred year old farmhouse, I was informed that they were just about to start Christmas dinner, which had been postponned due to Christmas being a crazily busy time for pig farmers. People eat ham for Christmas? A lot of ham? Go figure.

So I sat down with the farmer couple, their grown son, and their friends from Holland. We had about 60 delicious foods, including:
Glazed ham
Roast goose with pork sausage stuffing
Roast parsnips and carrots
super buttery roast potatoes
lima beans and peas
braised cabbage
vegetarian haggis
and etc.

It was delicious! I had never had goose before, which tastes like rich dark turkey meat on crack, or vegetarin haggis, which is full of oats and spices and good things.

After lunch, we fed the sheep by driving a quad which pulled a feeding device called "the Snacker". It deposits wee piles of grain (aka "snacks") at intervals along the pasture, and I still laugh thinking of all the sheep running pell- mell toward us, baa-ing loudly. Then we fed the "weaner" pigs (about 8-12 weeks old), and the cattle. The rest of the afternoon was devoted to curling up in the living room digesting.

That night nobody really ate supper (just a few digestives and slices of cranberry Wenslydale cheese), but D made a treacle pudding for everyone. Now, I had only ever heard of treacle in Harry Potter novels, and knew it as basically a desssert based on corn syrup, which doesn't sound particularly appealing to me.

Oh, was I wrong. It was SO amazing. Delicious. Incredible. So much so that when I learned they were making another the night after I left, I almost stayed an extra day just to taste it again. Man.

Anway, The next morning we set up fencing for the weaners to move into the field for the first time, since they spend the first few weeks of life inside to help them stay warm. I never knew that stringing fence for Dr. Mike would be such a useful skill! We set that up and did the morning feeding, then had a bit of lunch. At this juncture C recieved a call from the other person who was supposed to be doing EMS (work experience) with me, who cancelled. So I promptly called Nell and told her to rock herself over to Berwick-upon-Tweed to play with pigs. We then went and moved the weaners, then put the newer weaners into the shed that we had just emptied of the others. I seriously love little pigs.

So, we went and had supper (goose and pheasant stew), and I started working on EMS forms while C picked up Nell. Yay!

Thursday, C and D went with their son A to a friend's estate for a day of shooting, so Nell and I were at the mercy of their main farm hand. Lucky for us, he was exceptionally patient and skilled and taught us a lot about driving the quad (much bigger than the Wuelfings', Lacey!), feeding older pigs, and moving pigs around. We moved some soon-to-farrow sows up to the farrowing pens, some newly weaned sows down to the field, and some new baby piglets (aww!) and their sow to an ark. Did I mention that baby pigs are really cute? Since D wasn't there to fatten us, we had porridge for breakfast, bacon sandwiches for lunch (after I figured out how to use their old stove), and some bread and butter for dinner.

Friday And Saturday were much of the same, though the quad was busted so we drove the Land Rover instead. Yay for driving a cool old stick shift on the opposite side of the car! it was a lot of fun. A bunch of the pigs had escaped (the battery on the fence wore out), so we shuffled some of them around. Food those days consisted of the usual breakfast (porridge), but lunch on Friday was tomato soup with game stock and cream (yum), and dinner on Friday was Cumberland sausage and mashed potatoes, while dinner on Saturday was pheasant with mustard and cream over rice. Yes, we were spoiled.

As a side note, they didn't have the same compunction for refrigeration that you or I do. Milk styed out until it was drunk (2 or 3 days), pots of leftover hung out on the counter, etc. It really freaked me out, but I didn't get sick, so I can't really complain.

Sunday morning, I went out and fed pigs and cows, then packed up my stuff and went back. All in all, it was an amazing trip. Everyone down there was awesome, helpful, encouraging, and hilarious. They invited/agreed that Nell and I should go back for lambing this year. I can't wait!

I put some pictures up here, in the pictures section, so you can see the cute little pigs and etc.