KW-04 When Brunhilda is feeling tetchy.
I’m often asked "What do you do all winter?” It’s a perfectly reasonable question. I’m certainly not doing much in the vegetable growing space. There is fruit tree pruning to be done, but this only takes a few days, and will probably start this week. Mending fences is an answer I give quite a lot. Hauling wood is common.
The problem is, I just do stuff. Like most of the time here. The barracks is an exercise in constant motion, and mostly, I just get on with it. I know I must be doing something because I am tired all the damn time. This is partly due to old age and decrepitude, and party due to the weather, but quite significantly due to always doing stuff as well.
This week I know what I was doing. I was herding pigs.
They usually escape when Brunhilda is feeling tetchy. This week, I have no idea what possessed them. They have finally completely destroyed the electric fence. It’s one of those netting ones, and at the start of the week I was crocheting wire netting back together. But, it’s now completely broken, and the porkers know it is broken. I think they’re doing it just for fun now.
I’ve been through all the emotions. All of them. These are amongst the best fed, most pampered pigs in Germany. They have great food, a human servant who brings it to them twice a day (warmed), plus snacks. They have soft straw in abundance to make a nest out of, a solid house to keep out of the snow, the best, most suitable food that money can buy. Oh yeah, and they are still alive. Which is something of a statistical anomaly for a pig over the age of 6 months in this world.
They have no idea about this, of course, and little interest. The remarkable thing is that they are interested in their freedom. The emotion that I am left with is that of angry vegan. I don’t get that often, but I’ve not been confronted with the drive of a captive animal to be free before.
If they ever make it out of the their piggy paradise and into the big wild forest, I will go looking for them. If I don’t find them, or can’t bring them home, they will have found that freedom. I’m not yet ready to actively help them and this week, I will be mostly be building a completely new compound for them. Again.
I was planning on chatting all about leaf mould and seed lists in this week’s newsletter. But I’m not the boss around here. That would be the trio of Sus scrofa domesticus.
In other news …
The Weather Report - https://twitter.com/BarracksWeather
I was wondering about chill hours for fruit trees last week. Well, since then, we have had another 168 of them. And 20cm of snow.
And this week, I will be sorting out my seeds and figuring out what I have, what I need, and planning the year in the garden. I think I am going to be thinking mostly about soil conditioning this year. Which is what the leaf mould thing was going to be about.
Until then, be excellent to each other, and much piratey love
your
Pirate Ben
xoxo