What a weekend! Our music school, Opus Academy, entered a float in the Navan Fair Parade. We had our senior Rockband playing as we rolled down the main street. The kids were fabulous, the crowds cheerful and the weather perfect.
We had lots of fun over the last few weeks getting the float ready. Bought an old hay wagon, stripped it down to bare bones then spray painted the frame pink! The theme of the fair was Chasin’ a Country Rainbow so we searched the property for anything that could be recycled to decorate the wagon.
By Saturday morning we had it all ready to go. What a hoot! And we placed first in our category! How cool is that?!
The girls and I had lots of help which just reminded us how important community spirit can be. So thank you to the kids in the band, Aidan, Alex, Rohit and Amy. Also thank you to Jason Camm for using his Cammstruction truck to pull the wagon in the parade. Johnny, thanks for keeping things light and of course, Brian who found the hay wagon, mentioned we should be entering the parade and helped us build the thing!
Now I think that the hay wagon will become our fruit and vegetable display when we do markets in the next few years.
Speaking of vegetables, I started seeds for lettuce this week. I hope to be able to grow a good variety of veggies throughout the winter right in the hothouse. And, great news! I found a gentleman on market place (Facebook) that was willing to give away 9 yards of wood mulch. He also delivers it! For free!!! Should be getting that today. That’s a game changer for me. Now I can really build beds for next year. What a great gift. (My week got away from me, so it’s a few days later, and he never showed. Starting to think it was a scam….)
On the animal front, we are starting to get eggs. They are being layed by chickens that the girls got recently. Bantam Cochins. Small eggs. Like sooooo small. And only one a day. So……cute, but….. Actually, I can imagine that they are the perfect size for a toddler meal. It IS nice to collect them. It’s what I love most about having chickens.
In other – sadder – news, Thursday was a hard day on the farm. We lost one of our forever animals. Our male pig named Pua. After noticing that he was in extreme respiratory distress, we called a vet over to come see him. After attempts to help him, he had what was most likely a heart attack brought on by heart failure mixed with the stress of having people poke and prod him. While we were very sad to see him go, if this was in fact heart failure, he would have eventually succumb to this disease in the end, and probably with more prolonged pain and suffering.
One of the saddest parts was seeing his sisters’ reactions to his death. When he was in distress, they were very concerned and kept poking at him, but once he had passed, Nyree (our friendly girl) laid down next to him and didn’t move until we took him away. They stayed in their house just sleeping for the rest of the day, which is out of character for them, but as I write this (on Saturday afternoon), they are finally starting to get back to normal.
So this could be a genetic trait that all three pigs share. This means big decisions. Do we hope that only Pua was affected so that we can keep these girls for breeding as intended and just get a new male from a different line. We might wait a little while and see if the girls grow up healthy. The vet gave them a shot of antibiotics, just to make sure that we aren’t dealing with a pneumonia (since they sound like they might have some respiratory noises).
their first day on our farm! 
always scratching on something 
trying to get good pictures of a shy pig is hard! 
he finally let me get close enough for a face shot!
All in all, the pigs are now going to be a wait a see project. This was our first big death on the farm, and I think we all handled it better than we thought we would.
In the next blog I’ll be talking about harvesting some garden goodies. Until then, keep well.
Unruffled Farms 