day three . pop pops . tropical rain

Eggs in the hay bailer. Little black pigs in the field. Swallows in the barn. Hot like a sauna then a big storm to round it all off.

Oh my! Yesterday was a doozy!

The little black pigs are American Guinea Hogs. They are small pigs and very trainable. They are raised on what they can forage plus extra veg and eggs. They eat a lot of grass and clover. Not hard on our infrastructure at all and spend half their day hours quite free.

They clean up fallen apples every morning then run around the property and into one of the fellowship food forests way down the back because the wild plums are coming ripe down there …

.. then after a while they back track eating alfalfa along the banks of the ditch and eventually come back to their own yard and back into the wallow for the hottest part of the day. And in the afternoon they do all of this again plus a couple of buckets of vegetables from the restaurant down the road.

Yes. These are vegetarian pigs. 😆

Their route takes them under the walnut trees and past the oaks ..

.. so as the season progresses the nuts will be devoured - the farm will feed them. This takes years to set up by the way but these guinea hogs are doing very well eating what the season provides. Of course they also have a little grain from the fields and eggs from the chickens.

And they always seem to get back to the barn ok at the end of the day for night time. When we shut all the gates behind them and say ni ni!

Swallows! ⬇️ The barn is heaving with swallows. They arrive late spring every year, repair or rebuild their old nests and hatch piles of new swallows before all suddenly flying off all together every autumn.

The baby swallows ⬆️

and their mother ⬆️ (or possibly their father - hard for me to know). And this is only one family of a multiple in the rafters of the barn. There are probably over thirty nests in this barn alone. It is a proper swallow nursery in there with the adults flying in on a gazillion missions to bring the babies bugs. An adult swallow may catch and deliver up to 5,000 insects a day to feed her fledglings. So, these birds collect thousands of flies and mosquitoes and ticks from the farm environs. And they never collide! Birds are amazing.

⬇️ Apparently the chickens ( chooks in NZ vernacular) like to lay their eggs in the hay baler this summer. So I squeeze through the big doors into the tractor shed (a smaller barn) to collect the eggs. Sigh.

They have such lovely laying boxes in the hen house which they ignore. They are free range too. We let them out every morning and lock them in at night.

Is that enough for today?

I promised to keep these daily posts short.

See how the house is being taken over by its own hedges. I won’t get everything trimmed but I will try. I got most of what was on my Days List done yesterday, except for the compost heap, and in the night we had two major thunder and lightening storms with rain. One was a deluge. Tropical. Sheets of rain. It is pouring down as I write. All the wallows will be filled up without any help from me. The ducks will be thrilled. And after a good soaking the compost will be ready to add to and turn.

Though I left the tractor out - I forgot to check the weather forecast! 🥹

The cows water is set up to refill from the barn roof in the rain so I be will not need to drag the hoses out there today.

And the fish pond has rain water run off from the house gutters pouring in - I cut a little drain right at the top of the pond so the overflow runs out watering trees as it heads down to the field. So the pond will be lovely and clear this morning.

And a good morning from central Illinois.

I awoke early to the heavy rain on my tin roof so after sending this to you - I might just sleep a bit more.

It is still hot but cooled off a bit with the rain and wind. As soon as the rain stops I will open all the windows again. We don’t have central air out here on the farm. So we open the windows at night.

Trees around the house can cool air up to 10 degrees.

Leave a comment! And you are always welcome to answer each others comments here. Often people talk to each other when I am in the fields - away from my phone.

Love Celi

PS I am enjoying the rhythm of writing a quick note every day - I have five more days on the farm! Then back to California for a few more days. Then off out to Australia where the overnights are hovering just above freezing.

Love ya!