The Book

Finally a project I began a few years ago is nearing completion. “I started so I will finish” springs to mind, except I probably wouldn’t have got around to finish this if poor old Honks hadn’t departed.

I made the awful decision to end her life on the 15th June past. I don’t think I will ever get over it. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do but I did it for her. I don’t think a day as passed since, when a reminder hits me in the guts and winds me deeply. I feel as much guilt and remorse as I would have done for a beloved family member. Maybe that makes me odd or abnormal but I’m at the age now that I really don’t give a damn what people think.

Her leaving me made me decide once and for all to finish something I started in 2016. I had written a book and submitted it to a few publishers. It was rejected. I hadn’t a clue what I was at. It was awful but I knew the idea was a good one. I got professional advice and reworked it. Then I got more advice and decided to finish it and commit to it.

It’s gone to my editor now for a final edit and she’s been fantastic and really supportive. Then Helen Joy who I’d asked in the beginning to illustrate it was on board as well. We had got to know each other initially on Twitter. Then we met and have been in contact ever since. She even met the diva herself and had previously done some fabulous sketches.

Helen is a smallholder who also rears pigs at Swanbridge Porkers. She understands how we fall for these magnificent animals and grow to love their personalities, their quirkiness and their downright pigheadedness. They say you love someone with traits similar to your own. Well that applies to animals too.

So all going well Honky the book (final title to be decided) will be published before Christmas.

The synopsis:

Honky makes friends with a young autistic boy, Hugo. Hugo is lonely, as she is because he finds it difficult to integrate in a noisy school. She can’t be reintegrated with her siblings after she was removed as a very sick piglet. They have a lot in common and start to explore the area where they live. They meet an abandoned donkey called Mikey. They discover an intensive pig farm and are horrified by it, so plan a daring rescue. But will they pull it off and what will be the outcome for hundreds of released pigs?

A lot of it is based on reality. I discovered the abandoned donkey in a derelict cottage and rescued him. I found him a home thanks to Twitter with the help of Lucinda O’Sullivan, food writer for the Sunday Independent. The setting for the book is based where I lived in north Meath. My experience of rearing pigs and farming ethically is the raison d’etre for the story.

I would love people to begin to connect how their food is reared is vital to their health. Animals ethically reared for meat, vegetables grown in healthy soils make good nutritious food. When we treat animals inhumanely, when we trash soils we produce low grade food. It’s really that simple.

And with everything we need to start with the children.

In memory of Honky (Her Royal Honkyness) born on my smallholding 24th August 2015 and died here 15th June 2001.

As an aside, I always knew this blog was finite and in the back of my mind I intended to turn it into a book. I mean if yer man who wrote A Year in Provence could do it, why couldn’t I? Maybe moving from one end of the country to the other with pigs isn’t as glamorous as moving to France but who’s to say it’s any less interesting?

So as they say “watch this space.”

The Tamworth Two

Saturday when they came back to pull out the second massive stump, I had to head off to collect the piglets. I left them with my phone number, loaded the big dog crate into car (putting down the seats) and spreading a huge tarp underneath. I was only going to Clonroche but I may as well have been going to Mars. Every field in Wexford has a road around it. And the roads aren’t necessarily road worthy…….

R apparently denotes “rural”. I decided in reality it denotes “rubbish”. L denotes “local” but that should be “ludicrous”. We pay taxes for this……?

It took me 40 minutes to travel 29km or 15 miles. They obviously factor in being stuck behind the local farmer with no wing mirrors.

The piglets were in what looked like a lovely place. Two sows were stretched in the sun in a paddock with an arc. He had the weaners in a shed. He calmly went in and caught them insisting on sticking his tag in one ear and mine in the other. The only time in my 6 years of pig keeping I experienced this. So the poor little feckers were more tag than pig.

We put them in the cage with straw in but they still skidded and stressed the whole journey home. The men were engrossed in the big stump removal when I got back and my standing helplessly asking them for a hand to unload the piglets went ignored.

Eventually the elder came over and we lifted the cage out and coaxed them into their shed stuffed with straw, food and water.

I decided it would be better to keep them in a few days before letting them out. I’ve never had wilder piglets. They had obviously never been handled and were totally freaked anytime I even opened the door. I kept them in almost a week. Then let them out into a small fenced area. They approached the fence, got shocked and one promptly dived through. She happened to meet the big pigs coming back in for their post-breakfast siesta. I’m not sure who was more shocked.

The second stuck her snout on it. Ouchio.

For a few days they remained confined. Then I went to the vets to get a wormer and enquire why one was a bit bald. They told me I’d need to inject a wormer and a delouser sub-cutaneously. I’m always wary of introducing pigs into my place and I prefer to keep the new ones separate until I’ve treated them. I had never injected pigs before but Mary told me how to do it. She suggested asking my neighbour who had helped us with Honky. He happened to be driving out of his yard as I arrived back. We confined them easily and he held them while I injected them. One was no problem, the other wriggled just as I put needle in and half of the dose dribbled down her neck. Bugger.

I rang the vets and they made me up another dose. My neighbours said they’d collect it for me. Later that evening they arrived up with their bull mastiff and a French bulldog on leads. The neighbour who’d helped me earlier arrived as well. Needless to say the piglets were freaked and there wasn’t a chance in hell they were going to cooperate. They bolted. Through fencing.

For the next 20 minutes 4 adults were given the run around by two slippery piglets. We gave up. Peter took the dogs home. Larry the other neighbour had long gone so myself and Susan sat on the deck in evening sun with a glass of red and listened to the happy grunts of two escapee piglets. The woofer arrived out to close in the hens and vanished. Eventually she appeared at the gate to say she’d coaxed them back in with food. Success.

Next day the digger driver’s dad held the piglet and I injected her like a pro. However, they’d got a taste of freedom and that little paddock wasn’t going to confine them. Just as the digger man drove a fully laden dumper of topsoil over the septic tank and got stuck in it, they headed for the hills. I was running out to try to round them up when I heard the frustrated swearing. I came back to find his wheel in the tank and the concrete lid had disappeared.

I gave up chasing the piglets. Utterly pointless and instead lowered the electric fencing and reinforced gaps. Meanwhile the Diggerman pulled the dumper out with his digger. I resigned myself to feral piglets but when I went out later I found them finishing off the last of their feed and settling into their shed for the night. At least if they were going to be feral they knew their way home.

My neighbours with the dogs named them The Tamworth Two and the name rang a bell. I had a vague recollection of it so I googled it. I hadn’t realised they’d made a film about the pigs.

I often just sit and watch them, they fascinate me. These weaners are barely 8 weeks old and were just weaned when I got them. So far they’ve moved home, explored all around and still found their way back for bed and board. We really underestimate the intelligence and resilience of animals. How many human babies or even puppies could do that?

Pigs are truly amazing.

The Weaners

Or also known as the horrors, the pests, the terrible two. You get the gist? Two (big) piglets by the time I got them here. I couldn’t find quality pigs on Done Deal, just the usual rubbish from someone who keeps a few pigs and breeds indiscriminately. Buyer beware really applies when buying livestock but particularly pigs. I have bought half-starved, runty piglets in the past because I was desperate and because I felt sorry for them but it’s not advisable. It took me twice as long to fatten them.

I got this pair in a convoluted fashion. I had asked friends if I could buy a couple from them when their sow farrowed however she aborted and they said they were looking for piglets as well. I told them if they found any let me know and I’d take two. They sourced them in Galway and I collected them from their place a week or so later in north Tipperary.

I had actually bought a trailer. Years ago I sold my horse box and I had steadily cursed ever since. Having to borrow a trailer is a pain and although most people don’t mind lending them, I hate being under a compliment to anyone. It was years since I’d pulled one and I was wondering if I’d still be able to reverse it etc. You can laugh but it took me a long time to be able to competently. It had taken a lot of practice, away from the “helpful” comments from men in particular. Actually in the end I was better than a lot of men!

Then there was the question of the driving licence. Somehow in the meantime, it had become law that you have a trailer licence. The thoughts of doing another test….. but one day I looked at my licence and lo and behold I had the trailer category ticked. Phew.

I asked around down here and a neighbour down the road called in one evening to say he had one. I had a look at it and I was in business. I then had to get a hitch on the Ceep (carjeep) or baby toe rag as my builder friend refers to it.

All that organised and the day was set. But I was still nervous about driving it. It was just over a two hour drive but it took me closer to three. You just can’t go whoring around bends pulling a trailer and boy were they bendy roads. It was a sunny bank holiday Monday so I just took my time. Pulling an empty trailer is a pain because it’s fierce bumpy.

Luckily I was staying the night and not making the return journey until the next day. After an evening of great hospitality and far too much wine (me), Alfie decided to catch the pigs rather than herd them in much to the amusement of a couple of Mexican American friends staying there as well. You wouldn’t get that in a 5 star hotel.

Photo courtesy of Mexican American guest

I set off in great trepidation. It was a hot sunny day and I had a massive hangover and I was nervous and it was a long drive. Three and a half hours later I was on the road out of New Ross and itching to get home for a cup of tea. There was a massive tailback for roadworks, of course there was. Isn’t there always when you are dying to get home?

I made it and ran into my neighbour to give me a hand to unload them into the stable. I was leaving to go back to Meath the next day so I wanted to keep them in until I got back. He was a great help and we got them unloaded easily.

Today they are free range as in really free range. They are immune to the electric fence and are having a lovely time ducking in and out under it at will to graze with the horses. To be honest I’ve given up trying to keep them in because unless they get out on the road which is unlikely, they can’t do much damage and the neighbours are all pretty relaxed about escapees.

They will have a great short life (albeit twice as long as a commercial pig) and will then head to Christy Byrne’s abattoir in Camolin, probably in October. Another outing for the trailer.

At the end of the day a good life and a good death is all any of us want.

Upp