Alas, I had to scrap my pair of yellow wellies. These were a spanking pair of wellies that I picked up in Brodies a couple of years ago. I loved them so much that I wore them all the time…even with my street gear and my prim and proper doctor’s attire.
Yellow Rubber Boots.
Anyway, it is soooo wet in Toledo you have to wear boots…well, that is what I think after living here for 13 years. I distinctly hate wearing open toed shoes here because I don’t like getting mud in between my toes (just a personal preference). Anyway the boots have a history and we (Gnome and I) have romantically dug dirt, planted trees and done the farm chores together with these boots. So much so that they got into a real state. They became a rather manky yellow:
Manky Yellow Boots.
Duckie even imprinted on us because we both had “yellow feet.”
Yellow Wellies.
Anyway, they started getting too many holes and cracks so there was no point in wearing them as they had lost their purpose of protection. Of course, Gnome got a hold of the throw-away before I cast them into the fire.
“Oh, they are made of a very good material…you can make rather good gaskets with that….I’ll take them thank-you very much!”
And so my dear yellow wellie boots will live on as gaskets…I had to ask him: What’s a Gasket??!! He demonstrated by making the first one for the blender so that the liquid would stop leaking out:
Rubber Boot Turned into Gasket.
Ahhhh…that’s what a gasket is…it forms a seal between two things to stop leakage. Munchkin learned something!!
Pretty handy and it works well so I can’t complain. Long live the yellow wellies in Gnome’s transformation magic.
Yes indeed this concludes the Fortune Telling Guinea Pig Marathon! What a lovely lot of piggies…plus duckie of course. We’ve posted the last two together because Gnome said:
“They look so alike…everyone will think that you are posting the same picture again. Why don’t we put them together instead…”
It was also because we couldn’t separate them…these two are as thick as thieves…they’re conspiring to overthrow Munchkin and Gnome!
Two Piggies.
Saturday’s Child works hard for a living (I was a Saturday Child, by the way) and the one that is born on the Sabbath Day is Bonnie and Blithe! These two were a bit camera-shy.
Yes I know that you are all waiting with baited breath for the Wednesday Piggie!! Wednesday’s Child is Full of Woe. I wanted to change this line to “Wednesday’s Child is Full of Soul” but then realised that I shouldn’t avoid the sad “Eeyore” archetype. They are everywhere so it would only be natural to have a statistically equal representation of the general population.
Sad Piggie!
Gnome Comment:
“Keep 20 to 30 guinea pigs at a time and you will learn the secrets of human behaviour; a skill that is essential to every doctor out there.”
Tuesday’s Child is Full of Grace. I deliberately picked one out that looked like a little highland cow. This one sat and posed like he knew that he had to give it his best. They all have different personalities and some of them can’t stay still and get very jittery. The mothers are all doing fine and doing what guinea pig mothers do.
We’ve got 7 new kids on the block lined up as calendar kids for the whole week. Whoopeee…I hear you all shout…what fun!! Just had 7 new guinea pigs in the last week from 3 mothers. First baby checks done; all fit and healthy!!
Hello and Happy Chinese New Year to y’all!! It’s the Year of the Rooster by the way, which means action, taking the chance and getting things done properly. Probably means other things too so best if you go read it up yourself…I don’t claim to be a Horoscope Munchkin. Today has been an auspicious day for us on the farm. Look!! We have 8 (Auspicious Number for Chinese) eggs to incubate. Last night we followed the duckies around, nonchalantly of course, and found their secret nest.
Yes, my evolved duckies, we know you’re hiding something from us:
Secret Duckie Nest in Bush:
Secret Egg Site.
We found 6 eggs last night and then 2 this morning. Lucky 8!! Try this number for Boledo today!!
The beginnings were delicate times when we first set about procuring our first generation of guinea pigs. We were looking for new blood, so-to-speak, and made a long and arduous journey crossing borders by sea and by road, to gain our progeny. Our first piggies were only about 12 weeks old; a long-haired tawny brown called “The Kid,” a blonde girlie named “Honey” and of course, the Grandmother of all our Piggies: Vanessa aka Stumpy. Vanessa suffered a fracture of her tibia during the transportation and had a successful below knee amputation once she reached the safe house. Lovely Grandma Stumpy out-lived the other two original piggies and went on to produce generations for us. She lived a very good life and died a couple of years ago; Grandma Stumpy you will always live on in our memories.
GrandMa Stumpy.
The original concept of guinea pig rearing was for food. We had seen some rather tempting Peruvian guinea pig dishes (mostly fried in batter like fried chicken) and thought that they might be rather tasty. The first houses were coined “The Hanging Gardens of Babylon” because they were wire cages suspended from rafters. A few generations of piggies started in this first construction but it finally had to discarded after doggy sabotage. The dog would spring up from her hind legs and attempt to break the bottom of the cages with her teeth. She was eventually successful and had a feast with quite a few of them.
Meanwhile, we attempted also to sample the fine epicurean delights of guinea pig. This is Piggies Cooked in Mead:
Three Piggies Cooking in Mead.
I have written on the finer points of cleaning guinea pig carcass in previous posts so I won’t go into the detail. They are actually quite bony so actually provide a good skin for stuffing….in this case, these piggies were stuffed with marinated pork meat. Anyway, it did taste good but it was a lot of hard work. Besides, we didn’t feel quite right about eating our cute and cuddly pets. They looked so harmless and helpless…yes, we felt like such awful predators!
Cheery Guinea Pig.
After some philosophical talks and drinking of mead, we decided that the eating of piggies did not sit right for us. So what to do with them? We feel that everything on our farm should have a purpose.
For some time, we used them like cows and put them on a movable cage so that we could have sections of grass mowed naturally. There was an upstairs and ramps to go downstairs to eat grass. Gnome’s idea of course!
Guinea Pig Mower.
This was dubbed the gated community of “Paradise Pastures” and lasted quite a while. The cage was rather heavy so proved quite a chore to move. But alas, we hit a snag with the dog….there is a whole story with this one. Anyway, the dog dug a hole in the ground and managed to get her paws into the cage!
Okay, then we had to re-model the cage with security features: we decided on a condo type resort thing with majestic hilltop views but no access to the bottom.
Piggie Condos.
There was a lot of unhappiness, squeaking and squawking and general mayhem with the new changes. The piggies couldn’t find a purpose on the farm. We even set up a dance/yoga studio for them with there own teacher:
Johnny Daybreeze.
Nah…that didn’t work either. Finally….and this is where they are now…they have been placed with the Zazen Duckies in the Zen Garden.
Piggies in Zen Garden.
And then we had a surprise hatching of a lone duckie last month:
Duckie!!
Munchkin and Gnome did their best to do Duckie Parenting and placed lone duckie in the guinea pig crèche:
Duckie and Piggies.
It has worked out so well. Duckie house-cleans for the piggies by eating up the grubs and creepy crawlies and learns to eat greens with them. They are all friends and get along very well. Duckie is getting bigger with the house cleaning:
Duckie Growing Up!
So, because of the success of this pilot project we have decided to incorporate the piggies into the cycle of duckling rearing. This is because our mallard ducks are not good mothers (very scatty, forgetful and silly…no, I mean that they are usually too busy meditating!). The piggies have a new purpose on the farm now!!
It’s been a good start to the new year because the weather has been dry and sunny (except for today, of course, there are rain clouds and it feels like it wants to rain). Anyway, with the good weather, we felt uplifted and ready to start the new year full of energy and enthusiasm. Well, it started off with Gnome fixing the washing machine! Yay, we have clean clothes now!! I’ve been doing a big spring clean inside the house and throwing all sorts of kipple and the like. It’s a lovely feeling dumping things and making a great big fire…whoopeeeeee!!
Kipple…stuff…just multiplies!!
Kipple
Anyway, Gnome has been doing some manly, physical work (so, I’ve been very nice to him…bringing out cool lemonade and dainty egg sandwiches to keep him going). He is setting up the platforms for our water tanks. This time we will be ready for the dry season and we won’t be caught out. We will have our tanks lined up to catch the rains from now to April.
Water Security!!
Water Tank.
And as usual the farm has been producing so there is the usual Munchkin harvesting….
These are Monkey Cap; the taste like peanut butter and have the consistency of peanut butter. They are nice but kinda get stuck in your teeth because they are gummy-like. Don’t eat them when you have guests around or you’ll get into a right old mess with orange gums and teeth…Ha-Ha! I wasn’t trying to put you off this fruit by the way!
Monkey Cap.
We hope that the year is starting off well for y’all out there!!
This morning, Gnome only had one mission in mind: try to get the washing machine working to avoid this Munchkin (Chinese Woman) Look:
I think he spends most of this time trying to stop me from pulling this face!! I am adept at it.
And so he got to work and took the washing machine apart:
Washing Machine.
He didn’t utter a single word as he scrutinised every single component and then went on the Internet to look up “How to repair your washing machine” and “what to do if your washing machine stops working” sites.
After about an hour of Gnomish behaviour, he finally gave me the diagnosis. He explained that the lid switch had melted; he then joined up the wires to bypass the switch and said to me,
“There you are…all done now. It still works but you don’t have a lid right now until we find a replacement lid switch.”
He smiled cheekily,
“Off you go then, you can start the first load!”
And pointed at the washing machine that looked like this:
Working Washing Machine
I shrieked at Gnome,
“What about the outside cover?”
He replied, cheekily again,
“Oh this old thing? Oh you don’t need this. It’s perfect for making a solar oven!”
and then proceeded to walk away with my washing machine cover as if he owned it…
Back to the normal Chaos on the farm!! Okay, I have to confess that I haven’t done any clothes washing for two weeks. This is because the washing machine stopped, all of a sudden in mid cycle, and wouldn’t start up again. This was at the start of the Christmas festivities, so I (We) decided to ignore it. But, now the washing is piling up and it’s hard to ignore it when you start running out of stuff to wear. I also have to admit that I have been a very messy Munchkin and had started piling obstacles in the way of the washing machine (well, I wasn’t using it so I didn’t need to get to it and we are running out of space everywhere). Today, I did an almighty clean up and the washing machine is back in clear sight! So, I’ve done my bit…now waiting for Gnome’ll Fix It (nudge, nudge, wink, wink….).
I really do hope that Gnome will fix the washing machine otherwise I will have to pound our clothes against rocks to get them cleaned!! I feel that I had enough of that experience 12 years ago when we first came here and I don’t think that I need a repeat of that. Anyway, if the washing machine has carked it I will have no choice but to start scrubbing again. Arrrgh!!!
