The weather today will be mainly rain, interspersed with
frequent showers, downpours and general all-round humidity. It was wet
yesterday, it’s wet today and it’s going to be wet tomorrow. In fact, it’s
wetter than a very wet thing that’s been soaked in a bucket of water and left under a
running tap.
The ground is like a sponge to walk on. Cultivating such
soil is a no-no and there's a danger that the soil can be compressed and
damaged when in this state. Curiously, our sheep walk in set tracks in the
field when moving about but spread out to graze and, as they're half the size of
a ‘normal’ sheep, I’m not too worried about their pasture; the pig paddock is
another thing.
We normally don’t keep pigs over the winter but due to special circumstances
we were looking after four pigs for a local farmer until up to slaughter
weight, which meant keeping them over the heart of a very wet winter. Pigs are
heavy, disturb the ground with their snouts and, at this time of year, there’s
nothing but roots to interest them, even the acorns long having finished.
They’ve turned their paddock into some sort of homage to the Battle of the Somme.
Much is made of pigs’ delight in rolling around in mud but
that's mud that is cooling and protecting in summer: an organic sun tan lotion. However, this is a different thing and I
felt a little sorry for these barn-raised pigs sploshing around in this cold exterior and we spread plenty of straw
around several times to try and improve the situation. This is a one off for
us, never to be repeated but must be a real issue for farmers who are rearing
free-range pigs through all four seasons. Free-ranging pigs is good for the pigs but
can be really bad for the land. Some people have remarked to us how adding all
this organic matter (straw) must be good for the soil but I’ve been mixing cob for
our barn renovation
and, to a clay soil, one adds water and straw and mixes it on a tarp by
marching vigorously all over it, which is just about exactly what the pigs have been doing. I fear that when it dries out, we’ll have
ourselves one hell of a slab of ‘organic concrete’. That might be the time to
ask one of our neighbours to plough it.
Now the French word for mud is ‘boue’ or, and I think this
is slang, ‘gadoue’. Do you remember the 1984 pop party record Agadoo, by Black
Lace? It went, “Agadoo doo doo push pineapple shake the tree …” I’ve rewritten
it:
If you’ve nothing else to do, watch the original on YouTube
and sing along with my new lyrics … I did!
La gadoue, boue, boue, mucky piggies fondue,
La gadoue, boue, boue, could do with a canoe
To the left, to the right, jump up and down and twist about
Come and dance every day in this sloppy muddy goo
