When we were packing up on Saturday after the fencing, we were treated to a spectacular sunset....

Rabbit Proof Fence

Well, we hope it's rabbit proof. We've been busy digging in the chicken wire so the rabbits can't get under the bottom of it and eat all our veg. As you can see, we've finally found a use for a lawn edger I've had for about a decade and never used - it's perfect for shoving chiken wire into the trench I'd dug previously with the spade. Now, if the rabbits try and burrow underneath the fence, they should in theory be stopped by the chicken wire.
It's slow going however, and all of Saturday afternoon only gave us about 20 yards of fencing or two sides of the garden. It looks good once it's all attached though, as you can see.

Only one small problem, this morning we saw two red deer in the woods, they're easily big enough to jump the fence and eat all the plants. So we might have to fortify the garden even more.....

As you can see, Kate's very proud of her new veg patch, and yes there are some wonky posts, but I'm certain the rabbits won't mind, and I'm not bashing them in again just to make them straight, I'm nearly 40 and my poor old back won't take it.
You can see the 2 veg beds to the right of Kate, they're long and narrow so we can work on them without having to tread across them, and there is room for a few more in the space we're fencing off, if we have to join them up we can, but I think there'll be enough room for all that we want to grow.
It's hard work lifting turf and hammering posts in by hand, the veg had better taste nice.

Vegging Out

This week we have started the vegetable plot. Like the true professionals we are, we've managed to site it on the main rabbit run from the neighbouring farm into our wood, but it's the best place to get the sun, and has a water supply already running to it, so the answer to keeping our furry friends out is either leave Buzz out there all night, or fence it.
Since the rest of the paddock will have sheep in it, fencing is the route we have started down. For which the dog seems thankful.
So we dug 2 vegetable beds at the weekend, ordered the seeds and today bought a gate and some posts, to be hammered in by 'Brenda' (as Kate calls her, she even gave her a face, you can see it if you enlarge the picture) the post-whacker-thing we bought from ebay for £22 (bargain).
Now we've got them all in (see next post) we only have the gatepost and gate to go, then it's time to attach chicken wire and bury it so the rabbits can't dig underneath. Simple. Probably.

How Much????

We did some calculations on how much each pig will cost us to rear last night. The figures we last did were back in November 2007 when we first decided all this was what we wanted. They were based on the excellent book by Tony York, whose course we attended back in October 2007 when pig feed was under £7 a bag.
Now it's over £10 and pigs are hungry chaps, meaning to raise one pig to pork weight from weaning we're looking at around £250. That means a break even of £125 per half pig. Tony's advice was never to sell pork at less than half a pig a time, but who's going to pay us enough even to break even when a freezer full of pork is that expensive?
So it looks like we'll be selling pork from the freezer, jointed and packaged, doing as much as we can to 'add value' since with a recession biting, not many people will be queueing up for pork from a couple of unknown chancers from 'down south' (even if one of us is a local).
It's not all doom and gloom though, we reckon that with a bit of lateral thinking and word of mouth we'll break even pretty quickly. The prices we charge per joint will be broadly competitive with the mass produced pork from the butchers in town and we'll never compete on price with cheap EU pork from the supermarket but we never intended to.
We'd like to try air-drying and curing too, which can be a very good way of adding value. Or a very good way to allow a good leg of prime pork to rot slowly in a shed.

The upshot is we're undaunted but cautious, it will definitely mean more work for us, selling half a pig at a time is a relatively quick and profitable process, selling it by the joint means we're likely to be left with the less popular bits of the pig as people only want what they know. But sausages can take care of the less glamourous (but equally tasty) parts, and people are getting more adventurous with what they will try.
So we still have our minds set on what we're here to do. We want to offer people the best pork they ever tasted, and if nothing else, we'll have a freezer full of delicious meat that cost us less than anything we'd care to eat bought commecially.

Anybody want to pre-order a chop?

Our First Livestock (sort of)

Kate made a 'snow-sheep' in the paddock - well it's a start (the missing ear is in Buzz's stomach, in case you were wondering).

That Tricky First Post

Well, like that difficult second album or novel, the first blog post is a tricky one. Fortunately the task is made easier by the arrival of snow last night, so at least there's something to talk about and put a picture of.
Otherwise, there'd be a picture of a half dug vegetable patch and a half finished saw horse (which is what we did this weekend) to see, and they're not half as picturesque.
No post today, which means the lane is impassable and if we had 'proper' jobs that we commuted to, we could have had the day off to play in the snow. Although I suspect Kate will be off out at some point to make a snowman.
In other news, we have a Holding Number from DEFRA, so we can now legally keep animals once we've gone through the hoops with regards to herd numbers, inspections and movement licences. The small wood is just about ready for pigs, we need to run barbed wire round the bottom of the stock fencing, and look out for electric fencing for the bits we can't stock fence, if we were really determined, we could probably have our first pigs in a couple of weeks - not sure we're that determined though...