Hot-Air Balloons, Piglets, and Changing Colours

Fall is arriving here in New Brunswick. Sunday morning I woke up to a definite feeling of fall in the air and I could hear Canadian geese passing by somewhere nearby. There are certain places where the trees are starting to dramatically change their colours and the most striking ones are always the maples that stand out bright red against the dark green of the evergreens and the paler green of other trees that have not yet changed.

Just over a week ago, on Friday, I was at the market in Sussex and that weekend happened to be a hot-air balloon festival. I was hoping that I would get a chance to see some of the balloons in the air and fortunately, just before we packed up at 7 pm, a number of them took off! It was neat to see such brightly coloured balloons in the air.

That same Friday, in the morning, we discovered that one of our sows, Hogatha, had farrowed (given birth to piglets) the night before and she had 7 new little babies! They were so cute and small. It is amazing to think that they grow up to be big enough to make bacon and pork chops. Then, early Sunday morning, Tillie, another sow, also farrowed. She had 5 piglets and I saw the fourth and fifth being born as I was out in the field doing chores! It was an amazing experience and actually rather funny. Pigs do not have labour intensive births. I was standing and watching Tillie with her 3 piglets and then Terry told me that she probably wasn’t finished farrowing yet. Suddenly Tillie farted and out popped another piglet! These pictures are about a week after they were born (and not earlier because I kept forgetting to take my camera with me when I did chores) and are of all the piglets together because they joined together into one group and we can no longer tell who belongs to which sow. There are also only 8 of them left now because some of them have died since the birth.

Sunday night there was a Harvest Banquet held at the Kingston Farmers’ Market. We were served five courses of local organic food prepared by several really good local chefs. We ate everything from carrot soup and salad, to chicken and lamb, to maple ice cream. Terry and Monique supplied several things for this dinner including the chicken, lamb, cream (for ice cream) and butter. The whole dinner was delicious and we were entertained by a local group called Isaac and Blewett. It was neat to see all these people eating organic food and eating our food: chickens I had seen grow and be butchered, cream and butter from cows I had milked, and lambs that I had seen running around on the fields. After it was over we lingered and talked to some of the chefs. I know one of them because he is also the market manager in Sussex and Terry knows one of the other chefs because he often gets pork heads from us. Overall, it was a wonderful evening.

As I write this (sitting at my laptop), there is a little, fuzzy, orange kitten sitting on my lap, trying to eat my fingers and generally demanding attention from me. I have named him Pauley (think Polly) because he often likes to sit on my shoulder (like a parrot) while I am trying to do chores.