New Arrivals

It's been a week of new arrivals. On Wednesday, having journeyed across the Mediterranean Sea, through the Suez Canal, down the east coast of Africa, and overland from Mozambique, my pick-up truck arrived in a shipping container at a railway siding on the outskirts of Lilongwe. The turning circle's terrible and it accelerates like a tractor, but it's got a thing that tells you what gradient you're driving on and it'll comfortably accommodate seven sacks of gaga and a fully-grown sow.

Which is just as well, because yesterday I purchased a pig: a one-year old sow. Nepear finished building the pig pen a week ago, so when I heard that Noah's sister-in-law's brother's cousin had a pig for sale in a nearby village, we jumped in the truck and went to investigate. After a brief negotiation we settled on a price of £60. It took six men to load her into the back of the truck - after they'd wrestled her to the ground and tied her legs together.

She's settling well into her new home and has already twice knocked over her water bucket to make a nice muddy wallow for cooling down. We haven't settled on a name yet, but 'Ophelia' - Hamlet's on/off girlfriend - is an early contender.

The plan is to hire a gigolo boar to do the dirty, and then wait for some piglets to appear. If all goes well, I should be able to eat a home-grown bacon sarnie in a year or so.

One of my chickens has now been sitting on a clutch of twelve eggs for almost three weeks, so I'm expecting the appearance of some fluffy chicks any day now...pictures to follow.

Reversing the truck out of the shipping container

A pig in muck