Boris the Boar's Blog Wick Court, September 17th (Boris is our Middle White boar)

Autumn is here and the first school has arrived with that lovely weather we always get once the holidays are over. Lots of excited voices and faces peering over the wall as they bring us our meals. It has been a quiet summer for us pigs but the exciting news is that I am a father - seven beautiful piglets born on Monday morning and within a day all were out running around the yard. Their mother is an Old Spot gilt but I have to say they have inherited their father's looks - not a spot between them. Her sister is due in 2 - 3 weeks so we should soon be overrun with my offspring. In the back pig sties the Berkshire boys are quietly eating and growing and the Old Spot weaners born in May are looking positively enormous next to the new arrivals.

The cattle are all still out in the fields, the barns are full of hay now, finally cut in August after all that rain, so plenty of grazing for cattle and sheep while the weather holds.

The geese have had the luxury of having a pen all to themselves for several months - although they do have many invading mallards who try to share their meals, but they will soon have 6 new Khaki Campbell ducks moving in, in time the children should be collecting duck eggs aswell as the chicken eggs they currently find - and apparently enjoy for breakfast.

And the other hot news in the poultry sheds, 12 turkey poults are also due any day, apparently it's a "seasonal enterprise", at least they're no threat to us pigs, they eat completely different food.

Round at the stables there's a lot of washing and shampooing, two foals off to the sales tomorrow as this year's young ones are being sold on before the winter. There has been a lot of comings and goings over the summer with ponies off to shows around the country, and plenty of new rosettes for the feed shed wall. I'm sure we pigs could win some prizes if only someone would give us a lift to the shows...

The orchards are full of fruit, a bumper year for perry pears apparently. A group of learned men spent the day wandering around this week with special books, identifying the different varieties. Apparently a very rare Arlingham Squash has been discovered to great excitement. They all taste good to me... The children have been picking blackberries and cooking crumbles, there have been lovely autumnal scents wafting across the yard.

The vegetable garden is also proving very fruitful, the children are coming out with laden boxes and baskets. Now this is great for the pig population as we get all the outer leaves and there is even a row of fodder beet just for us, well we all need our 5 a day.

Anyway, I shall hand over to someone else for the next update as I'm off to the egg farm across the road where there's a Tamworth sow who wants to meet me.

Bye for now

Boris the Boar