A Day in the Life......

...of the critters on the farm:


It started out as a beautiful morning, the rising sun casting its soft light through the trees :




The piggies yawned their greeting:

And enjoyed their morning veggies:

The piggies have all lost their winter coats finally - their lush black bristles have gone and they are left with smooth grey skin. Scotch was the first to go bald, and so is the first to be growing a new set of bristles. They are coming in shiny and black as before, but right now he looks like a little schoolboy with a short crew cut. He made a point of showing me his new look and waited for me to give him a little brush:

Once the pigs were taken care of, the dogs and I said good morning to Martin



Then headed up the path:

I wanted to get a picture of all three dogs in the early morning light. But first we had to wait for Belle:

And here she comes, daintily prancing up the path like a model on a runway, one foot in front of the other.

Charley and Sadie posed for the camera, but Belle had to do her own thing:



I turned Belle around, raised the camera, and then Charley decided to have a roll in the hay :

I got Charley to sit up again, turned back to take the shot.....
.....and now Sadie was missing.

Sadie had said "enough of this" and headed back for home. Abandoning the attempt at a group shot, we ran and played our way back down the hill.

The day got hotter and hotter - 37 degrees celsius in the shade at my place - possible the hottest day of the summer. I let the pigs into the pasture and filled several kiddie pools with water for them. There's nothing more entertaining than watching the piggies in their pools.

Lizzie sat down in the middle of one and proceeded to rock back and forth on her little butt, making waves like a kid in a bathtub. I raced to the house for the camera, but of course she climbed out as soon as she saw me coming.

Her gray skin was black where it had been in the water, and so I had a two-toned pig:

For the first time all summer, the heat was almost unbearable. Sadie got the right idea though - lie right in front of the fan, bare tummy exposed to catch the breeze:

But Belle was actually smarter - she knew that if she sat a little further away, she would catch more of the cool air than Sadie:




And so we spent a lazy day - checking on the pigs, trying to stay cool, drinking lots of water, and generally doing very little of anything. We went for another walk as the air cooled and dusk descended on the valley, and just as we returned from the pasture, I just caught the tail end of a beautiful sunset:

And so ends a hot summer day with the critters on the farm.