Piglets

 

Piglets

Wild pigs were a nuisance in the New Zealand landscape, in the forest, their worst trait was tipping over year old seedlings in the hunt for worms and grubs... ‘wild’ has an unfortunate ring about it so maybe I should have said, ‘feral’ but either way, it was one of my duties to control their numbers in my area. There were two basic reasons, first because it was the law of the land; land mammals were not indigenous, therefore the government called them, ‘noxious’. The other reason was pig hunters... some tended to come during the working week, which was a safety issue for my workers, so it was my job to ‘control’ them too.

Pigs are credited with intelligence and I’ll go along with that; sometimes a mob of pigs, will leave the smallest member behind to attract the dog’s intention while the others slink away quietly; although it could be that the slowest animal simply can’t move as fast as the others, which is more likely the truth. But a weaner wild pig put in a pen of domestic weaners will be the boss, and ‘organise’ them, like teaching them to poo in one corner. Caught young, wild pigs make good pets... that is, if you happen to want a pet pig. But don’t forget, kuni-kuni pigs are often kept as pets.

My two dogs used to prefer to catch pigs that on the hook would weigh around ninety pounds, somehow they’d figured out they could control it by each dog holding onto the pig’s ear and leaning their bodies against the body of the pig. I came along in response to the squeals, flipped the pig on it’s back and dispatched it. Bigger pigs were too strong to hold, but would bail, which risked the dogs being poked by a tusk. Both dogs would straddle piglets or weaners, not harming them just not allowing then to run off. Mrs. Matches, the widow who owned the huts I used live in, enjoyed cooking piglets in chicken fat after stuffing them with crushed pineapple; occasionally I would take one to her and we would dine on it. With weaners, I would take them back to headquarters and my workers would take them home to rear as baconers, and during the winter, we had townies come on the government’s employment schemes, and they would take them home, for both pets or to rear.

Sometimes when the vehicles were otherwise occupied, I would walk with my dogs, perhaps a couple of miles on the public road into the forest. On one occasion, I had already bagged an old sow and dragged her to where I could come back later to pick her up, when I heard the squeal of a smaller pig and knew it would be Yogi with a trapped weaner. It was a nice ginger one and remembering that old Frosty had asked for one, I crooked her in my arm and headed back to headquarters. It happened to be school holidays and there was a holiday house where two kids were staying with their mother. The girl was the elder of the two, and they used come up to headquarters at smoko time because I always had a packet of biscuits, which they dipped into.

As I passed the house both came running out, because the girl liked Yogi and made a fuss of him... the bugger, he as aloof with everyone else, including me, but he lapped up the attention of the little girl! The girl went for Yogi and the boy’s attention focused on the ginger pig. I was going to say. ‘Watch she might bite!’ But he was too quick and she did! She took a piece of meat out of the middle muscle on his patting finger. By now we were nearer the headquarters that their house, so I gave him my handkerchief to staunch the flow, and made pace to headquarters where I patched him up... only thing, he wouldn’t be picking his nose for a while.

It had to happen... Bob wanted to take a weaner home, and he put it in his tucker bag... I can’t recall who was driving but there were four in the car which stopped on the main street to let one out. The weaner took the chance of the open door and scuttled out. It stood for a minute, surprised at the new environment; the three quickly got out of the car, thinking to catch it. No such luck! The road has four lanes with parking and trees in the middle, and the little pigs ran right across, with ears pinned back at the screech of brakes! The chasers had lost sight of it, but the bookstore owner stood at the shop door and called out, ‘Anyone lost a pig?’ Adrenaline must have blocked logic in the chasers’ brains because they tried to to corner an alarmed pig in the shop with the door still open... it left a tolly as a calling card, and ran back out onto the street! But an elderly fellow, had witnessed the shenanigans and had used his walking stick expertly as a crook, to hook the handle around the piglet’s neck. He must have been a sheep farmer!

There were a few piglets that got away for various reasons and two got away, and had totally disappeared... but years later, pig rooting appeared on a school paying field, but the pig was never seen. Lenny had an experience... he bought an expensive toy puppy, a tiny thing. That first night he left it asleep beside the fire in its basket. The next next morning only its tail remained and suspicion fell on the big family cat, so he asked for a piglet to replace the dog and perhaps to teach the cat a lesson. The cat apparently took one look at the piglet, ran off and was never seen again!

Another fellow, whose name eludes me, had a son who was afflicted with one leg being a bit shorter than the other, so he had a pronounced limp. The pig he took home, quickly chummed up with the boy, behaving much like a puppy. Oddly, and of course, in town a dog had to be kept on a leash, but there was no bylaw that said pigs had to be kept on a leash, so the boy and pig walked the streets together quite happily... and on pet day at school, the boy and the pig received lots attention of attention.

Hans, a Dutch fellow was sick on payday, and because I had business to do in town I decided to call on him, to give him his money and collect his signature. I knocked on his door and his wife, who I had not met answered. I told her what I had come for, and without a word, she smiled put a finger to her mouth, meaning silence, and ushered me into the living room. There sitting in a chair before a roaring fire was Hans, and lying on him, was a half-grown pig, both were fast asleep!

Yes pigs make good pets!

Artisans

Artisans

It’s fair to say that artisans had an influence in securing the right to vote for you and me; it’s something that isn’t widely appreciated these days, and especially by those who are dissatisfied by their government of the day or what they stand for. My Welsh coal mining ancestors were involved in the Chartist movement, which was one of the small cogs that contributed to Britain’s First Reform Act of 1832... wrestling some of the political power from the elites of the day into the hands of workers. They risked their loss of freedom or even death by standing up for the rights of their fellow man.

Today, we call them ‘tradesmen’, but many of the trades that were, are no longer performed today or have morphed into being done differently. As a youngster I was fortunate enough to watch some artisans as they performed their craft, and I have tried to emulate some of them over the years.

My father had a business selling milk and owned a couple of trucks... under the council laws, businesses with heavy vehicles had to have some form of identification of who they were, which doubled in our case as advertising. The identification was done in an attractive way by artisans. Today it is done just as expertly with vinyl lettering or graphics or something called, ‘vehicle wrapping’, but for our trucks, we had the sign-writer visit our place. The guy turned up with his paint pots and brushes and with a stick with a pad on the end to support his paint-brush hand. He marked out the general shape with chalk... ‘Halswell Dairy’ was written in a half circle on the door, then my father’s name was written horizontally beneath, on an another line beneath, he wrote our phone number. To make it stand out, there was shading... it was all done with skill, based on the painters eye, knowledge of writing styles, and quickly. On the tray, he did old-fashioned coachwork, perfectly straight lines and squiggles.

I’ve had a go at it, not successfully, or freehand, but I learned at school about a stencil cut from cardboard. A square of five inches each side – draw a faint line in the centre facing and a heavier line on each side of it at half an inch making the centre rib one inch wide. Top and bottom score a line one inch wide parallel to the top and bottom; on each side draw a line one inch from the edge. So inside you should have two oblongs that you cut out. With that you can draw any number or letter – the sharp points can be trimmed off to make a nicer shape. Give it a try.

We had a piano in our house, not that I tickled the ivories, but I watched the man who came give it a facelift; if that’s the right term. The varnish had lost it’s glow. His tool for preparing the surface wasn’t sandpaper but a thin piece of metal that had been carefully burred slightly. He used it to gently scrape the surface down to the timber... which I guess was burred walnut. He was really careful and time seemed not to matter to him. When he was satisfied and had removed every bit of dust, he prepared shellac – sort of flakes that required some heating – and he made a pad of cloth that he used to wipe the polish on... it took several coats. The man took the keys off the piano and cleaned the ivory... I wasn’t there so have no idea exactly how he did it, but those keys came up sparkling! In woodwork class, we had a try with the burred steel and shellac on veneer, but sadly I wasn’t competent enough to make a good job of it, but I did use a similar pad to spread linseed oil on my cricket bats... which lasted for several seasons.

Artisans seemed to appear randomly; I was visiting a friend whose parents had been carrying out expensive renovations to their house, and they had employed a man with fine brushes to paint wood gain onto door architraves... that is the door surroundings. Apparently it was a thing in the past if you had the money. Simply put wood grain is the growth rings of a tree when cut longitudinally and knots are the cross section of a branch. A knot can be inter-grown, or alive when the tree is cut, or if it is darker than the surrounding wood, the branch was dead... and sometimes bark surrounds the knot, which is a bark-encased knot. The bark can rot quite quickly and the knot sometimes falls out... creating a knot-hole. And in New Zealand there can be small round holes where a stem cone was attached to the trunk of the tree and push out as the trunk grows.

Having spent years growing Radiata Pine, and pruning the bottom of the trunk to grow ‘valuable clear, knot-free timber, the house we built was of exposed Radiata Pine that hadn’t been pruned, thus showing knots, stem cone holes and grain... much like the inside of a log cabin. The beauty of that... if you have an imagination, it is possible to see shapes, like cats, ghosts, birds and clouds. The why of anyone painting over timber and then painting on grain is, or was the prerogative of the person with the money, but it was popular to do so in the past.

Beside my keypad, I have a notebook to write down little notes that take my fancy as I’m entertaining myself on the computer (or researching), and because I’m left handed, it sits on my left and I use the mouse right handed. Probably from those past influences, when my entertainment fails to entertain, I doodle on my notebook where frequent images turn out to be letters with shading and various wood grains, sometimes with knots.