evan's ant village log

The gate looks very nifty, Evan.

Congrats, Mr. Pierce!! You raised a good one... and Evan lucked out, too :)

Day 119

Working together with my dad, the fence went up quickly and we got Sir Chops moved into his new paddock, Hogwarts. It's just to the east of Hamelot, and for now is built out of calf panels for expediency, except for the border with Hamelot, which is junkpole. To move Sir Chops over, once the fence was built, all we had to do was lift up a few of the junkpoles in the fence dividing the two paddocks, and he walked right through. What a good pig!

We also gathered up some cow pies and got 'em soaking in water to loosen them up for making cob. Thanks dad, for putting up with this shit!

My gardens are looking pretty tasty, and the rabbits even left some daikon radishes for me, so we picked some. I know it's not much, but it feels good to grow some of my own food.

Day 120

We fried up some homegrown daikon radish and some recently dumpster-dived sweet potatoes for breakfast today. Free food. Yum!

Dad and I made a fair bit of progress on getting Siesta ready for the sidewalls. As usual, my plans for how I'm building these walls are constantly in flux, so I think I just won't even say what they are yet. Suffice it to say that like most of my plans it's based on my best guess of what I currently perceive as being the easiest, fastest, and cheapest way to make it simultaneously strong enough, invisible enough, and cool-looking enough. 'Nuff said.

Oh yeah, and we also went swimming and picked more apricots too! There weren't many more on the trees, but I gathered up a bunch off the ground for Sir Chops.

That large unidentified insect looks like my friend robber fly, also known as assassin bug. Beneficial! I think it helps with the pesty caterpillars on my farm.

Day 121

Got more apricots on the dehydrator, made progress on Siesta, and the cow pies are soaking nicely. Before too long, they'll be ready to add to a cob mix.

We spent a little time down at basecamp working on the berm shed with Josh and the newest ant Chris. The tricky corner bit is nearly done now. It's not exactly how I would have done it, but I think it looks pretty cool and it'll probably hold... probably.

On the way back up to the lab, Jesse called to inform me that Sir Chops was sighted far away from his paddock, in fact, on his way down the hill away from the lab. I guess it was a bad idea sending Sir Chops to Hogwarts. I should have known he would learn to become a hog Houdini and apparate out of his enclosure. Actually it was most certainly my own foolish oversight in not securing his pen thoroughly enough. I spent a few hours walking around with grain and slop looking for him, but with no luck. Maybe he'll come back; I left some food out for him. But he was never a particularly friendly pig, and without any kind of call to which he would respond, I have little hope of finding him and catching him amongst the thousands of acres of woods. He was a hard worker, a hearty eater, and a productive wallower, and I'll surely miss him. So long Sir Chops, I hope you enjoy your new life as a wild boar. Bacon is off the menu, and I guess I have to do the pig's work now.

Oh, Evan. But don't give up hope. I'd be surprised if Sir Chops didn't come back at all...catching him may be another matter though! Vertical fencing is definitely the best. Anything they can get there snout into is pretty easily lifted. Also, anything they can see through is a great temptation. Corrugated roofing iron mounted vertically is good and your original fence would have been much the same.

If you get him back I would train him to electric fence, that will hold hogs, we are using premier fencing quick hog fence but a line or two of standard hot wire at nose height will hold him in. We have 5 hogs we rotate every 2 weeks or when the paddock is showing wear and they start to hammer the food, the only time they have gotten out on us is when we first dropped them into the training paddock and we had a cattle panel on one end and they were small enough to fight through the square.

I like this diary, and hope you plan on keeping it up.

Is there electricity in ant village? I hear solar panels do the trick, but $$.

My friend has a solid pig fence, he dug down many feet for the posts to be secure.

Sir Chops is like a walking pile of calories, what a loss.

Matu Collins wrote:Is there electricity in ant village? I hear solar panels do the trick, but $$.

My friend has a solid pig fence, he dug down many feet for the posts to be secure.

He's like a walking pile of calories, what a loss.

You can run a fence off an old car battery, if you had two you could trickle charge one down at base camp but you could use a solar charger from premier or another one.