Rhubarb & Ginger Jam

I have received more rhubarb from neighbours! I am beginning to wonder why we are growing our own!

I find that elderly neighbours that still live in the traditional farmhouse with orchard and veg patch have so much spare fruit that they hate to see wasted but are not able to use/save it all. 

Either because they are not as young as they used to be, or mostly because the increasing yield of the orchard is too much for the decreasing family living there.

They love to see somebody make use of it, especially a young family with 'mouths to feed' than let it rot into the ground. 

And in return they get some jam, a bottle of wine later in the year, some tarts for the freezer or even a jar of our honey. 

So to make use of this additional rhubarb, I have stewed off half of it and put into the freezer, I also made some tarts and made a dozen jars of rhubarb and ginger jam.

The pigs are doing great! They have gained a great deal of weight and have become very friendly!

They eat a great deal and love the jersey milk. They would try and go through a wall for that milk!

While they eat a lot, they are working out cheap to feed. We get two 2 gallon buckets a day of waste restaurant food from hubby's friend. We give the pigs all waste veg material from the veg garden before it eventually makes it way to the dung heap. We also feed them a few kgs of rolled oats soaked in jersey milk. 

Several neighbours leave buckets of waste food at our gate once or twice a week for the pigs. We feed it, wash the buckets out and then return them to the neighbours backdoors later in the week!

The pig run, which is still not finished, should be this weekend. We have the foundations poured but we need to build the wall and hang the gate. The materials have been ordered for tomorrow,so hopefully it will be completed this weekend. I am eager to give the pigs more space and buy in another two weaners.