snowed-in pigs

It's been impossible to drive up to the farm and see the pigs for
nearly a week now. They live at the top of a very long, narrow winding
lane which the snow and ice has rendered virtually impassable to
vehicles. Not that this has prevented plenty of people from trying,
though. Each day I've walked up there I've encountered someone
valiantly (or stupidly) trying to negotiate the hill. You can see by
the frantic skid-marks who's got the furthest - maybe someone should
install marker posts and award points... They usually get so far up,
lose traction and then their car begins to slide gracefully but
inexorably, like the rock of Sysiphus, back down the slope. We stopped
to help the first few, but we've become inured to the sight now and
just trudge past on our way to the farm, laden with treats.

Mother pig, I have decided, is a true epicurean if you strip away the
hairy wrapping. She waits in crocodile sleep whilst I attend to her
offspring in the other pens, the twitching of her tail the only
giveaway to her alertness. Only as I approach her pen does she come up
to greet me, a porcine Clement Freud, snuffling at my bag to see what
might be inside. Today, when I spread out the contents, she inspected
them all before deciding on a crust of Hobbs House 100% organic rye
sourdough, closely followed by a slice of our own home-made soda
bread. She moved on to a pile of apple cores - the remnants of a spicy
apple and currant chutney we made yesterday - and finished with a
generous chunk of ginger cake which I'd found lurking in the bottom of
the freezer. After she'd chomped her way through that she cast around
for remnants and then her eyes lit on me asking was there any more?
When I said there wasn't she turned mournfully away and went back to
her ark, having a last look on the way for perhaps that elusive post-
prandial truffle.

On the way back we came upon a place where the road was covered in a
sheet of ice, perhaps from a burst water main. I had great fun
throwing sticks for Poppy and watching her scrabble around like some
elephantine Bambi. I got my come-uppance though, when she came
charging towards me, lost her footing and then rolled into me, sending
me arse-over-tit down the hill.