February has arrived at the farm.

Imbolc - a girl & her wonder pig

Illustration of Brigid & the Boar from the book, Saintly Creatures by Alexi Sargeant.

Blessings to all on this ancient Celtic festival of Imbolc.

May you awaken to the mystery of being here,

and enter the quiet immensity of your own presence.

May you have joy and peace in the temple of your senses.

May you receive great encouragement when new frontiers beckon.

May you respond to the call of your gift and find the courage to follow its path.

May the flame of anger free you from falsity.

May warmth of heart keep your presence aflame and may anxiety never linger about you.

May your outer dignity mirror an inner dignity of soul.

May you take time to celebrate the quiet miracles that seek no attention.

May you be consoled in the secret symmetry of your soul.

May you experience each day as a sacred gift woven, around the heart of wonder.

If you send out goodness from yourself, or if you share that which is happy or good within you, it will all come back to you multiplied ten thousand times.

In the kingdom of love there is no competition; there is no possessiveness or control. The more love you give away, the more love you will have.

John O'Donohue - Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom..

Happy Imbolc friends, it is the first days of February, the sun is shining, the mimosa has begun to flower & I am sat pondering the turning of the wheel & figured I would share my thoughts on this subject & how it relates to me & my chosen way of living. A friend shared this poem online recently & I enjoyed it so much I wanted to share it with you too.

I am still new to this writing thing & I am unsure where this is going to lead, for now I will try to get you all up to date with the goings on around here, we are slowly carving a sustainable life for ourselves, we have been at it for 7 years, we will probably be at it until we give up or die, which comes first? I do have paid subscriptions turned on, I would really appreciate your support if that speaks to you, we are currently building a house, we are 5 years in & still have to put a roof on the kitchen. I will have free posts available each month too, but my subs will get homestead recipes from my kitchen, more behind the scenes footage/stories/photography & some tutorials for the things I craft with my hands.

When you live as close to nature as we do, you tend to feel your body clock adjusting as the seasons shift. It feels to me that in January we set our intentions for the year ahead & now is a good time to pause & look inward, to think about what it is you would like to accomplish in the seasons ahead. The sunlight starts to return, a month or so of Wintering is slowly coming to an end, there is a new fiery energy coming from within, it begins to burn a little more each day as the sun also gives us a little more of herself each day, it is during this time of the year that I feel a very strong pull to tend the earth, prune the trees, plant the seeds, start the Spring cleaning of the barn, cut away the dead wood & clear space on the land, bake the bread, make something with my hands to decorate the room & honour this Celtic Goddess Brigid, which is my Grandmothers name by the way.

The wheel of the year, something I hope to learn & write more about.

Brigid, a Goddess known for fertility & smithing, her domain was not only humans & gods, but with animals too. She was famous for the animals she kept in the old folklore, including Torc Triath, the “king of boars”.

About 6 years ago we were at a friends place watching Game of Thrones on the projector outside on their veranda. A tiny piglet (or is it a “boarlet”? I don’t know) dashed out of the darkness away from the dogs & literally, into my arms. This story reminds me of Brigid & maybe this little piggie knew that I was an animal lover & a protector, a caregiver, I had my own piglets at home, so it chose me as the escape route from the dogs. We did quickly get a photo because we were all totally stunned! Then one of the guys took the baby to the field so that we didn’t encounter an angry Mother boar on the veranda too, I assume it found its way back to the pack. A crazy experience honestly, one that confirms my connection to nature & the animals, I was nicknamed the Queen of pigs for a while. Sorry to say I have since lost the photo to the death of my phone.

Symbolic Meaning of the Boar Spirit Animal

The Wild Boar is a powerful symbol of good mothering. When this spirit guide keeps coming your way, it alerts you of the need to love, protect, and nurture.

Dick King Smiths novel turned movie “Babe” was probably the first moment as a child that I fell in love with pigs as animals. I was 4 when this movie came out, 1995, I don’t remember when I first watched it, but it is definitely etched into my childhood memories somewhere.

“Children almost always hang onto things tighter than their parents think they will.” Quote from the book, Charlottes Web.

It is around this time that I also watched Charlottes Web, made in 1973, I was obsessed with this animated movie, the story was based on an even older book about a wonderful pig called Wilbur & a spider called Charlotte. Like all “disney” style movies it was filled with themes of death, childhood, innocence & inevitable change, it was quite an emotional movie for me I think, I did hold onto it way tighter than my parents probably considered. I had a wild imagination & convinced myself I could at least learn how to talk with animals, if I couldn’t already & in my mind, these movies could actually be real life scenarios. So, at some point around 2002, I began jokingly asking my Mum to fence off a small section of the garden so that I could go to the market & find myself a “micro” pig. It was the early 2000’s & this trend of the tiny pigs had started to become popular, obviously we now know it was a bit of a scam & a marketing tactic because plenty of these pigs did not stay micro sized, in fact they usually got at least as big as a labrador, which is still quite small for a pig, I guess.

My Mum loved animals as much as my sister & I, she must be where we got it from & she gave in to many instances of us begging her for a new pet of some kind. We have had hamsters, birds, rats, stick insects, rabbits, ferrets, tortoises, snakes, a horse & a pony as pets during our childhood. She didn’t give in to the idea of a pig in the back garden though, so my dream was not meant to be, I gave up hopes of having a pet pig.

Fast forward a few years (15) & I have landed piece of land with my love & we are about to start creating this dream life. I told Marley about my dream to have a pig, he said sure why not, probably just to make me happy because I am sure he does not have interest in keeping pigs, so we got 2 tiny piglets from a neighbour. They were about 8 weeks old, Vietnamese pot belly crossed with wild boar, I think the Father was a mixed breed so the piglets had 25% of wild boar - ish & the Mother was a pot belly. Super cute, all black with some white spots & actually not too big when they are fully grown. Catching them was the first hilarious part of this story, if you have ever seen a piglet running then you know they are FAST! It probably took us an hour or so to catch these little black bullets as they darted around our neighbours farm trying to evade the inevitable capture, poor pigs. Finally we got hold of them & dumped them into our camper van, boarding up the door hoping they would be easy to pick up when we arrived home.

The piglets I chose to take home with me…. Just look at that little face!

A quick 5 minute drive & we got to our place, opened the door of the van & one of the piglets flew out & made a break for it. Obviously I am in a state of panic thinking it will just run away into the wild, she runs straight into the wall of the house, bumps her head & then turns to run the other way, our dog starts trying to help us herd the tiny pig, which works a treat by the way & she darted back towards me. I had to dive on top of her & hold her like a sack of potatoes, if you have ever heard a piglet squeal you will understand that this was absolutely deafening, right in my ear. We put her into her new home & left them be until morning.

After a few days the piglets adjusted to new life in the ruin behind our barn & began to get comfortable, they became super friendly & affectionate & absolutely loved having their bellies scratched. I would spend hours & hours in there with them, training them to sit on my lap for cuddles & to have their whole bodies touched so I could examine them & make sure everyone was healthy without causing them stress.

Just hanging out with my new friends.

The piglets were with us for about 6 months when tragedy struck, I would let them loose on the farm to forage & had been training them to recall, they usually stayed quite close to the barn but on this particular day I hadn’t seen them for a few hours. We heard a loud bang & Marley knew that a gun had been fired. Hours of searching & calling for the pigs later we found blood & knew that somebody had shot one of our piglets. I was distraught & I felt terrible, we assumed both piglets were gone. Two days later & Noodle turns up at the front door of our house! She had somehow evaded the hunter (or local, who knows?) & survived 2 nights in the wild, but she came back & of course I was relieved, elated, grateful. Now we had ourselves a super pig!

This also taught me a lot about the culture in this area of rural Portugal, it helped me accept that I was very naive to the fact that people here hunt boar & that our piglet could indeed end up on somebody else’s plate.

We didn’t get them with intention to eat them, they were going to live on the land & help to regenerate the area we would create for them so that we could eventually plant trees there. Since this incident I have still continued to let them free, not very often & I try to keep a closer eye on them, I think that Noodle is smart enough to not run away again. She has made it 7 years with us so far & for that I am very grateful, she continues to make me smile every day, my very own Wonder pig.