-9 August 2019
A Flowery Start:
This morning, one of the squash plants was starting to flower (a male flower -with a whole load of male buds) -and I managed to pick a long bean and a spicy pepper as presents from the garden. Fatima is hoping to cook the male flowers -if there are no female ones....
A Litter of Young Piglets:
Birthday Greetings From The Nearly
Weaned Piglets
A Flock of Ducks and Chickens:
A Broken Fridge:
A few weeks ago our new fridge broke down -which was particularly annoying because it was nearly pig slaughtering time (we had a big piglet, the pen was needed for the next generation -and of course Fatima's birthday -and our meat supply needed replenishing for the next few months).
What made it all worse was the retailer was being difficult. Refused to honour the warranty, and demanded 3,500 peso deposit to fix it (possibly costing up to 5,000 in all. They also told us would be another 2-3 weeks before the repair could be done.
A Sick Piglet:
Unfortunately, in the last few days our fattened piglet also suddenly became sick: Not eating or drinking much, a bit of a fever -and last night it started vomiting blood.
Poor little piglet was still sick today -so unfortunately we had to act quickly. If it died, then the meat would be useless -and it's life would be somewhat wasted. The only problem was storing all the meat. In fact, if our new fridge hadn't broken down then the piglet wouldn't have been alive to be sick.....
Anyhow, our helper Penny kindly offered her fridge and a neighbour was available to help with the culling so an afternoon date was set.
A Good Breakfast:
After a delicious breakfast with traditional noodle, most of the morning was spent waiting for a response from the provincial vets. We were worried about eating meat that might be from an infected pig -so we'd really hoped for a diagnosis. Eventually somebody replied (by text) suggesting it might have been poisoning) but not really appearing enthusiastic about us calling them.
So, we'd just have to rely on the butchers report....
A Culling:
After the traditional noodle lunch -Penny and the man arrived on time and all was prepared. Everything went well, the meat looked normal, the liver looked ok -but the lungs were speckled -plus a few blood clots here and there....
The blood was thin, The gall bladder was also very dark and enlarged.
However, the stomach was full of a terrible black smelly stuff and there were traces of leaves that she'd been given three or four days earlier. So, it seems that the diagnosis of the feedstuffs company's technician was correct -mechanical problems as a result of eating something inedible....
As a result, we kept the meat -but buried the blood and the internal organs -except for the liver, which looked ok.
Anyhow, at least it seems the pig(let) wasn't suffering from any nasty infectious diseases.... So that was a great relief
A Short Break:
A Big Surprise:
We were just having a bit of a break with some soup and ice-cream -when Fatima's phone rang. It was the head of the fridge manufacturer's service center in Cebu (Fatima had sent a letter, which I had mostly written, to the Chairman and President of the company). Anyhow, they said the fridge would be repaired today -or tomorrow -free of charge.
Sure enough, a little while later -the retailer's service lads showed up and stuck something in -and it worked. They also said we could get a refund from the shop...
Fatima texted back to Cebu -thanking them and hoping there would be no problems with the refund.
Then we packed the meat into the freezer in our lovely new working fridge.
While we were relaxing afterwards, we were rung again -this time from the manufacturer's head office in Manila. They asked if the repair had been made and asked Fatima about the payment we had made. Fatima also remarked that we had received nothing on paper regarding the repair (technically, I believe the warranty on the board starts again from today).
So, we suspect some kind of a scam by the retailer -and probably some kind of follow up by the manufacturer.....
-Anyhow, we have got the fridge back in service again -which is another great relief.....
A Treat for our Pigs:
...and A Treat for Us:
A beautiful end to the day....
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