Merry Christmas 2012 !

Winter in Svångemåla

The deep forests in Svångemåla continues to be harvested. Huge piles of timber currently block the view over the Field and you feel a bit "locked in". Luckily they will not be there for very long and when they are gone the landscape will be more open and lighter.

The wild pigs seem to have disappeared and I hope they will not come back since I have now turned off the electric fence.

If you do not want to be in the hot seat, this might be a good place for you!

It is not easy to see the forest for all the trees!

The snow is a blessing since it covers all the damage done by the wild pigs!

Road problems

The heavy machines and large timber trucks together with the very wet weather have made the roads a bit difficult to navigate. Despite big efforts of those responsible for the maintenance of the road some sections are almost impossible for smaller cars to pass. One might wonder what they will look like next spring?

Deforestation and wild animals

One might think that the big machines and the totally changed forest had made all wild animals run away as far as they could but that is not the case at all. Maybe they know that the area next year will be a haven for them with lots of small trees and bushes that taste great.

Moose

Wild pig

Heaps of twigs, timber and more

The disforestation in Svångemåla is soon finished and it is interesting to see how everything has now been gathered and labeled. Even the cut off branches are put together in several huge heaps of twigs that soon will be cut up into very small pieces and made into fuel for heating up houses and water in our cities.

Most of the wood will be used for making paper (massaved) or timber (timmer) but the aspen trees will be matches (tändstickor).

Garbage

Many think that the destruction of nature that can be seen today is a new phenomenon but that is not the case at all. You just have to walk around in old settlements like Svångemåla to find all kinds of things that have been dumped without any considerations regarding neither animals nor humans. When I put up the electric fence, just outside the stone wall that marks the borders of my plot, I found a lot of old bottles, buckets,  two stoves, an old bicycle etc. They were covered by old leaves and moss but still dangerous to step on. It took just an hour to gather this heap of old junk that will go to the dump next year.

Late October

It looks like the wild pigs are not too keen on challenging my electric fence! I could not find a single trace of them when I spent a few days in Svångemåla last week. So far so good ....

The old forest to the north of the house was reap for harvesting and a big machine has made its way through most of it. It has left some hardwood but all conifers are gone. I actually do not mind since this will be a haven for moose and deer next year when new plants come up. It also makes the forest a bit lighter and not as dark as it has been before.

 The linden tree is wonderful this time of the year when it glows in the sunshine.

From "The ManKind Project"

Enough is enough !!!

A line or to be correct, a rope has been drawn in Svångemåla to keep the wild pigs (Sus scrofa) from destroying more of my plot. It was really hard work to set it up and without the help from a good friend it had taken me much more time than the three days it now took. As you know from previous postings, the ground is full of stones and it was as times impossible to get the fence poles down without removing rocks. When that was not possible, we simply had to go around them or in one case through a very small crack in a rock.

One of Sweden's more famous author and artist, Björn Gidstam, has experienced the same problem as I have and wrote a very good article about it in a newspaper, highlighting the fact that so little has been done to assist and help those who are hit by the pigs and that nothing will probably change as long as the politicians in Stockholm and other big cities are not affected.

http://www.smp.se/nyheter/lobbyn/insandare/ge-oss-ett-slut-pa-detta-svineri(3453528).gm

Gidstam also compared how much energy and emotions that have gone into the discussion about wolfs compared to how, relatively, silent it is about the damages done by wild pigs. I fully agree.

Here are some pictures showing the problems we faced setting up the fence. I really, really hope it will keep the beasts out!

The poles are treated to last for at least 15 years. By then I hope the wild pigs have moved on or even better, been reduced in numbers so that they can live in peace in the forests only.

 

 The equipment needed is not cheap. All together I had to pay more than USD 1,000! The instrument I am showing measure how high the voltage is along the rope and from my measurements it reached 7000V ! I do not think even a big pig can take that on the snout without feeling some pain.

Svångemåla under attack

I cannot say that I did not see it coming but I was still surprised, sad and mad when I saw what the wild pigs (Sus scrofa) had done to my lawn while we have been away for some weeks. It has never been a smooth, manicured lawn but I have without problems used a normal lawn mover to cut the grass while it now looks more like a field that has just been plowed. About one third of the lawn is damaged and requires serious work before it is back to what it used to be.

The first night we heard the grunting of pigs and when I rushed out I could see two large pigs staring at me for some seconds before they flew over a one meter high and two meters wide wall of stones. The next day we put some old wire fence there but the next step will be an electric fence. Many have already had to put up such fences and even if my plot was badly damaged we saw one not far away that had been completely ruined. The wild pigs are gradually becoming such a serious threat to the farmers as well as common house owners and motorists and I wonder how long it will take before it becomes a political issue.

Having lived in Africa many years I now have an even better understanding of the anger farmers there feel when elephants and other wild animals ruin their farms / shambas and thereby threaten their one and only way of surviving.

The force required to turn up such large pieces of soil and grass is amazing and it is even more astonishing that they can do it by just using their snouts.

I still don't know what the best way of repairing the damages is. Remove everything and put new soil in the holes or to use a cultivator to smash everything and then even it out???