Hello, long-time lurker, first time thread-starter, here. OK, so this might be a bit of a weird question:
My husband and I own a smallholding (homestead). We're quite young for doing this sort of thing, and have just finished building our first home with our own hands and with help from my Dad. We've got a small amount of land - 4 acres - and we're moving in this week!
My husband's parents are very excited about us having this land, which is awesome. They have been a tremendous help to us and we are very grateful. They helped us get the mortgage. They brought us a car, my father-in-law has been up most weekends helping us on the house.
The problem is, they keep buying us stuff, and it keeps causing us problems. For instance, they don't get around as well as we do, and so they bought a farm bike to drive around our property. We don't need a farm bike because it is four acres and we can walk everywhere. But now, of course, the bike is our responsibility, so we need to pay registration on it every year, and had to build a shed to store it, and that is taking up money, and time, we need for finishing our house. And they keep asking us how it is and if we're using it, and seem a bit put out that we don't really use it.
They got us a car, which is amazing, but they got it as a surprise and so it is not a car we would have chosen.
So this weekend they surprised us with some pigs for our farm as a Christmas present. Two kune kunes - they are very cute! But my MIL seems to have a big problem with us eating the sheep we're raising (despite being a meat eater), and so she has declared that these pigs must be our pets. We are super-stressed out trying to get the house finished in time for Christmas, move out of our rental, look after our land, and now we have to a) transport these pigs to our land, b) decide where they will live and build strong fences for them, and c) build shelter for them. In, like, a week, because my in-laws have them at their house, which is heavy residential and someone might complain.
We'd talked about MAYBE getting pigs MAYBE in a year or two when we were settled, but they would likely be for eating. I am trying to be very grateful, but I wish they had not given us these pigs. They are basically going to cost us money and time to feed and house, and we will not be able to eat them. They will be housed on land I wanted to use for other things. I wish we'd been able to choose what animals we had on our own land, and for what purpose. I think it's wrong to surprise people with a pet.
I think the time is come to have a talk to them about "surprising" us with gifts for the land. I think they have got into the mindset about thinking what THEY would want on the land, and buying that. Do you guys have any suggestions for how we might do this? I don't want to be ungrateful, as they have spent a lot of money on us this year, and have helped us a lot, but I don't want any more surprise gifts for a while.
Also, has anyone kept pigs as pets before? Any advice?