Our Five Seconds of Pig Ownership

Phil worked incredibly hard today. It turns out that we could potentially get electricity installed on Friday or Monday, so he spent time figuring out the electrical box all on his own! No books to help! All our books are packed, so he just reasoned it out. “If you look at it long enough, it starts to make sense,” he said. (I’m fairly confident that I could look at it for a month and it would make no more sense to me than it did in the beginning.) He ran again to Charlottesville, and bought, we hope, the rest of the wiring we need.

I planted 74 ginseng seeds after preparing a teeny bed in the forest in back of our trailer. It was restful and fun, though whether I actually get a harvest in five or six years is more than I can say.

Phil casually mentioned today that, for the first time since trying the Atkins diet, and the second time since we’ve been married, he’s below 185. He’s 175. Wow!

Our truck has been driving with a little shimmy at times, usually on the dirt road. We wondered if it was a harmonics issue, where the vibrations of the road built up over time. When Phil examined the truck more today, he found that one wheel had a nut sheered right off, and, perhaps in a related issue, one front tire was bent. That is not good news. And the power steering and power breaks are not working well. He is currently at the Bessettes, hopefully taking care of those issues with Dennis, who, as with many things, apparently is an expert.

If it weren’t for the Bessettes, we’d be up a creek without a paddle so many times over.

The worst of today was that we went back and bought our two $80 pigs. We enjoyed talking to the couple and the boys enjoyed playing with the children, so much so that it was dark when we returned home. We let the pigs out of the dog crate we had used to transport them, into the large electric-fence-lined pen built at such cost and pain. They walked right out.

We have no idea where they are. Phil, uncharacteristically, was beside himself. What a disappointment! What a frustration!

And that’s the news from Farm WoeBeHere.