Pigs Eat Acorns (But Maybe Not OUR Acorns)

After we moved the pigs this morning, we talked about where to put them next. Their log home is so heavy to move, and we're in the newly cleared section of the stone-fruit orchard, which means we have to pull the pen, with pigs inside, over stumps. Phil is the Incredible Hulk in terms of muscles, but I am not, and lifting a log cabin, even a small one, is not very fun.

Besides, we've run the pen downhill since we got the pigs, and now we were looking at uphill, over stumps. No thanks. I'd like to preserve Phil's back for many more years.

So we set up a two-strand electric pen, and the pigs went happily inside. They are large enough now that they can't fit through our cattle panel perimeter fence, and they have experienced enough jolts from the electric fence strung around the top of their log pen, they really respected the fence and gave it room.

They are in the woods, among the acorns. I read recently that pigs don't like all acorns, and I have no idea if they will like the acorns they have, but maybe they will. That would be nice!

***

I read a book this week about the Oregon Trail, and I was so convicted. Those folks had a really difficult time: cholera; Indian attacks; loss of animals through drowning, starvation, overwork, exhaustion. Mothers would give birth in the middle of nowhere, and keep moving the next day because, well, what else was there to do?

I have, at times, complained about our little house. But how large is our house compared to a covered wagon! How easy my cooking, with a fast and efficient propane grill, compared to a campfire made of buffalo dung. How easy my water, that comes out of the spigot, compared with drawing water from a creek—when there was a creek close by.

Concurrently with that conviction, I think my understanding of "home" has fundamentally changed recently. I had been thinking of my sleeping and cooking places as my home, and the outside was, well, the outside.

I realized last week, though, that my home is where I live. I had been forgetting that I live on acres of land, that that was part of the trade between upper middle class comfort in Boulder and white trash trailer life in Virginia. If I just think of 2700 square feet v. 224, it feels quite restrictive, like I made a bad choice. But that's not the whole package, and, on balance, I think we came out ahead.

***

I recently read a really stunning poem about women aging. It gives me great hope that, despite little wrinkles at the eyes and all the other bits of aging, that a greater beauty may await.

W.B. Yeats' "The Folly of Being Comforted"

One that is ever kind said yesterday:
"Your well-beloved's hair has threads of grey,
And little shadows come about her eyes;
Time can but make it easier to be wise
Though now it seems impossible, and so
All that you need is patience."
Heart cries, "No,
I have not a crumb of comfort, not a grain.
Time can but make her beauty over again:
Because of that great nobleness of hers
The fire that stirs about her, when she stirs,
Burns but more clearly. O she had not these ways
When all the wild Summer was in her gaze."
Heart! O heart! if she'd but turn her head,
You'd know the folly of being comforted.