One Pig Down: Eight to Go

After several days away from the farm routine, I spent most of Tuesday wrapping up loose ends from the previous three days, and preparing for the next few days. I'm guessing that Phil had some sort of allergic reaction to the massive amount of feather dust on the birds we processed on Monday, because he had a sinus headache until I gave him some Belladonna and Nux Vomica homeopathy, at which point he became functional again.

He fixed the auger so he can get started on fencing again. That has been a repair long in coming.

Today we penned the six piglets and Buttercup in preparation for selling one of the gilts (young girl pig). When the buyer came, he drove his truck right down to the temporary pen, and Buttercup and babes spooked. Buttercup somehow managed to escape out from underneath, along with one of her babies.

This ended up being a fortuitous error, though, because while I stood on the broken fencing, Phil hopped into the pen and soon grabbed one of the slippery babies. She squealed, as always, and Buttercup, outside the pen, went absolutely berserk. She was backed against the electric line and, I'm sure, was getting a good jolt, but she appeared not to take the least notice. Happily for me, she ended up on the wrong side of the electric line. The two boars were nosing about me, the remaining four piglets were scurrying around in the pen, and Buttercup was winding her way around, trying to get back to her babies.

It was an intense few minutes. I will be glad when the pigs and piglets are all gone. I'm not sure what the right method of separating and hauling and such would be, but I'm glad we won't have much more of that to do.

In other news, the varroa mite treatment on the Celadon hive continues. Each day since starting, I've found between 30 and 70 dead mites on the bottom monitor board, up from about seven (or so) before the treatment. Let those mites keep dying! Help that hive survive!

A day or so after treating, I found clusters of what looked like tiny white seashells, about the size of a fingernail: the dead bee brood. The package of mite strips had warned that that could happen, that the brood at a certain stage would die for a few days. That only lasted two or three days, though, and I am glad for that.

When the bees finished their forty pounds of honey, I have made them a different food: two parts sugar to one part water, with a pinch or two of sea salt, a bit of honey, all steeped with about a Tablespoon each of yarrow, peppermint, and yarrow. (There are other herbs that would serve the bees well, but I forget them now. I don't have them on hand.) The bees do not eat that food nearly as quickly, but I still check them daily to make sure they have enough.

And finally, we started an intense study of the book of Mark. On Sunday we were talking about Jesus' 40 days in the wilderness, and someone made the encouraging point that, in the Bible, people are not sent into the wilderness to die. It's not a pleasant time, but a time of stretching, where God meets with a person one-on-one, where they come away changed.

The encouragement of that thought has stuck with me. This time of stretching is not to crush, forsake, or destroy, but to grow and change. I like that.