Only Five Pigs Left!

Since I have been shifting my sleep habits earlier, my poor body has been very confused. I am shooting for 4am, which actually happened once this week (the latest I awoke was 5:30), but today I roused at 3am, after only a little more than three hours of sleep. After a couple of hours I went back to bed, and got up happily at 8am. It meant I was not grumpy, which is happy for all.

And I was prepared to face the disaster zone that was my kitchen. Bits of unrendered pig fat, knife and cutting board white with grease, pots with crackling residue caked to the bottom. I had felt bad that I pooped out last night, but when it took me three hours to clean up, I figured it was just as well I had waited.

Our friend Creigh had come for the morning, and he and Phil were in the lower pasture cutting down trees when a neighbor stopped by to buy pigs and a couple laying hens. Phil and I were so pleased: we managed to get the piglets and Buttercup in the catching pen, and Chunky was stuck far from the rest in a separate part of the paddock. Then we cut out Buttercup, who left her piglets for the allure of 20 pounds of feed all to herself. It all looked so professional ... until the piglets suddenly spooked and charged right the the cattle panel which we had neglected to fasten (and, indeed, had no idea was not connected).

The cattle panel smacked Phil in the forehead, which seemed uncomfortable, but no worse than Phil sustains on a regular basis. Creigh's reaction was much stronger: it turns out that Phil had dropped a tree limb, larger than his arm, directly on his head while cutting down trees. Creigh felt the leaves whoosh past his face, but Phil was on the ground. So two head injuries in the space of an hour was a bit much.

Hmm. How to corral five piglets without a protective mama, now that they were all spooked and in the wrong place, gorging themselves on 20 pounds of feed. Chunky had joined them by now, and the four adults and some children stood around watching them, making desultory conversation. (Okay, actually we were having a nice conversation, but it had to last a long time, because even with pigs, it takes a while to eat 20 pounds of dry matter.)

Somehow the pigs ended up in the corral. Phil's crouching action was most impressive, and I think they gave up resisting.

But now all seven pigs were in the small corral, and it was pretty clear that if Buttercup left, her babies would be squeezing out in front of, beside, and behind her.

So we wired them in, and Phil had the brilliant idea to take another cattle panel to cut Buttercup out. Happily, that worked. Charles and Buttercup stood on one side the panel, and watched as Phil grabbed a piglet. Three piglets somehow then squeezed out to join their mother, but the last one was by herself, so Phil grabbed and held, and then both piglets were in their traveling pen, and all was well.

Catching two Barred Rock hens was simple and low-stress after the shrieking of the piglets.

Phil went in to sit and drink a cup of tea.

***

This first day of October was quite cool. I went hunting in the storage trailer for winter clothes; I'm not sure I found them all, but should it be only in the 50s now, the boys will have pants and long sleeves to wear. That's good.

***

We are selling our Babydoll sheep. We had a couple come and look at them today; we'll see if they end up buying any. The sheep have such cute faces, I vacillate a bit even now, but overall, I am jealous for that half hour of Phil's day: no more putting up fence! Work on longer-term projects! May they all go to good homes.

***

Phil was moving the cows on the neighbor's land when he came across an apple that was not an apple.

We think it is a walnut.

Maybe an immature walnut, as his hands didn't turn black.