Pig Farming--It's Not as Glamorous as You'd Think!

We folks at The F.A.R.M. raised pigs, this year. Five of them. Two pigs for us, and three for friends who appreciate home-grown pork, from pigs which were raised with kindness, and which we allowed to roam in the field—to root, and run, and be pigs.

My two youngest kids grumbled their way through the summer.

“Why don’t we just BUY our pork? I hate feeding pigs! Why do I have to feed them sometimes, when I didn’t want them, to begin with?”

Yadayadayada….

The same arguments are used when we raise beef, or chickens or turkeys. Reluctant farmers, are my teens. But Josie and Eli are meat eaters. It’s only right--in my opinion--that they appreciate where that meat comes from. Meat is not just some magically appearing commodity which comes from a freezer, or from a cooler at the local grocery store.

Our animals live good lives, while they are here at our homestead. That’s important to me. It is also essential that I know what is going into the bodies of my loved ones, as much as I am able to know.

So, we spent the summer feeding pigs, morning and night. And in between feedings, they ran and played and slept and rooted in the field, turning over the ground underneath alders which we hoped they would kill. They did.


Dual purpose critters.

But as a farmer, there is an end to the twice daily chores associated with raising livestock for food. When autumn arrives, there comes the harvest. Of vegetables, and of meat.


For some fortuitous reason (on his part) it seems that—more often than not--Mr. Grumbles has to put in an appearance at work on the days when the animals must be transported to the butcher shop. That happenstance means that I am the pig herder. The cattle herder. The reluctant--but committed--farmer.


This year, rather than hire a fellow with a cattle trailer to come collect the pigs, I decided to save money for all of us and take them to the butcher’s, myself. That meant driving to North Anson to hook onto a borrowed horse trailer, and driving back to the Township. It meant backing said trailer in between the two gate posts with precision. Before going to work that morning, I’d called the five swine into their stall and shut them in, so that when I got home from the office, I could open the gate to the field without fear that the pigs would escape.

I drove home with the attendant horse trailer, traveling across some awesome washboards. Those well-known ruts in our dirt road are common-place, but I have not often driven over them with a trailer attached to the Reece hitch on the bumper of my truck. The spectacle seen in my rearview mirror caused me to slow down—a little. A trailer jigging at a 45 degree angle from the truck pulling it is ample hint that, perhaps, the driver should use more caution than usual when journeying across those well-known heaves and dips.

I had a crew on stand-by for the “Great Pig Herding Event” which was planned for that afternoon. Three of the six friends for whom we’d been raising pigs were ready and waiting for my call for assistance. But I didn’t want them to arrive too soon. I’ve had little experience backing a trailer, and I didn’t want to have witnesses to my incompetence, should I fail to hit my target between the posts of the open gate.


In hindsight, I wish they’d been there. It’s not often I do something which would qualify as ‘bragging material’, but I reversed and positioned that horse trailer perfectly, the very first time. Eighteen inches from the post on the driver’s side, twenty-four inches from the post on the passenger’s side. Wow. I was psyched… and there was no one there to confirm my amazing competence.

That figures.


I grabbed my cell phone and called the troops, and within 15 minutes, they’d arrived. While I waited, I went into the hay loft and threw down two bales of hay and spread them in the trailer. The pigs would be spending their last night there, and I wanted them to be comfortable.

One gal arrived with big sheets of cardboard for us to hold and use as a chute, if need be, to funnel the pigs into the trailer. All three friends were dressed in calf-high rubber boots—something I don’t own. I was wearing my sneakers. And blue jeans. A purple button-down shirt, red barn coat and work gloves…

Since I’d been calling the pigs to my side all summer long with rewards of bagels, breads, tarts and rolls from the day-old supply at the local grocery store, I made the call. I positioned the two women at the small openings between trailer and posts, just in case any of the fat creatures tried to squeeze through. I dropped the ramp on the rear of the trailer. It splashed into eight inches of deep slop. Really deep, really stinky slop. Here in Maine, we experienced a dearth of rain over the summer months, but November had proven to be very rainy. Add to that, the fact that my son forgot to turn the hose off one night after filling the trough with water, thereby emptying our well into the paddock, and the ground was very soupy, indeed. I slogged though goop which covered my sneakered feet up to my ankles and climbed aboard.


I had a box of bread under my arm. I called to my third friend, who’d volunteered to unlock the door to the stall.

“Release the pigs!!!”

He did. The five porcine creatures wandered out. I called them.

“Come on! Heeeere, piggy, piggy, piggy. I have foooood! Come and get it!”

I began to drop pieces of sponge cake and garlic bagels onto the floor of the horse trailer. And as I’d hoped, the pigs followed their snouts. One wandered up the ramp for a mid-afternoon snack. The second followed suit. I told Mister Pig Herder to be ready. To lift the ramp and slam it home the very second the fifth pig was inside the trailer.

Three in. Four in. Two back out…. I continued my sing-song calling and tossed bread onto the hay at my feet. Finally, the last of the five swine made it up the ramp and my guy-friend grabbed it from its place in the muck and, giving a mighty heave, slammed it shut. One pig changed his mind at the last second, and his snout was caught. He squealed—as well he should—but we daren’t let the gate drop. Despite one gal’s frenzied admonition to drop the gate, we didn’t dare. We’d never get five newly stressed pigs back into the conveyance. I pushed against the ramp enough for the poor creature to free his nose, and then it banged home. The locks were flipped into place. The pigs, with nary a fuss, were loaded.


But so was I.

One of my girlfriends was worried about me. Concerned that I was trapped with five pigs weighing between 200-300 pounds, each. Would they turn on me? Attack the hand that fed them?

That was not a concern of mine. My unease came from the fact that I had to get out of there. Somehow exit the trailer. The ramp, locked into place, was chest high. The ramp, newly recovered from the muck, was nasty and slippery. I’m not afraid of muck and kuck… but I am deathly afraid of making a public spectacle of myself. I looked out, and down. I was going to have to climb the gate and jump into soupy pig crap. Yay…

My quick-thinking ramp-closer made a suggestion. He said he could pull the trailer ahead so that I could jump out onto water-sodden grass instead of water-sodden muck. That sounded good to me! Chagrinned, I wondered why I hadn’t thought of that

He pulled my truck away from the gate. Got out. Walked around and looked at me. So did my two girlfriends.

The gentleman asked what he could do to help. Did I need a ladder?

Naw. A ladder would be a little… sissy-ish, wouldn’t it? And I—well, I had backed a horse trailer perfectly between two gate posts on the very first try! No way was I going to be all ‘girly’ and use a step ladder to exit that trailer! I just needed to be alone. I knew I could get out. But I feared making a fool of myself in the process.

“Okay!” I declared. “Everybody… git! I’m climbing out of here, and I don’t want you all to see me if I take a nose dive!”

Respectfully, my three friends wandered away, backs turned to the trailer. How cool are they? (Way cool.) I’m not sure I wouldn’t have been there, camera in hand, waiting to record the sure-to-be ignominious leap from the top of the ramp, if t’were one of them in my predicament. The pigs began milling nervously. Juliet stomped on my foot, and left a cloven-hoof-shaped imprint in the inch-deep muck atop my sneaker. Baldy pushed me aside as he competed for the onion roll at my feet. And Angus actually gave me a bit of a toss as he tried to reassert his dominance over the confined herd.

I peered out. All three backs were turned. I grabbed hold of the rim of the roof over my head with my gloved hands. I swung my right leg up and over, thanking my lucky stars for a 36 inch long legs. My left leg followed, until I was sitting atop the locked ramp. It wasn’t so far… maybe five and a half feet to the ground. But I am a klutz. A hard-core klutz. I’ve never done a graceful thing in my life. But their backs were turned. If I made a fool of myself, no one would know. Unless I broke a bone or something, and had to lie writhing in pain on the partially frozen ground for several minutes while my buddies decided whether or not they dared to turn around…

I launched myself from the rim of the horse trailer gate. I landed, both feet firmly planted on the ground. I stood upright, and resisted the urge to raise my arms victoriously in a classic, gymnastic dismount. Why, oh, why, had I made them all go away? Turn around? For the second time that day, I had deftly avoided a Bonehead Moment... and NO ONE was witness to the miracles!!!


Dang!

I called to them.

“Okay! I’m out!”

My friends turned around. Looked me up and down. Their expressions caused me to do the same.

I was covered in pig poop. My sneaks, my socks. My butt, my thighs. My belly and chest, from leaning against the ramp to view the ground below. My gloved hands. I even sported a little splattered crap on my face. I resisted the urge to lick my lips—something I always do when I’m nervous.

I chuckled and walked onto the granite steps of my front porch. Kicked off my shoes. Slid my feet into Crocs and dumped my gloves. It was late afternoon, and the days are short, here in December at the 45th North latitude. I needed to deliver the pigs to the butcher shop before dark, as the trailer didn’t have any working tail- or brake-lights.

I thanked my cohorts for their help, climbed into the truck, and headed for North Anson.

I noted that a trailer loaded with more than a half-ton of ‘critters’ didn’t bounced nearly as much on washboards as did an empty trailer, so I picked up my speed. As the heater warmed up, I became aware that I was particularly ripe. Nothing is quite as pleasant as warm pig dung. I grinned. There was no worry that I would ever grace the front of a glamour magazine--that much was a given.

I made it to the butcher’s with a half-hour of daylight to spare. Upon parking the truck and trailer, I walked inside. I greeted the owner, who looked me up and down. I was a mess. An aromatic mess. Feeling the need to explain the reason for my dishabille, I told him the story about getting trapped inside the trailer with the five pigs. About how I’d been stuck there, at the mercy of five gigantic, carnivorous pigs. I had to make it a good story, after all. Else… why would I be standing there in his sanitized shop covered in manure?

He cocked his head. Raised his eyebrows. Took one last look at my poop-covered façade.

“So… your friends wouldn’t let you out the door on the side?”

“There’s a door?? On the SIDE?”

I burst out laughing, and moved to the shop window to take a look. Yep, there it was. A full-length door on the passenger’s-side of the trailer. A door which could have been effortlessly opened, and easily exited through! A door made for humans—for farmers like me—to disembark the close confines of an animal-laden trailer. I giggled. Had I been the only one who didn’t notice the door? Had my friends known about it—seen it—and made the collective decision to ignore it? Decline mention of it?


I almost hoped they’d known. Otherwise… where would the fun have been? Who, really, wants to be a boring, small-scale farmer?

Not me.

A Quiet Barn

Well, the barn is silent. The grain bins are empty. The lights are off, the hay chaff is swept up, and the stall and henhouse floors are scraped clean.

There are no farm animals at The F.A.R.M.

This is the first winter since 2000 that we won’t be slogging through snow to the barn, lugging buckets of water or toting sacks of feed. This is the first time that we haven’t had some type of farm animal needing our attentions and keeping us close to home. At one time or another, we’ve had goats, chickens, turkeys, pigs and steers.

But not anymore!

The Buff Orpington laying hens and their two escorts have moved to the home of a kindly neighbor. She’d heard they were destined for the chopping block and quietly asked to rescue them from their fate. What can you say to that?

You can say, ‘Certainly, Marilyn. Of course you can rescue our flock.’ Danged things probably would have been tough, anyway!

And the steers got sent down the road on Thursday. Willie and Blue, two Holsteins with a penchant for tossing me into the pucker-brush with their horns—albeit, lovingly—will be coming back home to The F.A.R.M. on Saturday.

Minus the horns.

Farming is a hard row to hoe. I love animals. We eat meat. Those two precepts seem to be in conflict with each other. How can a woman who loves animals then turn around and kill them? Even worse, how can she EAT them? How inhumane! How dastardly!

Yup. I agree. That’s how it seems. And yet…

How many of us think about the actual, living animal when we pick up a package of hamburger from the grocery store cooler? How many of us pause to imagine the chicken whose breasts we are about to bake? Or the pig who provided the bacon that is sizzling in the pan?

If I was to hazard a guess, I would say, ‘Very few.’

However, I am NOT guessing when I tell you that most of the meat we buy in the supermarket comes from farm animals which were raised in less than comfortable conditions. Very few of them enjoyed their lives. Many never ran across a field or a barn yard, few had the opportunity to cock-a-doodle-do from a tree branch, or roll in soft grass warmed by the sun. Hardly any of them got their daily jollies by chasing down a country girl and flicking her aside with devilish glee. Some never felt the touch of a gentle hand, never had their backs scratched or their feathers smoothed or their tummies rubbed.

We give our farm animals a good life. While they are enjoying our Fresh Air and Room to Move, they are happy. Happy enough to cavort and play.

And as we are treating them with fondness and good humor, we are also trying not to become attached to them. Because we are humane humans, and it takes a little piece out of us each time we kill an animal, or send it away to be killed. We don’t like doing this. But we DO care about how an animal is treated. We DO care about giving them a good life. We also care about what goes into our bodies, and we know that our animals have not been fed growth hormones or an excess of chemical additives.

We aren’t vegetarians. Perhaps, some day, we will be. But until that day arrives, we are trying to do the responsible thing. The RIGHT thing. We are raising, loving, and then slaughtering the animals that feed this family.

At the very least, I am caring about the animals’ quality of life while they are on this earth. I won’t apologize.

But I will feel guilty, and I will feel sad.

Capon Capers

The chickens have flown the coop, here at The F.A.R.M. And it’s about time!

We’ve had a flock of Buff Orpington laying hens for a couple of years, along with two roosters named Bert and Fred. Too late, we discovered that Orps rate low on the scale of good egg producers, despite having done homework prior to purchasing the little chicks. I guess I’d paid more attention to their cold-weather hardiness than their egg producing abilities when I made my decision to purchase the young flock. Lately, we’d been lucky to get three eggs a day. And so…it was time for the darlings to enter the next phase of our farming operation. They were headed for the freezer this coming Saturday.

Now, I like to think of myself as a sound businesswoman and a practical farmer. But that’s just how I like to THINK of myself! In reality, when push comes to shove... I’m the pushover.

Instead of slaughtering them, instead of selling them…I gave the biddies away.

The whys and where-fors of the situation are moot, at this point. Suffice it to say that it involved a kindly, big-hearted, elderly lady…and a tough, bone-headed, middle-aged woman who had a meeting of the minds and souls. Who needs Fred fricassee, anyway, when rice all by itself is perfectly palatable?

If a little bland…

I hope Fred realizes how lucky he is, because I really hated that bird. That homely, beady-eyed rooster with the obvious comb-over was constantly riding my ass. And I mean that literally. Every time I turned my back on the fowl creature, he was raking his spurs down the backs of my thighs. But he’d never attack me head-on! Oh, no! He’d wait until my defenses were down and my attention was elsewhere before he’d dare to strike. Chicken!

Still…I’ve got to admit that I’m pleased as punch that the boys and their seventeen much-put-upon ladies are now comfortably ensconced with twenty-one other chickens, a crow, a robin, some geese, a few ducks and seven parakeets. Their lives have been spared, and really…it’s no skin off my back! Or my thighs…

I did have to take a little bit of grief due to my economically unsound decision. One friend had the nerve to say I was going ‘soft’. Naturally, them’s fighting words to a gristly old girl such as myself. There’s nothing soft about me! Except for my stomach, maybe. And my thighs. And perhaps…my butt. Sigh…

All in all, though, I’m tough as old leather!

Mr. Grumbles was also less than enthused by my spontaneous bout of generosity. How could I tell, you ask? Well. It started with a folding of his arms across his chest. From there, his exasperation travelled northward, to his mouth, where the corners skewed themselves downward as his chicken lips pursed. Upwards the irritation moved, until his eyes began rolling in their sockets. He must have been especially annoyed, for I witnessed a rare phenomenon. Mr. Grumbles’ left eyed rolled counter-clockwise, while his right eye revolved in the opposite direction. And like the power of the coriolis effect, there was no changing directions mid-rotation.

I’ve gotta tell you…it was rather creepy.

As I stood there staring, wondering what awesome display of pique his hair would display, my husband spoke. He uttered five short words, but they cut me to the chick.

‘I KNEW you’d do that!’

Well, now… that was just a lie! There’s NO WAY he could have known that I would have had a plucking party planned one moment, and a rooster rescue instigated, the next. No way! And I said so!

He shook his head in exasperation (which made me rather nauseous, what with his eyes doing all those whirls and whorls right in front of me. Ghastly!)

‘Oh,’ he said, as I battled the effects of vertigo, ‘I didn’t know WHO you’d give them to. And I didn’t know WHEN you’d change your mind about slaughtering them. But I KNEW you’d pullet off, somehow. But to GIVE them away??? At least you could have asked for some small, measly, poultry little fee!’ He shook his head again, his expression resigned. ‘Did you give her the mash, the grit, the oyster shells, too?’

What an eggsellent idea! I hadn’t, of course. I’d gone off half-cocked, all in a rush to deliver the flocking things! But I will. Just as soon as Mr. Grumbles’ feathers aren’t ruffled anymore, I’ll run those supplies up the road to the Orps’ new home. But I’ll do it grudgingly, of course.

Because, after all--I’m a tough old bird.

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The above photo is of Fred Fricassee and some of his biddies. The pic was taken by Josie-Earl Pease. Because, you see...I was too scared of him to get that close.