Porkstacular Pictures

mmmm...

Porktastic

I will admit to feeling somewhat glum on the last post. I didn't sleep so well that night and anthropomorphised the pigs more than is necessary. The PETA people have it wrong. Pigs are not really that smart and if they have feelings they haven't lived long enough to learn how to express them. They have a life span of 7 months and they grow from 0 pounds to 300 pounds during that time frame. Their brains couldn't possibly handle feelings. A pigs brain needs to assimilate that much physical change as well as thermoregulation, feeding and basic coordination with a body that grows a pound to three pounds a day.
It rained all day as it should on a day you bring something to it's death. My dad drove up from MA to help me with the building of a box on my truck as well as the transport. I will add here that both he and Stacee begged me to pay someone to take them away. Thanks for the confidence. Anyway we built a fine box on the truck and formulated a plan of attack. We backed the truck up to the pen and manuevered a ramp into place. We put some fencing along one side of the ramp and got out our bucket of food. The pigs hadn't eaten all day say I figured, with my many years of pig husbandry, that they would practicly fly up the ramp and into the truck. The larger of the two finally got the point and came on up. Dad had to leave to get back to a client right then so we closed pig one in the truck and decided to take it and then return for pig 2. An aside: We might as well name them now because the only attachment to them will be related to a recipe. Snuffy and Oink were the original name so maybe Snuffed and Loink. As in pork loin.
I drove to the butchers and expeditiosly as one might with a 300LB pig in the bed of the smallest pickup ever to roll out of Detroit and pleaded with the butcher to help me unload it.
We opened the tailgate and asked the pig (cumown pig, mon pig, git and like words) to step out of the truck onto the loading dock. The butcher gave the pig a stern 2 second warning and then grabbed it by it's ears and hauled it out of the truck. It took two of us to pull the second one out and it was smaller. Once penned I hopped back into the truck and started planning the second loading. Our friend David who knows how to cook every scrap of a pig helped lure the second pig into the truck. It took considerably longer and the pig definitly knew that where his mate was he would soon be also. I nearly killed it by tying a noose with baling twine around it's neck and trying to drag it in the truck. It put a such a fuss that I had to cut the rope. I tried the "bucket trick" Where you put the pigs head in a five gallon bucket, grab it's tail, and steer it backwards "wherever you want it to go" (the butchers quote) I think the trick part is getting a 6' 4"rookie with a high center of gravity standing in ten inches of pig waste to try to guide a pig that hits me right at my knees up a twenty inch wide plank to my truck. Finally a piece of whole wheat bread and some apples did the trick. I gave a very un-farmerial whoop upon penning the 2nd pig in at the butchers, climbed into my now filthy, reaking cab, rolled down the window, and went home. I had to take two layers of clothes off in the barn and go straight to the showers. After 8 handwashings with 3 types of soap the smell was diminished slightly.

We picked up 210 lbs of pork product this morning and have another 80lbs of hams and 30 lbs of bacon to follow. Heart attacks for everyone!! Please contribute suggestions on how to use fatback. We have 80lbs of it with the skin attached and really no clue as to what to use it for. My suggestion was dry skin treatment.

12 hours to go.

Tomorrow I take the pigs to the butcher. I'm not so thrilled about it actually. I don't really like them very much but they are very much alive. Tonight I went out to dump a tarp full of leaves prior to the rain tommorrow and happend to walk past the pig pen. Both pigs were sleeping peacefully side by side in a pile of leaves under a very full moon. We'll see how tomorrow goes.
My dad is coming up to help get them into my truck and from there down the road a few miles to the Windham Butcher. There we unload them down a ramp into a holding pen. They hang out there for the day and then Wednesday morning they are "processed".
If anyone would like a cleansing mud bath we have 10" of the finest organic mud and I would imagine we'll have the aromatic bath for quite a while still but we will still require reservations. I'd actually love to toss a few key people in there. You can mentally get in yourself, or toss certain people in if you need to. If you do imagine it please keep it G rated and please hose them off after and bring them some clean dry clothes. goodnight.

new pictures

Jack at gymnastics. He's learning levitation. To start they let them use trampolines.
Ezra at supplication....He's actually cradling a dried orange seed in his hand and asked Stacee to take his picture. Ezra Orange Pit doesn't sound as good as Johnny Apple Seed

November

Saturday was nearly 70. Not quite November weather in Maine. Last Saturday was opening day for deer season and instead of being out in the balmy fall air waiting to take a life I was upstairs in bed, swishing water gently around my mouth to rinse any of the mashed potatoes or yogurt I had eaten out of the 5 sockets where once my teeth were. Gross? yes it was a bit, but the made it almost all worthwhile. Since I'm not a casual user of painkillers I can now see how some people can get hooked. I realized that while on them I could think a thought and before I could analyze the thought and convert it into speach I had already spoken it (grammar corrections welcome). Whether it was anger, kindness, a musing or what have you, out it came.
I'd like to prescribe a derivitive of this to people who like to let you guess what they're thinking and the opposite to people, like me, who usually talk without or instead of thinking. Another upside to spending a day and a half sedated in bed was watching the entire 10 hour series of the Band of Brothers DVD. I have always been fascinated by WWII and had heard great things about this series and finally had the chance to watch it. All 10 hours. If you have any interest in WWII get this series. Our library had it and I'm sure your video store does too. Disclaimer: It's very real... Especially on Hydracodone and some other .
The boys are well. The pigs are off to market on the 16th. All 250lbs of them.
Oh.... and we have another Smith on delivery for May 24th.