On the Farm 01.08.08

I think by now I’ve banished any thoughts from your head that things are all rainbows and unicorns around here. Yes, yes, many days things are positively bucolic at Sugar Creek Farm. All oinking piglets, mooing calves, and crowing roosters.

Today was not one of those days.

Don’t let those lovely eyelashes fool you.

Or those cute, floppy ears.

Or even those little pink snouts.

It was supposed to be a simple task. Move nine 3-month-old feeder pigs from one pen, through a cattle lot, to another pen. They should have been happy about it. They had outgrown their current pen and their creep feeder. They were getting moved up to the big pigs’ pen, with more space and a heated water and a 1-ton capacity feeder.

We were without our head herdswoman, who was attending a wrestling meet, watching her boyfriend wrestle. Ahem. So Matt, Olivia and I were left with the task.

We got them out of their current pen easily enough. Got them through the cattle lot easily, too. Got them moved up to the shed, and all they had to do was walk through one last gate. We’d slowly crowd in on them, gently moving them towards the pen entrance, waiting for just one to find the opening. Because if one finds it, then the others usually follow pretty willingly.

But there was one little devil in the group. We’d just get them up to the opening, get them sniffing it interestedly, and that one little devil would bolt.

And once one bolts, they all bolt.

So we’d head back out into the cattle lot and start the process all over again.

And again. And again. And again.

During the ensuing hour and a half (!) things were thrown, threats were made, the occasional f-bomb was dropped. Finally, finally, we got them all into the new pen.

About that time Madeline called for a ride home. I replied, “We just got them in, I’ll be right there, but I’m warning you…nobody is in a good mood.”

2 years ago:
Sucky, sucky day (maybe January 8th is just cursed?)

1 year ago:
Last call