The March of the Piggies

Sunday was the big day, the pigs' appointed time to be taken to the next step in their journey. It started like any other day. Any other day when rain had fallen for about 36 hours and turned the pigpen and the approach to it into mud soup.



Since one of us tends to take such things calmly, and the other tends to panic, it did not surprise me to hear, shortly after lunch, "There is no way we can get those pigs into the trailer today." He was right. If we drove the trailer to the pigs, it would have been axle-deep in mud. If we tried to drive them to the trailer, well, a hog drive is not something I ever want to take part in. The image of chaos is just too much to bear.

Except now that I've experienced one.

John first called our friends, the Wilkes, and asked if they had a 4 wheel drive vehicle we could use to get the trailer in and out. No, we aren't REAL farmers, in that we don't have one of our own. We could pull the trailer to the processor, but we needed help in getting the trailer past the mud. Not only did they have a 4 wheel drive, but they were taking their pigs to the same processor that day, and offered to come by and help us load ours.

John's second idea, which involved a contraption he built, sounded shaky. Ethan thought so, too, as John explained it to him.



Can't you just see, in the set of those 18 year-old shoulders, that his brain is saying, "I wonder if my dad has lost his mind?"

But faith in Dad returned as he heard Dad explain the plan to the Wilkes, and they agreed that it made sense. (Note the water in front of the barn. The approach to the hog pen is just to the left of that white tent/building, where we store hay. A truck/trailer was NOT getting through there.)



So firstly, the Wilkes and the Peterman men drove the pigs into the aisle way of our barn. I had to be at the end of the aisle way, so I missed much of the fun. This was the view I had.



The pigs came through the aisle way and into John's ingenious contraption of hog panels, bucket clips and a bucket of feed. Watch it's employment, using sheer manpower.



Isn't that slick? No pigs slipping under the side of a chute or romping through the pasture, as we've had in the past. Just up the yard, into the truck, and off to



Where we left them looking like this;



They don't look like that anymore.