Pig Lickin' Good

I know I should be in bed, but it is Wednesday night and I am thinking 2 days until the big day. And since Mark isn't here to tell me I should just go to bed, here I am making a post. We have the morning person/night person marriage. Mark is definitely a morning person. I on the other hand, am assuredly a night person. But we have made it work for the last 21 years. I thought for this post I would fill you in on our adventure in the pig farming.

So we had been talking about purchasing a pig or two. Mark finally decided to make it a priority and after a few weeks and some false leads he found a place over in Eastern Washington that would sell us a "couple". Now when Mark left at 5 am to go pick up these cuties, we agreed that 2 would be a good number. But I was a little skeptical that we were on the same page since our agreed upon cow purchasing number was 3 and we ended up with 8. Must be the new math they are teaching. So when he rolled in the driveway my first question was.... how many do we own? Luckily he showed some restraint and only bought 3.
















This is our dog Lucky, who is by the way, sensing that life is about to change on the Thomas farm. She has her nose up in the air getting a whiff of those pigs. Now normally you would say, that is impressive, she must have a keen nose on her, but I beg to differ. As soon as I left the door to the house I could smell them. Luckily our pig pen happens to be out in the field behind our house.
















Here is our pig pen that head pig farmer Mark and his brother Kyle built. Did I tell you that Kyle is in the whole pig farming thing. I guess one of the pigs is his and we own two. How lucky are we? So pigs are in the back of the truck (hereby known as point A) and need to be cooerced into their new home (hereby known as point B). I always love it when head pig farmer Mark has a plan and he didn't fail me this time. He backed his truck up to within 5 feet of the pen opening, was going to lower the tailgate, lay down a piece of plywood and if all the stars and moons lined up correctly those pigs where going to be so joyous about their new home, they would run down the ramp from point A to point B. We would then close the gate and tada. Oh did I mention Coty and I were in charge of holding a couple of measly 2X4's that were surely going to discourage those little piggies from running off the ramp and into the tall grasses never to be seen again. No pressure. I really wanted pictures to blog this amazing event but my camera was confiscated since head pig farmer Mark thought I couldn't 2X4 it AND take pictures. No confidence. I mean, us women were meant to multitask. After several attempts to lure those pigs down the ramp, Mark finally grabbed some hind piggy legs and ran them into the pen like he was in a wheel barrel race and first prize was a hunting trip in Africa. It was impressive. He really didn't need us after all. Which means we could of had some awsome pictures of Mark and our piggies blazing their way. But maybe in the long run it was better for me to just hold this memory safely in the deep recesses of my memory instead of on the blog for everyone to see.
















And here they are in the new home. Lucky, our dog, was trying to figure out what in the heck was going on. She was doing laps around the pig pen sniffing up a storm and either she was trying to make friends or maybe she thought she had ordered the sampler platter.
















Now here is Courtney and Coty doing their father's bidding again. We have an electrical fence that runs around the inside of the pig pen. I understand that as they get bigger they will lean on the fence and root underneath. So we needed to run an extension cord out to the electrical fence until my dear husband has 15 minutes to himself to get something more permanent done. Luckily Coty was helping because he had the great idea to check and make sure no one, namely ME, was leaning on the fence before they engaged the electrical cords. Thank you Coty for not shaving another 30 minutes off my life.
















Here is Sidney, trying to become "one" with the pigs. Ahhh grasshopper, to understand the pig way, you must first make yourself look like a pig .


















Finally, I feel it necessary for us all to walk away with some insignificant bit of knowledge about pigs after this whole post. So instead of going into some technical debate on why Berkshire is a better breed than Duroc, or not, I am just going to tell you about the pig and it's curly tail. The pig will usually have it's tail curled unless it is relaxing OR if it isn't feeling well. So as long as our little piggies are walking around, eating and have their little tails all curled up, we know they are happy. I wonder how happy head pig farmer Mark would be to go out and check on his pigs and see big pink bows tied on their tails. Hmmmm tempting. Maybe that is for another post :)