The Learning Curve

From these postings, you’d think we only have pigs, but no. Pigs may be short on manners, but they’re long on personality. Maybe they’re just an easy target.

I bought Turnip Green from a friend about a year ago. He’s a very rare Mulefoot boar. Always a docile pig, Turnip Green wouldn’t hurt a fly. Rambo knew that, too. Rambo was a terror of a pig. If you could bottle a tornado then reform it into a pigs body, you’d have Rambo. But his is another story.

When they were both about six months old, we put them together. Rambo immediately began what we later found out was a life-long pursuit – Turnip Green torture. Within the first week of their cohabitation, we came in one morning to find Turnip Green limping around a well-beaten track in their stall. Apparently Rambo had run him around the stall all night and Turnip Green had pulled something. There were a couple of gilts (females never bred) in the stall with them and we thought they might be the source of friction, so we removed them. And that seemed to work.

Turnip Green and Rambo proceeded to grow up together. It was very obvious that Rambo had a crazy, aggressive side, and Turnip Green just hung back, but within a few months the two were moved into a larger group of juvenile pigs and everyone was happy. We never realized what simmered just under the surface.

These little boars eventually reached sexual maturity and I wanted to try out Turnip Greens genes first. We put him into a partitioned area in a field with about six young sows and removed Rambo to a sturdy stall in the barn.

Within two days, Rambo had broken out of his stall and was running around the field adjacent Turnip Green and his newly-acquired harem. With great difficulty, we corralled Rambo and re-penned him. In less than twenty four hours, Rambo was out again and had broken through not one but two stout fences. We found him in the field with Turnip Green and his women. Well, not really. They were no longer his.
Turnip Green was as far away from Rambo as he could get, cowering in a corner of the field, while Rambo was up at the highest point of their paddock, with all his women. And Rambo was in the mood for love.

We repeatedly tried to remove Rambo to no avail. Finally he started snapping at folks when they tried to feed them, so we de-manned him and made him sausage.

Turnip Green’s saga continued, however. Even after we removed Rambo, he wouldn’t go near the other pigs. From all appearances he was so beaten, so psychologically traumatized that he would never even be able to function in porcine society again, much less entertain ladies. But we left him in with them anyway.

Finally the time came for us to move all the young sows to another location for the winter. Determined to make sure all 15+ of them got bred, we put in Turnip Green, plus two other boars – Elvis and Hinkle. The enormous size of their wooded lot, plus the docile nature of the other boars assured us that Turnip Green would not be harassed and maybe, just maybe would date again someday.

Shortly, however, our hopes were dashed. Turnip Green was obviously the low pig on the totem pole in the herd, just barely above the eunuchs. He ate last and skulked around, always timid. So, when sows began to farrow a few weeks ago, we were sure that they would come out looking just like Elvis (the largest of the three boars in the herd).

It took a lot of patience and finagling to catch all 28 piglets born in the woods, plus their four mothers. But when we did, it was well worth the work. Here we had beautiful, watermelon-striped grayish silver and black piglets. To top it off – not a one of them had cloven hooves! To our shock, they each bore the unmistakable single-toed hoof of a Mulefoot. It turns out Turnip Green worked like a thief in the night. Turnip Green, you might say, is a true back door pig.

“This is the real thing,” Aaron said, “This is farming, for real.”
“It’s pretty hard-core,” I chuckled, as I widened my incision with the scalpel.
Stuart was silent. I heard him gulp and then wimper, just a little.
We were stuck – castrating pigs. I freely admit I am a procrastinator and, in this case, for good reason. It’s not the most pleasant job.

We first started performing surgery nearly ten years ago. Our first two pigs produced an abundance of little boars that had to be, for lack of a better word, tamed. With pigs, stools and bullwhips won’t make a dent. You have to use a scalpel, and sometimes even that doesn’t work.

There was Peripatetic, for instance – the half-crazed pig who we had cut (read: castrated) when young. I truly believe he was mentally damaged. He escaped one day, took a wrong turn, and ended up in the horse pasture.
The horses quickly made him the ball in a pickup game of soccer. The second goal was ugly and I know he was hooved in the head pretty hard.
After that, Peripatetic didn’t come around very often. He actually disappeared somewhere in the woods. He would reappear every few weeks, strangely hairier, and keep his distance. If he even saw a horsefly, he would vanish. When we’d see him the next time, he’d be hairier still. When we finally managed to trap him, I promise, he had the most beautiful, blonde, lustrous hair growing at least three inches off the tips of his ears.
Castration did wonders for his hair, but it did not tame him.

But back to the actual work at hand. Castration is truly traumatic. Without going into the painful details, it is enough to say that when we began castrating little pigs of about 20 lb., none of the men on the farm could bear it. The scene was something like this:
We would line up at the barn, face the cage of caught piggies, set up a piece of plywood on a couple of rickety sawhorses, and don gloves and aprons. We would then, very solemnly, pray and stand aside. No male was brave enough to operate – my sister and eight month-pregnant wife were the first bold surgeons.
The men would valiantly pull the pigs out of their cage and hold them. This was somewhat difficult since we had to do this while simultaneously trying not cry, gag, or look at what was happening. Truly. During castration, my brother-in-law gagged almost continuously. When he didn’t gag, he moaned. This was bad because I’m a sucker for gagging. As long as I’m not hugging a toilet, if I hear gagging, I laugh. I don’t have to even hear the gagging. I can hear a story about someone hearing gagging and laugh. Some might call this keeping alive the child in me; others might term it nourishing the sadist.
Regardless, the women were castration whizzes. They studiously ignored our empathetic whining and worked with precision. Eventually, however, they wanted us to grow up. So we had to learn. And learn we have.
We actually had a boar named Nelson (Rockefeller). He was a bad dude – mean. When he got too big to handle and had sired too many piglets with genetic defects, we decided it was time to cut him. We were all too ready to leave our first full-size, totally grown boar castration to the professionals, so we carried him to the vet. I myself was absent, but through repeated re-tellings in hushed alleyways of the farm, I have heard that the vet gave the boar a shot of anesthetic. This made him mad. The next shot made him mean. The final shot made him irate enough to run the vet, his helper and one brother over the gate and out the back of the trailer. Another brother, Wright, was the only human left in the trailer. Nelson saw him just after Wright activated the suction cups on his back and played Spiderman on the trailer ceiling while the boar made leaping bites at the air just below him.
Eventually, Nelson slowed down enough for surgery, but our vet has declined cutting any more of our pigs.

Today was much quieter, however. The pigs did squeal. Our stomachs did turn, but we never saw Spiderman and nobody got bit. This is not to say, however, that I’m not still searching our genetic pool for self-castrating pigs.

Where do you begin with your story when you’ve been gone a long time? How far should you go back? Is the cow that lost her calf too sad to write about? Can you tell people from the city that you had to spend two hours pulling it out, knowing it was dead, but desperate to save its mother’s life? Will they understand your wonder that you were able to hold that cow by her horns – in the dark, in an open pasture all that time? Will they fathom your relief when she recovered?
Can they feel the cold? Had it ever been that cold? Did they worry about their piglets at night and stand in awe, in the 15 degree dark, staring at the day-old piglets not even trembling? Will they laugh when you tell them you later found those piglets hiding in their hay bedding – undectectable – except when the hay pile moved? Can they grasp your relief when sows finally start to farrow seven piglets and not four, ten and not two? Would they walk around the barn with you and not mind the smell?
Would they feel your shakes when the trailer spun on the ice, smashed into the side of the truck and shoved it into the ditch? Can you explain, really, how cold it was driving that same truck to the shop when it was 20 degrees and there were no windows? They probably would understand the embarrassment.
Would they have gotten mad at those pigs that had to break out on Sunday morning – the muddy Sunday morning? Would they know how happy and awestruck you can be when escaped pigs make a sick mule stand for the first time in days? Would they like getting their boots muddy, too?

It still amazes me how quickly you can move when a pig’s involved. As a child I was trained to remain calm, act slowly and deliberately. Remember fire drills? Never get in a hurry, right? I’ve even had CPR training. And what do they always tell you? Remain calm, remember your training, two breaths to 30 compressions (don’t use this as a guide, please). Not so in pigdom. Maybe it’s because pigs act without regard. Maybe it’s because they simply can’t be caught in the open. Generally, they aren’t aggressive animals. They just don’t like to be cornered – or penned.

Last Thursday we had to catch a gilt (young female pig not yet bred) and get it home. So, we went to our pig enclosure nearby, baited them into our feeding pen, waiting till they were busy eating and grabbed one.

The first problem arose when my unfailing inability to estimate pig sizes again emerged. I thought those gilts were about 60-80lb. No, try 100. It is surprisingly hard to even lift a 100lb pig. And the cage we’d brought for her? Not really PETA approved. Granted, it was large enough for a 7 minute trip to a holding stall at the farm, but…wow.

Once we got her in, the second problem arose. How to lift the cage without severing fingers. If you’ve ever lifted wire with 100lb of bouncing pressure, you begin to empathise with amputees of all sorts. Oh, and there’s always the favourite trick of any animal in a cage it shouldn’t be in – go sit at one end. That way at least one of your captors ends the day with a hernia. Aaron was the unlucky fella on the heavy end that day.

But he’s strong and we eventually muscled the cage into the back of Big Whitey (88 ford flatbed pickup). As we all loaded up to leave, I saw something amazing. I know now I should have taken it as an omen. The pig in the back of the truck was actually folding the cage up, neatly, like a starched dress shirt, from the inside. Transformers, eat your heart out. I really saw this.

So we headed home. We had to run by somewhere and help a friend. The farm could have been on the way and Aaron asked if we should drop off the pig first. “Naw’, I guffawed, ‘hit’ll be fiiine.” Right.

We hadn’t passed the place where we should have turned for the farm by even 100 yards when I happened to look back. To my horror that pig was tearing the cage off itself just like Hulk Hogan used to do with his t-shirts. Now that I think about it, she might have been standing on her back legs, laughing, too. But, maybe that’s just my imagination…
Anyway, I hit the brakes and then the asphalt before the truck came to a complete stop. Somehow I emanated “the pig’s getting out.” I know this because Mark (another friend helping) arrived at the back of the truck just before I did. I think Aaron hung back so he could take pictures for Facebook, but maybe I’m imagining again…

At the back of the truck things happened fast. The front half of the pig was out of what once was a cage. Mark grabbed her by an ear and I went for her torso as she shot out of the back of the truck. Mark screamed, then disappeared. The pig came down in between my legs and I grappled for a hold, any hold. She squirmed loose between my feet and I grabbed again. Suddenly Mark was back again, grabbing at the back legs. Something lunged or pushed and then we all fell back.
And then we were sitting. Mark was to my left with both of the pig’s back legs, complaining that she had bit his hand. The gilt was between my legs and I had one front leg and one ear. Aaron was off to my right and I don’t think I only imagined him laughing.

The pig was tired but I knew she’d get her wind back in a minute. So Aaron turned his attention to the mangled cage. That little gilt had actually ripped apart an entire seam. The metal clips holding it together from the factory? For all I know she munched them down like skittles. Right then, my leg was breaking under her weight and we were desperate to get her contained again. If she started struggling, we might not be able to hold her and if she got loose, she was gone – forever.

We decided that the only way to get her back in the remnants of the cage was the way she came out, so, while Aaron held it open, Mark and I poured her back in. We then sewed up the seam with electric fence wire and put the cage in Big Whitey. This was, of course, after, at least two more fingers were lost lifting the cage back into the truck.

When we got in and turned toward the farm, Aaron turned and said, “Do you do things like this on purpose?” I protested ignorance. “Do you make things harder just so life on the farm will be more adventurous?”
“Wow’, I thought, ‘If only I thought things through that much.”

Sometimes I can’t help but be awestruck. And laugh my head off.
Today I looked out the living room window. There was my 10 year old and his cousin, who’s the same age – moving a cow. This wasn’t simple herding though. Please picture two boys, replete with summertime mohawks, white herding poles in hand, shirtless, in shorts, one in crocs, one wearing knee high, black mud boots. They lacked the hurry that knowing the direction you are headed generally prescribes. They were half following the milk cow over to the barn, half talking to each other, and half herding. When I looked, she had quickly altered course in the front yard so that she could munch on some grass nearby.
Andrew, who’s six, stood in the yard, aimlessly watching this operation, eating an apple. When the cow turned his direction, he bravely stepped in front of the grass patch, waved his apple and stared her down. Undeterred, she simply walked right next to him and put her head down to eat. Accepting life, Andrew turned away to follow suit and finish his apple.
After laughing, it hit me. We really have farm kids. These boys have a life that most of us only dream of now, as grown ups. It’s going to be hard to top their childhood. And it’ll pay off – I hope. Someday, this will all sink in to their growing minds and they’ll end up as stout, kind, brave, loving men. Well, that or they’ll just wander off in the woods one day in search of their tribe.

I once heard someone say that you don’t know how bad you had it until it gets good. Well, it’s got good.
Years ago a dear friend had pity on us and gave us an old 16 foot, bumper-pull stock trailer. Great trailer, fantastic trailer, especially when you ain’t got none.
Over the years, through continual use of an implement, you always see its shortcomings. And, while beggars, of course, can’t be choosers, they can be swappers. So we decided to see if we could swap the stock trailer for something a little bigger, a little more suited to our current needs.
About a year ago, I had seen a sort of trailer swap lot about 35 minutes from home. I had even stopped and called the number on the untended lot, but I got no answer. Last Friday, however, I was determined. We had to drive an hour South to Florence to take some animals to the processor. Then we headed East for 45 minutes and North for 45 minutes (When we arrived at the lot, we didn’t forget to congratulate ourselves for turning a 35 minute drive into a 2 ½ hour drive).
But nothing is as simple as it seems at first. Here on this sprawling corner lot was not one, but two trailer swap yards. We pulled into the first, thinking it the home of all trailers within sight, but shortly found out that the ones at the left end belonged to another fella who was absent and unafilliated with the folks we met first.
These folks had something tempting. An open stock trailer in good condition, but it was real open and I knew it would provide no protection for animals in the winter. Nor did it have an escape door on the side.
I love that escape door on the side. But I don’t think it’s properly named. It really should be called the jump-out-of-it-at-the-last-second-to-save-your-life door. Then again, I guess escape is more concise.
So, we hemmed and hawed and I sent my brother, Zach, to spy out the other fella’s trailer while I made small talk with the caretaker of the first lot. Zach shortly called me over to look at a much newer version of the trailer we’d just seen. It was cleaner and had less rust, but still no escape door, no sides. Then I saw her.
The term ‘beached whale’ has been so overused that it really no longer carries any shock for the reader. But it’s best I’ve got. Zach properly dubbed it “the grey goose.” He had initially passed over it (probably because it was just too ugly), but it was exactly what we needed – a gooseneck, mostly enclosed, with storage up front, wider than our old trailer, higher, and, you guessed it, it had an escape door. We drooled as we slid the rear loading door and it actually slid. We had heard trailers could do that, but ours had been frozen for years and only moved with the help of three smashed fingers and a sledgehammer. What’s more, there was a center gate to separate animals. With a flick of the wrist, you could swing the gate and an automatic catch on the other side of the trailer would grab it closed just like that.
Zach’s fingers shook with anticipation as he dialed the number on the lot. The owner (Mr. Chandler) shortly arrived and offered us $100 more on our trailer than had the first lot. The day was looking up.
We couldn’t swap our trailer in its current condition, however. It was mired with the leavings of the last animals it had carried (two cows, two mean pigs—R.I.P.). So we made plans to take it home, clean it, and return after lunch. When we did, Mr. Chandler met us quickly and helped us hook up to The Grey Goose so that we could test the lights and brakes.
Zach drove off down the road, I was sold, but I waited patiently for him to return with the verdict. I stood next to Mr. Chandler in the lot and Zach came back into view and Mr. Chandler commented, “It looks real nice riding behind your truck.” I don’t think I laughed out loud when he said that, but when I glanced over, I could tell that he knew his salesmanship had carried him a little too far. Here was a wonderful goose, but no swan.
All in all, it is so wonderful. The brakes and lights work great. That gate still swings like a dream and sometimes, at night, when no one’s around, I’ll go out there and just slide the rear gate back and forth for fun.

A death in the family and two trips have kept me away from the keyboard for awhile. But the farm has not stopped.
When we first started this, ten years ago this July 4th, we decided we needed cows. After researching various breeds, we landed on Scotch Highland cows. Known for their good mothering instincts, hardiness, and ability to perform well on poor forage, we figured here was the cow that would be hard for us to kill. And we were right. They have done very well on our farm that had been untended for nine years when we bought it. They are very gentle, we’ve never had to pull a calf, and all the problems they’ve given us have been because of things we’ve done wrong.
In our typical biting-off-more-than-we-can-chew fashion, we literally bought a whole herd at once from someone getting out of the cattle business. The herd bull was Pilgram. We also bought another young bull from another farm at the same time, but Pilgram was the main man.
Short for a bull, he was long on fertility. Year in and year out he impregnated every cow. He was gentle, easy to work with, and never aggressive. Pilgram much preferred to hide from you than charge. There were many times I stupidly put myself into a position where he could have quickly killed me, but Pilgram was mild. Dare I say? Pilgram was merciful.
In early June, we found him under a big tree on a rented farm. He had passed away several days before, never giving us a sign he was nearing his end.
I was unwilling to go a year without a calf crop. Pilgram had been with the cows for months and they should be bred, but I knew there was no time to waste finding a replacement. So, I began three weeks of reading, researching, calling farms, and learning new ways to judge cattle for needed traits by measuring and comparing various parts of their anatomy. I landed on the farm where Pilgram’s mother was from. The only problem – it was in New Hampshire.
So, we planned the trip, got our green cards so that we could cross the Mason-Dixon and actually went. We visited two farms, one in New Hampshire, one in Vermont. Both farms had beautiful animals that excelled those in our own herd. But the farm in New Hampshire had it all. The animals were smaller, more fertile, and from a herd that had been ruthlessly culled for excellent animals for nearly 40 years.
Yes, we found our bull – Victor – and ended up with four yearling heifers, too. They’ll arrive in October and I can’t wait.

Pilgram, the gentle, with an old friend

Fergus - father of our new bull

“Did you put a pin in the trailer hitch when you hooked up the ball today?”
Wright’s voice came over the phone with just a touch of annoyance and hint of frantic.
“Well, sort of…” I said.
“What do you mean?” he snorted.
I knew where this was going and I started to chuckle. “Well, I was in a big hurry when I switched out the ball because you had that pig stuck under the trailer and I remember telling myself to mention to you before you left that the only thing holding the hitch into the back of the truck was an old bolt with no nut threaded onto the end. But, getting that pig out from underneath the trailer was pretty dramatic, and then the excitement of getting everything shuffled around so that we could get her into the trailer so you could leave with her…well, I forgot. Why do you ask?” I knew the answer.
“The trailer’s gone!”
“Hmmm (I was laughing at this point) “Well, had you already dropped off the pig when you noticed it was missing?”
“Yes.”
Visions of the little trailer flying down the highway with that fat little sow, eyes bugging, vanished from my head with a sigh of thanksgiving.
“Great, where did you lose the trailer?”
“I don’t know. I was on the phone. When I hung up, I looked back there and the trailer was gone.”
With hurculean determination I resisted explaining to him that this was perfect proof of the dangers of talking on a cell phone while you drive.
“Well, call me back when you’ve found it,” was all I said, though.
I couldn’t stop laughing when I hung up the phone. We had been through this before. In the past, the trailer had left the truck because its receiver was larger than the ball on the truck at the time. Thankfully only the trailer had been damaged during those times.
Then someone said, “What if it hit a car.”
Laughing stopped, praying began (in earnest).
Then, I got nervous. I called Wright back in five minutes. He was obviously irritated. “No I haven’t found it and I’m all the way back in Waynesboro.”
“Ok, call me back when you’ve found it, ” I said.
Ten minutes later he called back.
“I’m almost back to Gravel Hill (about 7 minutes from home) and I drove on the shoulder, checking every ravine between here and Waynesboro. There’s no sign of the trailer.”
I could picture us hoisting the little trailer up out of a 50 foot deep ditch along that strctch.
“Well, since you’re so close why don’t you just come and get me and we’ll head back to Waynesboro and I’ll help you look.”
“Ok, I’ll be there in a minute.”
He picked me up and when we got back on the highway, sure enough, there was no sign of the trailer. We passed the point, 2/3 of the way back to Waynesboro, where he thought he’d last seen the trailer in his rearview mirror and we had found neither hide nor hair.
“Where are you certain you last saw it?”
“Well I had to hit my brakes in Waynesboro because some dude pulled out in front of me. I’m pretty sure I felt the trailer when I did that.”
“Ok, lets go into town.”
When we got into Waynesboro where he’d been cut off, no trailer anywhere.
So, we kept driving.
Lo and behold, another ½ mile down the road there sat the trailer, peacefully. It was resting in the middle of a parking lot not 20 feet from a couple of very shiny, very new suvs.
“Oh, yeah. I forgot that I turned around in that parking lot,” Wright said.
“Thank God, “ I thought.
Apparently, when he made a U-turn in the parking lot, it just slipped right out of the hitch and there it was, ball still connected to the hitch on the trailer. Of course, we had to bear the indignity of admitting it was our trailer when we walked across the street to an auto parts store to buy a pin to hold the hitch in the truck’s receiver. The folks in the store had been wondering whose trailer that was in the middle of the parking lot across the street. But, they didn’t say much when we admitted ownership. Not while we were in the store anyway.

If you’re into running, I’ve got some tips for you. Sadly, I can’t help with distance, but if you’re looking for speed. I know just the thing. Of course, there are the old training standbys:

• Catching the ice cream truck,
• Finding a hiding spot when someone wants you to change a diaper (only women do this, of course),
• Store openings for labour day sales, and, of course,
• The bathroom at half time.

But if you really want the kind of fast that only tangible, imminent life and death fear can put to your legs, look for a pig. I’d recommend a sow, specifically. If you want to really work your legs, snatch one of her piglets within 48 hours of birth. Within this window, she’s still a little disoriented and her aggressiveness is at its peak.

It is very, very important that you do this a certain way. Never, ever grab the body of the piglet. You’re not that fast. Nobody is. When you grab their body, they will immediately squeal and you’re dead. You can only try that method if there is a partition of some sort – a door, gate, water trough, or relative, between you and the momma pig. If you have said bastion, I would recommend using this to work up only the speed of your arms, hands, and, generally, your upper body.

For the legs, however, you must always grab the piglet by the tail. Few people not now incarcerated know this, but piglets will not squeal when you pick them up by the tail. If you touch their body, they will scream as if dying, but, from what I can tell, they are perfectly content to hang by their tail. I’m pretty sure I remember a biology teacher telling me once that this goes back to those prehensile-tailed pigs of evolution lore.

Anyway, if you’re working on your forty-yard dash, sneak up to the sow very quietly, grab the piglet and run. It’s that simple. She will be right behind you, not because she is angry, but because the smell of your fear will simply make her hungry. The silence of her piglet, however, will give you at least two steps on her. Pigs are notoriously slow off the line.

If you want to work on baton handoffs and the like, don’t sneak up on the sow and her brood. Instead get a running start of at least, say, thirty feet. Simply grab the piglet’s tail as you hum by. You might want to find something to lengthen your reach so that you have to slow as little as possible. Try vice grips, salad tongs, or, my personal favorite (but the trickiest to master), post hole diggers. If the wind is blowing in your direction, the sow won’t even move. If, however, you time it wrong, she will jump up as you pass, trip you, and kill you before you can get back up.

These tips, dear readers, however dangerous, have successfully trained generations of bored farmers, politicians, and garbage men. Use them wisely.