Happy and unsuspecting (but hungry) pigs in their yard

Big pig waiting for food

It was a very entertaining morning; I wouldn't have missed it for anything. There were 7 of us: 3 women and 4 men. Paul was kind of in charge. He had built the trailer and he and Karen had done it last year.

The women found it hard not to feel a little sad; no sign of that among the men. The pigs had been raised by us to become food. We gave them a good life. Several of us solicited scraps from restaurants in town and brought them to the farm every week. They loved the cheese grits from Sunday brunch and some of the leftovers looked good enough for us to eat: asparagus, baby arugula...

I know you brought me something good.

Now it was time for them to go to the "processor." (my favorite new eupemism). No reason for me to feel bad: I would be as guilty if I went to the grocery store and bought pork chops, and I wouldn't know how they had lived and died. In this case, I knew a lot about these pigs.

It was quite entertaining when Paul brought them home in the back of his small pickup truck, with the cap on and lots of hay. They were very cute, small and black, heritage breeds, not the pink ones raised commercially. We carried them and they squealed blue murder the whole time. Paul had prepared a spacious yard fenced with electric wire. We just had to set them down inside it. One of the pigs immediately escaped. It took several people, but we were able to catch it eventually and Paul quickly added another strand of wire to the fence. They were small enough to slip through at that point, but they got bigger and bigger.

Last bath

Paul and the Captain, ready for pigs

We had to drive a ways to buy the special mix of feed that Karen decided on: hog chow, calf manna, rice, oats, and several other kinds of feed. Not to mention all the garbage that any of us produced in our homes or picked up from restaurants. She specified no peppers, eggplants, or tomatoes, and no onions, so sometimes we had to paw through the restaurant donations to remove the stuff they shouldn't eat. After a few weeks, we discovered that they would eat around it anyway.

Is it big enough?

Ray was in charge of food, for some reason.

Now it was their last day. We arrived at the farm before 9 in the morning. Paul backed the trailer down as far as he dared, but there was still a field we had to coax them through to get to it. We spent a lot of time trying to rig a ramp for them, with an old door and some stones to brace it.

No one had fed them the day before; we had held onto some leftover cake from the last restaurant run to lure them into the trailer. Unfortunately, Karen's dogs had gotten it. So, when the pigs saw us, the biggest one broke through the electric fence and waited at the next fence for us to give her something to eat. Meanwhile, all the guys worked to get the ramp ready. Paul is not particularly good at delegating. He mostly just figured it out and then did it. When he had it arranged, it was time to get food to lure them into the trailer. I went down to the field to get the bowls we use, that would be familiar to them. Karen brought what she could scrounge up--garbage and dog food and things they might like. We put those in the trailer and encouraged the pigs to come in, but they had trouble with the ramp. Their little hooves slipped on it. It didn't seem very steep to me, but I guess it was enough to make it hard for them. They don't see very well at all, and there were a lot of people around and a tiny box with no way out. Occasionally, we would try to push one of them. They weighed a lot! That just made them go away for a minute.

Paul got more stuff: a tarp, some fencing, Karen even brought her yoga mat! Ray kept sprinkling food along in front of them and even got into the trailer trying to lure them. Everyone was giving opinions. Sometimes the pigs were wandering away and threatening to get outside the fence, in which case we could lose our entire investment!

Karen's yoga mat didn't work

They wanted to climb up the side of the ramp, but couldn't.

plan B: steps

moving the door to close them in!

Paul decided to build steps instead of a ramp, piling up pallets with plywood on them. I have no idea how we finally did it, but we got all three pigs inside that trailer and the guys closed it up and cinched up the straps to hold it. Now they should be on their way to the processor. I didn't have any interest in going, but Ray and my Dad did, as well as Paul and Mike and Rebecca, Karen's daughter. I very much enjoyed reviewing the videos from this experience this morning. It's appropriate to be a little sad and appreciative.

View from above: 3 happy pigs in a box.