I Had A Feeling - Deep Down In My Gut

Shamrock and Thistle Farm, 5:30 AM
Somewhere in the middle of Blast Furnace, Arkansas



Up early is the only way during this time of year. Work until 10:00 AM. This is when the too-close Sun breaks the top of the trees lining the eastern border of the property and begins to try the resolve of those humans and animals still living, or mostly living.

I was able to plant 60 feet of green beans in our slowly-being-renovated garden. I meant to take some pictures to post but as the sun cleared the trees, the batteries overheated; chemicals raised in increasing amounts of agitation, boiled over, rendering the electronic device obsolete. It occurs to me that, back in the day, when picture taken relied on mechanics, optics, and the inverse square law, batteries were not required. The chores were done and some staging for some night time projects completed, I surveyed the farm just to check up on some things. The cross garden is coming into shape and the tomato plant located there, which had given us our first tomato of the year, picked too soon as it always is, had turned two more smaller fruit that had turned a deep salmon color and felt soft to the squeeze. I almost picked them - almost, but remembering the tartness of the first I decided, against something in my belly telling me to go ahead, to give them one more hot day to ripen fully. I went inside, got some things in the house accomplished, a big breakfast gulleted, the nap time she comes and goes, and then, the time being fulfilled, I go outside to pick our tomatoes which should be very ripe and ready to eat.


Apparently something got to it before I did. An eyewitness described a Female, Black and White barred, rose come, slightly pink legs leaving the scene while they were closing the gate of the garden. A warrant was issued for the apprehension of the alleged perpetrator. It will be served tonight. A trial will be commenced. Due to the egregious nature of the crime, the proceedings will be without a jury and I will be the judge. The hen will get a fair trial, then I will incarcerate her in solitary confinement for a period no less than 3 days. If this hen doesn't lay 2 eggs during the 3 day sentence, she will be executed at dawn on the fourth day...

Pig Tractor Part 3

 After only three weeks on this patch, the pigs had tilled it all up, we moved them to the next area and we planted tomatoes and Mississippi Silver Crowder peas, mulching heavily with old hay the morning after our rainstorm described in "Struck By Lightning". Between the rows of peas on the right I have a bed prepared for a planting of garlic come October.

 After only two weeks (the pigs are now HOGS and becoming more efficient at pulling up the weeds) the second patch of garden space has been cleared. Now its our turn to lay out the beds and plant with something that will add nitrogen to the soil and something that will loosen it a little.

 Here are Squeal and Grunt in their final paddock in our garden area. This over grown area has already been obliterated by their tough jowls and muscular snouts. The picture was taken after only two days on the patch. Next up for them - they will do the same in our pasture areas where we will throw down grass and clover seed for the rest of the year.

This, in an unrelated note, is our asparagus bed (three 30 foot rows) all "ferned out". It has finally been weeded and mulched. Nothing else to do here until the first heavy frost kills the ferns. Then we snip them off at ground level, fertilize the area, lay down a heavy blanket of leaves, and then place the ferns on top to hold it all in place. Then, God willing, by the time the Irises bloom out next spring we will be up to our ears in asparagus!

It's Okay - I'm From Arkansas

I had the idea for a series of very short stories I would call "It's Okay. I'm from Arkansas" a few years ago on an ill-fated "family reunion" we "good" Hutchinses held in Branson Missouri. There were 12 of us on the trip. Mom, Dad, my sister,  Patt and me, and our three boys, and my brother and sister in law and their two lovely daughters. After a weekend of shopping and a "Hee Haw" type musical show, it was left up to us (Patt and I) to decide where to eat one last time before heading home.

We decided on an Irish Pub located around the Promenade there in Branson, much to the chagrin of my mother and sister. I checked with my brother to make sure it was okay if Patt and I ordered a pint of Guiness. He said he didn't mind. I was worried that our drinking a beer would cause an uncomfortable situation with he and his daughters. It did not...an uncomfortable situation with my sister and mother was, of course, inevitable. "What are you drinking?" they asked. "Root beer", I said.

We had all finished eating our meals. Every plate was still half full. Mine because I ordered too much, my sisters and mother's because they would not admit they liked it even if they did. The waitress came out to present the check and asked if we would like "To Go" boxes for our left overs. Mom and Sis said "no" because we were going to be driving 6 hours home.

Patt and I said yes. But since no one else wants their left overs, we would take them all. "Just bring out a garbage bag. We'll fill it up to feed the pigs when we get home." The waitress smiled and said "Sure!"

I glanced down the table  at Mom and Sis to be met with looks of incredulous disgust - shock really. I looked at them and said in my most reassuring, sarcastic laden tone:

"It's okay. We're from Arkansas!"

Snake-Thief (or That's where all the eggs are going!)

Over the last several weeks our egg production has gone down, from about 36 eggs to 24 eggs to 19 or fewer out of a flock of 45 chickens. At first we blamed the dog. That's where the phrase - "Egg Suckin' Dog" comes from. And we have found the dogs carting an egg or two around in their mouths from time to time.

Today, about 4:30 PM I went down the hill to do the evening chores, which includes collecting eggs. Patt was busy putting the sheep and goats back in the barn in preparation for the culmination of Operation Pig Tractor, while I went to the coop to collect, what I hoped would be, a large harvest of eggs to sell out our local market (Conway Locally Grown) or to friends at work or our friends here in Perryville.

I stepped up into the coop and found a surprise. A large black snake had just crawled in before me and slithered its way into a nesting box full of eggs. Just coiled up in the box and started swallowing eggs, one by one, like it belonged there. I called for Patt, she brought my gloves and I reached into the nesting box, bravely I might add, and grabbing the reptile just behind the head pulled it out of the box.

It measured 5 and a half feet and as I was handling in and eventually carrying it to a far corner of the pasture to be set free, I accidentally crushed no less than 5 eggs it had swallowed and which were making its way down its belly.

This snake, we believe, is the same Black Rat Snake Patt rescued from our well back in 2006 when it was no more than 3 feet long. We've seen it several times on the property over the years and don't want to kill it because it does beneficial things in addition to stealing eggs. It's kind of our pet snake...

You Can't! Farm Widsom from Shamrock and Thistle Farm

Amid all the chatter one hears in the media, from teachers and coaches and parents, who say silly things like, "You can do anything - If you set your mind to it." Here are some things you can't do. Sorry to burst your bubble.

You can't reason with a goat.
You can't herd a chicken.
You can't milk a rabbit.
You can't kill bermuda grass.
You can't keep a set of wrenches complete and intact after the first time you use them.

Operation Pig Tractor

Since moving back to the farm in February, Patt and I have been debating, with either of us waffling from PBA to OSA (Petroleum Based Agriculture and Old Solar Agriculture) off and on. We land on the OSA side when the weather is cool, the rain is regular, and we aren't coming down with some kind of disease from some of the city folk we have to mingle with from time to time. (Just kidding city folk!) We are tempted by the PBA when the weather is hot, dry, the ground is compacted, and through some series of events, the weeds grow thicker and taller, and faster than we can pull them out.

Today we put our emergency response plan into place today. Facing 90 degree weather and high humidity for the next week or so and a garden that is out of control -

We went to Defcon 4 and put Operation Pig Tractor into play.

The first stage of Pig Tractor starts with a single tpost marking one corner of the new bed space. It is set about 2 feet away from our asparagus beds- this was by design as you will see. eventually this 2 ft gap will be heavily mulched and become a walkway between our established beds and our new asparagus bed which will be planted next spring.

Step two involved releasing our pigs, Squeal and Grunt, into our corner pasture where they have been in a semi-mobile pen, which is the subject of a prior post. The following video shows their reaction to this new freedom.

They both were running around all crazy like Jon Pinette at a Chinese Buffet.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdwuiyO7hOU


Once their mobile pen was dismantled we moved it into the garden. The key here is to protect the beds we already have established while routing the pigs around them into their new pen.

These were protected by a chute we built.

This routed them between the asparagus bed along the future walk way. They entered through a gap we left in the pen. Once inside we closed the gap with a small piece of scrap cattle panel to make a gate.

Here are Squeal and Grunt in their new temporary home - a 32x50 foot rectangle that will be mowed, tilled, and fertilized, by them and then laid out in at least 3 50 foot rows and planted in tomatoes and cow peas by us. This fall, when the weather cools off again, I'll dig three new asparagus beds to be ready for planting in the Spring of 2014 - if ever we live that long.





This is OSA. Old Solar Agriculture. The slow way. The hard way, yes, but no petroleum was used in the construction of the pen or in the mowing, tilling, or planting that will come. When this spot is completely rooted up, we will open the back corner of the pen to allow them access to the back half of our over-grown garden which will be fenced off from the planted portion, by swinging the panels into place.

Now, getting the pigs into the pen was not uneventful. Once the pen was built and the chute put into place, we still had to get them from bottom corner pasture into the garden. Ronny and I planned it out to the minute detail. Patt would keep their attention with a bucket of feed and attempt to lure them into the garden gate and the opening of the chute, while Ronny and I with an intricate moving wall of cattle panels, gates, and hay bales would keep them from escaping into the large pasture. On this 90 degree day, we did not want to chase pigs. As it turns out, the pigs did escape, but eventually, after Ronny and I stopped panicking, the pigs found Patt with the feed and we slowly coaxed them into the chute by calmly standing in their way if the went the wrong direction, not pressing them too closely, and, in essence, convincing the pigs that going into the chute was their idea, and it was a good one.

New Pigs - Squeal and Grunt

Fourty two and a half miles from Arkansas Children's Hospital in Little Rock is our farm- The Shamrock and Thistle Farm. For these three years past, the little postage stamp of green we call home has been devoid of that favorite of farm animals - the pig. Twenty miles north of S and T Farm lies Morrilton Arkansas nestled between two ridges of highlands between the Arkansas River and Interstate 40 on State Highway 9. Eighteen miles north of Morrilton through relatively flat plateau, past Heifer Creek Ranch (Highland Cows), is Center Ridge Arkansas and State Highway 124. State 124, scenic and smoother than one would expect, rivals, and in some cases exceeds State Highway 9 for its sharp curves and 40 to 55 speed limit and back changes. Eight miles after taking a left on 124 in front of Nemo Vista School one encounters, to the right, a dirt road aptly, but obscurely, named with a small blue road sign at the apex of a ninety degree left hand curve, is Lost Corner Road. Aptly named because we had passed it and would have wound up lost if the directions we had been given were not so precise, "Exactly eight miles..." the farmer had said. Another 2 miles, we were told, you will see a mailbox with the farmer's name on it. "B____" and a "cedar box I built to hold my garbage in there besides the road." Two miles later, in Aaron's Jeep Grand Cherokee, we saw the mail box but no cedar box wherein the farmer "holds" his garbage. We pulled into the drive. The large split level house was abandoned. A small creek ran past it at the base of a ridge, picturesque, but no farmer, no pigs, and an eerie feeling like we had driven into the plot of a slasher movie. We pulled around the circle drive and decided to continue down this dirt road in the hopes of seeing another mailbox with "B_____" on it and the elusive cedar garbage box. About a 1/4 mile more and there it was. No mailbox, but a cedar one at the end of a dirt drive, pock marked by deep ruts and holes. In places where there was not a rut, or a hole, there were large rocks that had probably been in their places for millenia. Rain hitting the ridges that bordered this farm apparently had run down to this sunken road and washed away the top soil to reveal the boulders, that, we hoped, Aaron's Jeep was made to traverse.

I have given you this detail to not only show you where we went and how we got there (it is important to set up the end of the story in this manner) but to set up where I am going with this post.

During the hour and a half drive I mentioned to Patt that I hoped where we were going was a nice farm. We've had too many experiences in picking up animals we have bought, of driving on to a farm littered with scrap metal, garbage, disjointed buildings barely standing, over crowded with, perhaps not abused, but neglected animals that have become wild through a lack of the farmer's attention. We pulled into the drive and found beautiful scenery, a clean crisp farm with good fences, well constructed barns surrounded by paddocks with safe looking fences and gates - not the Martha Stewart kind of prissy barns and paddocks you see in the magazines but efficient and safe and clean. We are also greeted by a pack of dogs and a teenager who informed us, though we arrived at exactly 5:00 PM that his father who works an hour and a half away had not yet arrived but since his cell phone went directly to voice mail, he must be almost there. We checked our cell phone and saw that, we too, had no bars.

The teenager gave us a quick tour of the place and before too long his father pulled into the drive. We shook hands and introduced ourselves and without hesitation he put on his work jacket as the air had become cool and he walked us towards where we thought he kept his pigs. However, he instructed us to get into his old farm truck that never left his 130 acre "pasture", he driving, me in the middle and Patt riding shot gun in the single cab pickup, his teenager and our large dog crate in the back. We bounced and jiggled down yet another trail, over rocks and into gulleys, down a hill. As we came to the bottom another beautiful vista appeared to as, a valley nestled between the two ridges, a creek to the south and a large pond or small lake up top of the northern ridge. This lake, we learned, captured run off from the rain. We stopped briefly to pick up two 5 gallon buckets of feed for the hogs (to keep mama hog busy while we stole her children) and headed to the flat piece of earth on which the hogs were kept, surprisingly by a small pen of hog panels and an immaculate house which kept the piglets, and a decent sized pasture of nothing but a single strand of solar powered electric fence about knee high. Behind this electric pen were two very large boars and a couple of sows and a pack of mid sized hogs that would soon go the butchers.

The farmer, I'll call him TB, instructed his son to hop in the piglet pen and catch us two girls while Patt and I stood ready with our crate, still in the bed of the pickup, because the tail gate would not lower - the truck had over 400,000 miles. I won't tell you the make and model. If it were a Dodge I would have.

Teenager had some trouble with the lightning quick masses of muscle, so I, in my newly cleaned work coat hopped into the pen to help him. I picked out the one Patt wanted, corralled it up against one of the panels and reached for it, grabbing it by a hind leg with one hand and attempting to cradle it around its belly with the other. The little 20 pound piglet put all of her dense musculature into action and drug me to the left and right into their mud-hole. But I caught her! I leapt over the hog panel and walked her quickly, covered in pig mud to the crate and shoved her in. By this time TB had finished feeding the big hogs and had come back. He asked,

"How'd you get mud all over you?"

"The little pig went at tackled me!" I said. He laughed and hopped into the pen to catch another little girl. He wound up crouched inside their little house and with a cacophany of grunts and squeals emerged with another little black and white piglet. With of our new pigs in the crate we piled back into the pickup and bounced and jiggled back to the drive way where the Jeep was parked, lifted the crate up over the stuck tailgate and into the back of the Jeep. We closed the hatch, said our good byes and we headed home.

The inside of the Jeep smelled like hog, hog manure, hog mud, and sweat both from the two little piglets in the crate and from the big piglet driving - me! With windows cracked we headed home with the piglets screaming, squealing, and grunting the whole long way home...

And, here is Squeal and Grunt our new friends on the farm.

Feeding Time

Flurry is only about a month old. So we will need to bottle feed her for the next month until she is of weaning age and is fully able to digest hay, grains, and fresh grass. For the first two or three days we had to convince her the bottle was good for her - and boy did she learn quickly!

Her friend Slipper, a couple of weeks older than she, not so much. She still has no interest in the bottle. But, unlike Flurry, Slipper is content to eat the alfalfa pellets, fresh grass, and hay we set out for her.

Now when Patt enters her stall in the morning and when Boyd enters at night when he gets home, Flurry hops up and expectantly waits for the bottle - which is an empty coke bottle with a lamb nipple stretched over the top.

Tonight, without hesitation, without taking a breath, Flurry slurped down the whole bottle without stopping, collapsing the bottle in Boyd's hands.

Another interesting development is that we saw Flurry chewing her cud this evening. This is a tell-tale sign that her four stomachs have the right balance and is starting to digest fresh grass, grain, and hay. The chewing of the cud is the way sheep, goats, cows, re-chew already chewed food. This assists them in digesting what they eat and means they are happy and healthy.

Since Flurry is most likely going to be the ewe that starts our herd, we hope to grow her big and strong by keeping her in milk for much longer than is necessary to get them to weaning age. This will help her grow more quickly and will make her friendlier towards us. Over the next few weeks we will spend much more time with her, just sitting in the stall, letting her get used to us. Eventually we will be able to lead her around the farm.

Once weaned from the bottle and fully on pasture, she will be either tied out to a different spot in the pasture or let loose in one of our three paddocks.

    

 Boyd and Flurry at the evening feed.

Not only will she be the mother of our meat for the next 10 years or so (God willing), she will also be our friend, and our lawn mower!

New Additions to S&T Farm

We decided, since the local grocery store burned to the ground, the local farmer's markets are not yet open, and for some reason we can't stand to have an empty farm, to start growing our own food again - immediately.

So, without further ado, I would like to introduce you to the newest additions of our food making machine...

Flurry and Slipper.

No, not THAT Flurry and Slipper. These are from the IRISH RM, one of our favorite shows from the BBC.

This Flurry and Slipper...

I wanted two rams or two wethers, but all the farmer had were these two ewes. Having male names already picked out I considered trying to come up with more female sounding names. Patt said that calling girl goats by names from characters in a show no one else had ever seen would just add to my quirkiness - well, I think that's what she meant.

I think I am going to call the white one Flurry - she is more outgoing and friendly than the black one. So by default the black one is Slipper. From now until this fall, they will be concentrating on growing big and strong, and docile, and then we will most likely breed them so we can have new lambs on the farm next Spring. But for right now they will be our lawn mowers as well.

Tamale and Enchilada - Our First Hog Adventure

Pigs. They really are wonderful animals. Perhaps that's why God forbid his people from eating them. Get past their odd shape, the odd sounds they make, and put them in an environment where the odd amounts of damage they can do is useful damage and they really are quite charming - almost human. I say, find me another animal, other than perhaps the dog, that exudes unmitigated joy at seeing you, that becomes so excited at your arrival that the twist and hope and squeal with delight.

Our first foray into the world pigs caused us to learn - and learn fast - and easily replaced goats, cows, and chickens as our favorite farm animal. This is the story of those first pigs, Tamale and Enchilada from furrowing pen to freezer...

*   *   *

One of the first farm related trips I made in Disle (my 88 Dodge Ram Pickup of which much has been written) was to pick up the first little piglet. I drove Disle 45 miles into work that morning. It was an overcast morning and the sun was just peeking up over the Arkansas River as I parked, illegally, I admit, in one of the patient lots at the hospital where I worked. I did not have a parking pass on Disle and had never registered her with the campus police so they had no idea who she belonged to, and the only way they could figure that out would be to run the plates through Little Rock Police Department. But, that cost them money so I felt I was safe.

One of the many things I love about Disle happens to be the lack of communication she throws my way. For instance, modern vehicles talk to you from the moment you unlock the doors. It may be a simple, short beep and flash of the lights to let you know, that yes you did push the unlock key on your pendant and the unlock did occur as it was meant to. Then start the car without fastening your safety belt and it will constantly remind you - "Hey reprobate - fasten seat belt, hey reprobate - fasten your seatbelt" and even though most cars won't verbalize this in your particular language the message is quite clearly stated, incessantly with the "beep beep beep - beep beep beep". Some cars will even turn on your headlights when ambient light grows too dim or if the windshield wipers are turned on and the vehicle will also, again with an annoying machine gun series of beeps, that you've left your lights on as you exit the car - or the car will simply turn them off because it knows you are too stupid to do so yourself. Disle has none of these features. You fasten the seatbelt or not and no fanfare from Disle at all. She respects me and assumes I am an intelligent human being. No need to keep harping on all those things she thinks I should do, she's just happy go lucky. I can almost hear her say, "You know what? It is what it is. I'm good if you're good."

This day of all days, dark, overcast, and just early enough in the morning to need headlights before setting arriving at work, and just light enough to be able to see that they are on, I decide to drive her into Little Rock, park illegally, to pick up some pigs. Needless to say, Disle did not inform me that my headlights were on when I exited the cab, nor did she take matter into her own hands to turn them off because I had failed to do so. She also refused to start when I got back to her at the end of my work day - the temperamental old tart!

I had rolled up a pair of overalls and had laid them on the seat that morning so I would have something to change into, figuring I would be chasing and catching my own piglet that afternoon (more on that later). Remember, I was illegally parked at the hospital and would face a $25.00 fine if security found out about it. Incidentally, multiple parking violations would eventually lead to an employee's termination, especially if that employee insisted on parking in a patien/visitor lot. I knew that the security officers had portable jump starting kits they carried around with them. But to call them dressed in my business clothes would expose me as a patient parking vulture and subject me to the fine I had to find a way to work my way out of the situation. Of course, I did what any one would have done in this position.

I crawled into the cab of Disle and slyly, in front of God and everybody, succeeded in stripping down to my skivvies and sliding into my coveralls without too much commotion and I do not think any one saw what was going on - at least no one ever brought it to my attention if they had. I am sure, if someone I knew had seen me make this attempt at changing clothes in broad daylight in a single cab pickup they would have never let me live it down. Once clothed in my "farmer disguise", I rolled up my business clothes and laid them on the seat disguising them as well as I could. I then called the security department for a jump. In a few moments they had Disle started and I could be on my way. The officer looked at me a little askance and I could see the question forming on his lips - "you work here?" - but my appearance, the run down state (then) of Disle, and my pseudo-southern drawl made the words stop before they came out.

"Thankee officer," I drawled, keeping up the deception, "gotta go pick me up some hawgs!"

A quick sigh of relief and a quick pull of the gear shift into drive and then I was on my way.

Disle and I pulled out onto I630 heading east made the sweeping left exit up and over I30 and entered this interstate right before reaching downtown Little Rock and the Arkansas River. Over the bridges, a bumpy ride, past the Clinton Library, extended out over the bank of the river like some single-wide built by a lottery winning hill-billy, to my right, the RiverMarket and Amphitheater on the left. Once across the river we proceeded straight ahead, which exits I30 as it makes its way towards I40 and Memphis, and made our way up State Highway 107, one of my favorite roads for some reason. Even though it was no longer the winding strip of two lane blacktop snaking its way up north towards the Air Base it still had a lot of memories for me. Once cleared from the stip malls, grocery stores, and small time car dealerships, we passed through Gravel Ridge, Cardinal Valley, and other small towns, past Little Rock Air Force Base, and almost to the Highway 5 cutoff that takes one to Cabot. Just before the highway was the road I was looking for, Apollo Road. I turned left off the highway and then a quick right on to Zeus Road, dirt, gravel, and red Arkansas clay.

I had seen the add in the Arkansas Democrat Gazzette:

"Tamworth-Hampshire cross piglets $35 - Zeus Road, etc".  I called the number and set up the deal.

As I pulled into the drive way I realized that the people I would be visiting were not the well mannered, organized, hobby farmers I thought they were when speaking to them on the phone.

The drive pulled into a barren patch of lawn shaded heavily by large oak trees. The archetypical large hound dog trotted out to the truck braying with every step. At about the same time, Jethro and Cooter, brothers, hairy, thin, shirtless, a cigarette clamped between the fore and middle fingers of their right hands which simultaneuosly held a frosty Coors Silver Bullet cans open, probably half empty. They had slipped on their knee high muck boots so quickly that their trouser legs were all bunched up around the tops. One of them, Cooter, I think, pushed back, with his left hand, the brim of his RiceLand Foods camouflaged ball cap, stained with sweat, slop, and chainsaw grease,

"You here bout them pigs?"

There's one thing you'll need to know about me that is important to this story. I sometimes tend to adopt the accents and mannerisms of the people I am talking to. I am not mocking them, it just comes naturally, and I find that I meet with great success when I do this, because the person I am dealing with assumes I am just like them.

"Yup!" I said in a natural midwest Arkansas drawl.

"Got one left and momma's pissed." he answered.

Of course, I said what any intelligent farmer would say at this point, knowing that an inbred or unhealthy animal makes no meat, has multiple health issues, and will cause more stress on the farm than they are worth, and knowing that I needed to see the hog first, to make sure the animal was healthy and had all its parts - in the right places...trust me on this - it has happened before - I said,

"I'll take it."

"Awlraight. It's a little girl." Cooter said. Jethro had failed to speak a word this whole time.

"Awlraight, " Cooter started again. "Here's what we gonna do. Momma's pissed. This izzer last baby.  She gone be mean.", swig of beer," You got a crate right?"

I nodded. "Well then, put down yer tailgate dere and pull the crate out own it and open dat dere door lak this." He did it for me. And now we were set up to receive the hog.

"Now gimme dat thirty fav dollers and you climb on in that truck. Me and Jethro gonna go get the hog. You stay in the truck, cause momma gonna try to come troo dat fence back dere. Jethro and me gonna come running, slam baby pig in de crate, flop up de tailgate and head to de house quick as we can. You stay in de truck. Ok?"

What could I say? I mean, I said, "okay" and hopped in the truck as Jethro and Cooter left the scene along a path that circled up under the trees into the back yard, where, ostensibly, the pigs were kept. I waited just a few minutes and began to think that I had been had. I broke the two cardinal rules of animal purchases. First, I failed to inspect the animal. Second, I handed over cash before I had the animal secure in the truck. The risk of this all too trusting process of buying an unseen animal for the former is you may end up buying a deformed, retarded, or somehow evil creature that will destroy your farm and your dreams, and in the case of the latter, once the money exchanges hands, if the animal escapes, the seller can legally say, "well you bought it, you catch it!". That's if they just don't disappear around the back of the house while you sit in your cab wondering if they are coming back at all.

I sat for what seemed a few more minutes until I decisded to get out of the truck to go find the guys. Just as I reached for the door handle I looked at my rear view mirror and saw Cooter, closely followed by Jethro, holding a little black piglet, which was squealing as loudly as the two men were. They were running full tilt towards the back of the truck, powered on by the little pig in Jethro's arms, the wild screeches from the little pig's momma shaking the trees and the foundation of the single wide trailer, emanating from the pen behind the house. Come to think of it, Jethro and Cooter were screaming just as loudly. The looks of extreme terror on their faces made me think twice about exiting the relative safety of the truck.

Jethro threw the pig, head first, into the crate sitting on the tail gate. Cooter slammed the door shut and locked it. Then with a blinding speed, and a grace that belied their rough exteriors, they lifted the tailgate and slammed it shut, then ran straight to the house, up the steps, and into the house. I started Disle, slammed her into reverse, backed into the drive, slammed the transmission into drive and threw up a cloud of dust as I stepped on the gas. I pulled up to Apollo road just as a large, red and black, momma hog, sprinted in that coiled, ball of undulating muscle, that is the pig, into the front yard, squealing and wailing the whole while.

I turned left onto state highway 107 and then left on state 64 in Vilonia, stopping at a gas station to get  a drink and a snack. It was, after all, now 5:30 PM and I had not had anything much at all to eat all day. I was the main attraction of the middle-of-nowhere gas station just east of Conway. People pumping gas left the nozzles running into their gas tanks to walk over and take a look of the cute little piglet locked in the large dog crate, making pig like noises, and I am sure, without a clue of what her destiny would be.

Another 45 minutes and I pulled into the drive of Shamrock and Thistle Farm.

*** Warning: The following paragraphs contain considerable amounts of onomotapoeia.***

While I was on my adventure at Cooter and Jethro's Single Wide and Hog Farm, Patt and the kids were busy building a pen for the new piglet in a corner of our garden. The idea was to use the pig as it grew as a kind of tractor to till the patch while fertilizing it at the same time. The piglet was a ball of muscle and energy about as wide as a basket ball and about as tall as a large terrier when I picked her up. The plan was to construct a 16' by 16' pen out of cattle panels and they had it all ready when we lunked the dog crate with the 45 pound piglet inside down the hill to the garden. We were so excited, the pig was too. When the crate started shaking as I carried it towards her new home, she started oink-ing, grunt-ing, and squeal-ing, all sounds foreign to the farm. Upon hearing the strange sounds from this oddest of animals, chickens started clucking, goats started braying, cows started mooing and as they lined up along the fence to the garden to get a glimpse of this strange new animal our excitement grew much like the teenage pianist, used to practicing a piece unobserved, suddenly finds herself in front of an audience.

We set the crate down inside the pen and opened the door. Patt was ready with a jug of fresh cows milk which she poured into the trough. The little black piglet burst out into what she thought was the wide world and sucked down the milk with rapid fire slurping and gurgling.

At the time we had an all white Jack Russell Terrier named Lightning because of the lightning bolt that zig-zagged across his black nose. We dropped him in the pen and the dog and the pig became fast friends. The pig rooted here and there into the soil and I envisioned a well weeded, naturally tilled and fertilized patch of the garden. Incidentally, to this day, when the soil is gently turned to lay out the beds every year we can still smell the particular smell of hog on that patch and it is so well developed that it has become our permanent asparagus bed.

We hung around a bit to watch our new animal get used to her surroundings and to make sure there were no holes she could get out of. After several minutes we realized she had no intention of escape, confining herself to the center of the pen and the milk filled feed trough.

Satisfied that the pig was secured we made the walk up the hill to the house to wash up for dinner, ironically, a pork shoulder that Patt had been roasting all afternoon. The dining room table, in our small house, was wedged between the carport and backporch doors and the single bar-countertop that segmented the kitchen from this space. One end of the table was up against the sill of the window that looked out onto the back yard. Patt and the three boys sat two on each side, and I held the position of honor, the head of the table facing this window.Just as we sat down to eat, I looked out the window and saw a small, dog sized black shape scurrying up the hill behind the shop (which eventually would become our home after the fire in 2010). The shape disappeared behind the 400 square foot building. I think it was here I let out one of those bad words basically decent people learn when they move to a farm. We all jumped up to chase the pig which somehow had squeezed through the fence bordering our neighbors cattle farm. The little pig ran into the huge 30 acre pasture, apparently taking great pleasure in her freedom and the tall green grass.

Our new little pig, less than an hour into her stay on our farm, had escaped the pen in the garden, the garden fence, the fence which kept our cows away from the house, and the fence that kept animals on our property and went on the run. We sat back down to eat and decided from henceforth and forever more, this pig would be called Tamale. And giving up hope of ever eating one of her pork chops, we ate the store bought roast. The story does not end here, however, because by the time we had finished dinner, I happened to look out the window again, and I noticed Tamale slowly trotting back down the hill, crossed the two fences and make her way back into the pen we had built for her. Apparently, she felt the fresh milk, and the friend she had made (Lightning) was too much of a draw for her. And she gave up freedom for the security of what promised to be a peaceful life on Shamrock and Thistle Farm.

It was this incident and several others like it over the course of the ensuing years, that taught us, probably, the most important thing to know about raising pigs. They are smart. Don't let the looks, the mannerisms, and the noises fool you. The word 'swine', in the English Language, connotes a disgusting, boorish, dullard. This is inappropriate at best. Pigs will not test a fence while you are watching them. They know, you are watching them, and they will find all sorts of things to keep them occupied, to fool you into thinking they have a lack of interest. It's like a husband in the mall who sneaks a look at another woman in a tight sweater by positioning himself so his wife can not see his lingering stare. It gives the husband plausible deniability if he is caught. The pig, will eat, root around, lay down in the middle of the pen in an effort to communicate to you - "master, you have given me such a nice home, why would I want to escape?". It is only when they have lulled you into this false sense of security, do they escape, or root up the beets in the garden, or lift the gate off its hinges, or get into the chicken feed, or any number of mischeivous possibilities.

With Tamale, as she was eventually named, settled back into her new home and we plugged the holes in the cattle panel fence it became evident that she would require a companion. Pigs are friendly, social creatures, so, excited about getting into the pig business we searched the want ads of the Arkansas Democrat Gazette to find other young piglets for sale. This is how we came to own, Tamale's new friend, the cute, red and black Duroc mix hog, named Enchilada.


Patt and I loaded the large crate with which we brought Tamale home just a week before, in to the back of her station wagon for the trip. It was a "farm" southwest of Benton Arkansas advertising piglets for $35.00 each. Upon arriving we should have known better than to go ahead with our plan of getting a friend for Tamale. The "Farm" was fenced, completely on all four sides of the property, with old washing machines, dryers, and refrigerators. Not a pretty sight, but perhaps, the "farmer" deserves some credit for re-purposing these broken down appliances. The farmer saw us pull up and came out of his home, didn't bother to introduce himself, but led us to the hog pen, also fenced with used appliances. The small lot wherein he kept is flock? of hogs - what do you call a group of swine anyway?- was filled with mamas and a great number of piglets, some scurrying around and squealing, others, less motivated, lay on the hard dry compacted earth.


"Well, get in there and pick you out one!" the farmer drawled.

Hmm. I thought. For $35 I figured this guy would catch one for me. But not to be embarrassed by asking him to get one for me, I jumped in the pen and chased down an active, healthy looking young male. After a few minutes securing him in my arms I crawled back over the "fence" and headed to the station wagon.

"You want'em fixed?" the farmer asked

"Yeah, I was going to ask you about that. Can we do that now?"

"Sure! Just hold him up by his hind legs and put his head between your knees to hold'em still."

I did so, arms raised up to chest level, the piglet's legs outstretched. The little fella's head clamped securely between my knees. The farmer whipped out a razor blade from his overall breast pocket and made a quick slice to Enchilada's back end, reached in a grabbed the parts and ripped them out of the hole. Enchilada made not a sound. I put the piglet into the crate, locked it up and paid the farmer.

The farmer put the parts onto a saucer and exclaimed, "There's breakfast tomorrow morning! Nothing better to go with fresh eggs!"

We drove home. I am not sure who was more traumatized, Patt and I, or the little pig. But he made little noise all the way home.

We housed Enchilada in a small crate in our workshop (which is now our home) to give him time to heal up from his "surgery" before putting him in the garden pen with Tamale.

After a couple of days we noticed the little pig wasn't eating and he felt warm to the touch. He was soiling his crate with some of the most foul smelling stuff, and he refused to drink. We did everything we could think of - cleaning his cage, force feeding him water with electrolytes, and cooking up special meals that we hoped would entice him to eat. But he kept getting worse.

We ended up taking Enchilada to a local vet you had an office in a singlewide trailer along the banks of Harris Brake Lake. A quick examination revealed that the farmer had cut deep into Enchilada's stomach cavity in search of his boy parts. Apparently the little piglet was born Cryptorchid, which means his testicles had never developed on the outside of the body like they should. Instead of dropping they remained inside. Over the past few days, Enchilada had been dying a slow death from infection caused by the deep cut into his bowels. The vet cleaned the wound up, flushed out the cavity that had grown rancid, sprayed the area with a yellow aerosolized antibacterial spray (something every farm should have on hand), and dosed him with a strong antibiotic. He gave us several more doses with instructions to give the pig a shot on a regular scheduled for the next 11 days. We did so and the feeling of guilt we experienced every day when sticking him with that needle eventually subsided as we saw him get more active and happier looking. One wouldn't guess it from looking at them, but one can tell if a pig is happy or not by simply looking him in the face. When the course of antibiotics was finished and Enchilada started making happy pig noises and happy pig faces we turned him loose in the garden pen with his new friend.

For the next 7 months Tamale and Enchilada had a very happy, healthy life. The work they did for us in that little patch of garden is still bearing fruit today many years later as our asparagus beds are really established and producing some of the biggest, tastiest spears I've ever eaten.

Then we ate them. It is the proverbial circle of life...