Still Life With Pigs III

I was only in my early 30s when we farmed so that explains why I worked as I did although I know older women who do it day in and day out. 

When we moved from the farm (to a NON working farm, the non part is important, it's like a giant lawn or deer feeding station, my husband wants to make it that working thing again?) I thought I was getting soft so I started digging up the sidewalk in front of our house which was OLD and cracked and uneven, smoothing the ground and then putting it back.  AND THEN for fun my daughter and I dug a yard pond and used an old stock tank to line it, the big kind of stock tank.   People said we couldn't do it.  That's a really big incentive most of the time @ least for us.  Yard pond is still there with my one lone water lily in it.  

WARNING gross things next.  I told you now, uh huh, you said I didn't warn you now, uh huh.  (if you don't know 70s music you won't get the last line and I can't remember the name of the song)

When we were @ the real farm @ first I was just learning all about the ins and outs of raising pigs.  You see I'd never really touched a pig much before we started raising them.  (real estate agent in high heels remember?)  When you castrate the boy pigs sometimes there is an opening between their scrotum and their abdomen that leaks out intestines to be exact.

So I was doing my first bunch of castrations, all was fine till I did this to this pig and his guts were showing quite literally, wasn't a big opening though so I thought maybe I could take him to the vet.  So we did, the kids and I, she explained that it was not in my medical ability to stitch the opening up which was like a hernia. (I learned how to do it and could make it work on most pigs that weren't too bad by the time we quit farming.  Can't sew up a pig, my rosy red.... anyway)  The kids were with me, I think the two boys and my youngest girl, and the vet had to kill the pig because she said it wouldn't be cost efficient for her to sew the pig up and it probably wouldn't work.  So she had to put poor piggy to sleep.  We got to take him home though and since we were pretty blase` about dead things and he was in plastic he was in the back seat.

So we stop @ Farm and Home which is just down the road.  (Farm and Home=Wal Mart for farmers) We start to get out of the car and the kids ask if they should lock the car.  I say "why should we lock the car, what are they going to steal?  Our dead pig?"  For some reason (maybe because we were so poor) the idea of someone stealing our dead pig from the backseat of the old car was hilarious.  I mean pee your pants fall down hilarious.  You have to remember we were poor so we didn't have much to steal but a dead pig that weighed like 10 lb?  I can see someone sneaking across a parking lot with him......  You guessed it, the line "what are they going to steal....our dead pig?" has gone down in family lore.

So we go home with our dead pig.  City people won't understand this so much but we had a burn barrell for trash.  Call me inhumane or cold and cruel but the ground was frozen so I just through said dead pig on top of the burn barrel.  We had two dogs, Sam who was a blue heeler/australian shepherd (I know I said just blue heeler on the last post but I was tired and lazy) and Jolie who was a crazy Australian Shepherd, she only bit friends and famil and not hard, just a little blood.  Strangers she was terrified of till we moved to the other farm with the built in dog herd and she suddenly decided she had to be friendly dog or she was getting left out.  She was crazy because someone shot another dog that she was fighting while she was fighting it.  That's before we got her. 

Back to to the story, it's later in the afternoon, Saturday and I usually got out of Saturday evening chores cuz hubby was still home @ that point.  I was puttering around the kitchen and I notice the dogs are acting STRANGE.  Almost like they were drunk.  Falling down, staggering,  then they'd get up and do it again.  I panicked and ran out to my husband, he didn't know what was wrong, he hadn't seen them eat anything strange. 

We figured it out in time.  The dogs had been eating the pig that the vet had put to sleep.  Thank goodness they hadn't gotten enough of whatever she gave the pig to kill them but it was enough to make us think they were going to die.

I set the trash of fire, we burned lots of things making sure the poisoned but tasty pig was gone.