Dear Curiosity Journal,
We have a “spirited” bunch of piglets on the farm this year. Rufus and I joke that whenever the term “spirited” is used to describe an animal in a sales ad, you should steer clear. The farmer translation is that they defy fencing or wreak havoc on the owner in some form or fashion. These six little stinkers are mini Hoodinis, the highest ranking escape artists thus far. There was a stretch of time, before we put up the electric fence, that they were getting out every single day, sometimes multiple times a day. Chasing pigs is not like herding sheep, and heaven forbid you have to pick one up. If you know, you know. You can run them down until you don’t even care if they go feral. It can bring out the worst in a person, at the very least, some creative cursing and sarcastic comments with decidedly dark undertones. This week, we built a beautiful new winter paddock for them, full of fresh grass, worms, grubs, and all the goodness they love. We opened up the gate to transition them and their snouts went straight to digging, enjoying every inch of the new ground, until one of them backed their rump into the hot wire, and they went wild, sending one faction toward the eastern border and one group toward the greenhouses. These little excursions always seem to occur when you have an important meeting coming up, which puts additional pressure on the already chaotic happenstance. To add insult to injury, the piglets also destroyed their automatic nipple waterer, so it’s back to the 5-gallon bucket experience. As you can imagine, those buckets don’t last long with these little party animals jostling for position. With a few repairs and adjustments, we’ll get them back on the nipple waterer and onto new pasture, but this raucous gang is not going to go easy on us. This is clear.
~Joy
