Pigs will eat ya

I hate pigs. They are slightly intelligent, but only to a degree that pisses you off. Say you have them in one pen and you want them to go into another pen, they realize this and refuse to cooperate. On occasion it is because they're scared or confused, more often it's just because they're screwing with you. All their little buddies ran into the other pen, it would be easy for them to follow suit. Yet they don't, just to spite you. All of that is somewhat irrelevant to the story I want to speak on, but its information worth having.

The countrified story for the moment is one of Abe's, my little brother, near death experiences. He's had a few, so have I, its just the way it goes on the farm. I'm gonna say I was 11, maybe 12, which'd make him 6 or 7 when this went down. So, the old man and us were working over the pigs, and by that I mean we were doctoring and castrating the little ones, not more than a few months old. You work it out so that all the sows have their piglets around the same time. Then they all grow up together and it's easier to work them and move them and sell them off in big batches (this is all obvious rudimentary stuff that everybody knows, right?).

How exactly did our little operation work, you ask. It goes like this, we have 4, 5, maybe 7 sows with little ones, and we get them all in the barn at once. Now there are three separate pens inside this barn (there were more, but we're only using three for this). So all of them are inside one pen, the 5 sows and 35 or 40 little ones. Now we cut the sows off into one pen and the little ones into the third and then leave the original pen empty. Important note here, the pen the sows are in is walled off and they can't see us or their babies. This kinda gets them worked up and pissed off.

Then we start to work on the little ones. This consists of me and my older brother running around grabbing the little pigs, dragging them over to dad, and holding them down as he checks them, gives vaccines and castrates the males. My little brother, being a little to small to manhandle the pigs, is shut off in the empty middle pen, just watching us through the fence. The whole deal makes for a dirty loud morning of work, which we would do every few months when a new batch of piglets was big enough. So what went wrong that particular morning?

Nothing really went wrong, but circumstances escalated, you might say. The little pigs don't like the chasing, and manhandling, or especially cutting out their balls. And they let you know it, squealing and crying and running around. Being unable to see the proceedings the momma pigs get pretty agitated, and that morning they got themselves worked up into a frenzy. When Abe screamed was when we saw what had happened. The sows had went crazy and busted open the door that separated them from the middle pen, which he was in. I mentioned hogs are vicious in my previous entry and that is no joke. A 300 pound sow could tear through a 7 year old boy in about half a second, and there were 3 bearing down on my little brother. Abe screamed when they busted through the door, and backed away into the corner of the pen. The scream turned them from the fence and their little ones to him.

That moment was one of those instances you see something happen incredibly fast, yet you don't realize how fast it is really happening. Dad jumped the fence, grabbed a 2x4 (from where I do not know), and commenced to beating back the pigs. He snatched up my little brother with his free hand and tossed him to safety into the pen we were in. Abe was wailing as he picked himself up off the ground, but beyond being sacred shitless he was ok. Our old man was just about as shaken up I figure, he was calm as he always was, but was pretty pale in the face as he climbed back over the fence and inspected his youngest. Again things happen so fast at times you don't think about them in the proper context until much later. Thinking back to that experience now, it was an insanely close call. One good bite and it would have been curtains for Abe, or hell they could of just got him down and trampled him.

Between Dad, my brothers and I there's probably a couple dozen or more stories that put us on death's doorstep (the old man's exploits fill out the heavier percentage, I'd say). And usually you shake it off and go right back to work, which is what we did that day. Abe almost got ate, but as soon as he was out of harms way we went back to chasing pigs and doctoring them up. Shit's got to get done.

Line 'O the day - March 30, 2007

What the hell is so difficult about the name Zeb, I never see anybody asking Tom, or Bob, or any other three letter name how to pronounce one syllable. “Hi my name is Tom.” “Wait, what was that? Tuumë?”


Present day note:
I reckon this was me just venting one night. Doesn't matter when, or who or the noise level in the room, I almost always have to say my name twice to everyone. Most folk always think Zed.

Though being named Zebulon is a first rate conversation starter. Thanks mom.

Line 'O the day - March 11, 2007

The gaping maw is not a welcome sight, but having that realization while leaning too far over the edge might come a little late in the game.

Farm Life: Hog Lot

I want to say something about myself first. I have two degrees, I've studied film production for one and then separately I have a degree in Ethics. I can make movies and I can wax philosophical if you'd like. Also I've lived in New York City and currently live in a major metropolitan area. I just wanted to state that up front, and say that by most accounts I'm a fairly intelligent, forward thinking, modern fellow. Having said that, I used to sleep with pigs. Literally. Maybe I'm not the only one, if you read this and there's a commonality between us let me know.

So, my old man had a pig farm for the better part of my youth and we always kept a few old sows behind the house to toss kitchen scraps to (chicken bones, watermelon rind, hogs will eat anything). You would go out back and see the pigs basking in the sun, sprawled out snoozing away the day, and it seemed like a perfectly reasonable thing to do. For as much as I hate pigs I will give it to them that they know how to relax.

We'll say I'm around seven years old and run it up till I'm about ten. On an odd summer afternoon you could find me lounging in the hog lot, straw as my bed and an old sow as my pillow. Like I said we fed them scraps, you could do it out of your hand, and you could pet some of them, others weren't too friendly. And when they were napping they'd be piled all over each other, one more little body wasn't that much of a concern. I'd be out cold taking a nap like any other 8 year old, only I was right in the middle of two or three coarse haired grunting hogs. All of which had a couple hundred pounds on me. Was it dangerous? To an extent I guess, but my parents were attentive and conscientious, and if they thought it was too dangerous they wouldn't have let me do it.

I stopped doing it at some point. I didn't exactly outgrow it or anything, but the hog operation got bigger and the lot became more crowded. Plus the old sows got sold off and the younger ones weren't as accommodating, in a manner of speaking (pigs can be vicious, if you didn't know).

Now then, that is but one of a great many instances that comprise my life growing up. I'm inclined to think it's not that unique, and there are others who've had a nearly identical experience. Anyway, I think for the next one of these I'll stick with hogs and the more vicious nature of the animals. Only the next story centers on my little brother.

This might work, could be horrible

So I think I may have come across an idea for the blog that I can do as a serial thing and keep it going for some time. Provided I keep with it. Basically this is something I can crank out in a half hour or so on an odd night, when I'm not otherwise busy.

The blog is called Learned Country Boy and so I figure I can easily create a series of posts about country life. And not necessarily quaint little stories of farm life that conjure up images of a piece of straw clamped between some redneck's teeth, or an old man and his hound dog gazing out at the cattle on the lower forty. Such instances can be recollected, but there are also things much harsher and much deeper than those, which I will attempt to call upon.

Farming in its simplest form is about life. Things are born or take root. They grow, with strength or weakness. And they die, sometimes earlier than they ought to, beaten down by the harshness of the elements. A farmer, rancher, whatever you want to call them is a custodian of life and death. They dictate life and death on a daily basis, measure profit by how long something lives. Corn gets planted, it grows tall and green, then it starts to falter and wither away. A farmer has to wait, watch the leaves of the plant turn brittle, time out how long he lets the corn die in the field before harvesting it. A calf is born, its mother cares for it for months, and then the rancher decides it's been long enough and separates cow from calf. Lets the calf grow more, feeds it well, treats illness if it arises. Then when its market time the calf is sold to be slaughtered. If the corn field gets flooded, or the calf gets sick and dies money is lost, and a family's, hell a community's livelihood could hang in the balance.  That being said, the bulk of these probably won't be in a very serious vein, but some will.

Hopefully some will be funny, provocative, or insightful, but they will be as honest as I can make them. And ideally interesting, otherwise whats the point. The first one will be about me, a bit self-deprecating look at a childhood activity (I can easily be made fun of for what I'm going to divulge).  Be up later today sometime.  Beyond my own rural exploits, I'll be stealing from a massive family history of life on a farm in the middle of nowhere.

Line 'O the day - March 6, 2007

Forestall your weary contemplation. For such thoughts only stall progress.

Line 'O the day - February 28, 2007

I’m a little under the weather; I’m just getting over a bad case of appendicitis.