Rehoboth Farm

Since 1999 we have now raised seven hogs. All have been purebred Landrace and all purchased from Mr. Floyd. Until yesterday we have been raising three that we bought back in September. The same things seem to happen with each set of pigs:

6 weeks old: Piggies are cute.

Driving to pick them up is a wonderful day, with the children anticipating seeing the piggies, and Mom and Dad anticipating a freezer full of pork in six months. ThereÂ’s the fun in picking them out of the pen, with the children running around and saying "Oh, Mommy and Daddy look how cute they are!". Then bringing them home and putting them in their new quarters, using all of the things that we have prepared for them for food, water and shelter, etc. For the first few weeks we sit and comment on how big they are getting, even though we havenÂ’t seen anything yet.

Pigs are of one of God’s unique creatures with a set of traits all of their own. You begin to realize how smart they are when they respond to individuals differently. Their ‘feeder’, (me), gets treated well during this time. When our children visit the pen, the pigs run and do spins for them, much to their delight. Our other animals are met with the pigs’ noses being pushed through the metal wire and sniffing loudly.

Something happens to a hog when he realizes that he is bigger and stronger than you are. They take the things that drive you up the wall and use them to their advantage. As their feeder, their treatment of me has gone from "Thank You, Thank You!", to "What took you so long?", and, "Oh and by the way hereÂ’s some crud from my nose that you can wear to work with you".

The metal wire panels containing them were a veritable fortress just a few weeks ago, but now they are a flimsy picket fence. They get their snouts up under them and lift them into the air, as if to say, "Hey, I could just walk out of here if I wanted to". By this time IÂ’m spending my Saturdays strengthening and reinforcing their enclosure, while the rest of the week IÂ’m praying that they donÂ’t get out. Then thereÂ’s the water.

Pigs love water, but they cannot and will not understand the direct connection between an empty water bucket and them dying of thirst. They are obsessed with spilling their water. This time around I spent $20 on a 13 gallon metal water bucket. I figured that full, it weighed over 150 pounds. Once they got to be about 175 lbs, I would find the bucket turned over each time I went to feed them. The mistake I made was scolding them about it; this gave them insight into driving me crazy. Soon I would find the bucket empty and stomped on, and so I would have to knock it back into round with a hammer.

In recent days this progressed to the water bucket being empty, stomped on, and dragged into their manure area for a nice coating that had to be removed as well. Last Saturday I dragged it out, washed it off, hammered it out and put it back into the pen and filled it with water. One of the hogs walked over, took a sip, and then put her snout under it and turned it over, where it rolled away. She just stood there and stared at me like, "What.., what are you looking at?" I said, "YouÂ’re going to the butcher on Tuesday, you know that?" Kim, who was watching all of this said, "Kevin, youÂ’re arguing with a pig". I didnÂ’t care, she got the message.

But seriously, years ago Kim and I listened to a tape by Garrison Keillor about his childhood memories of hog-killings. He talked about how somber all of the adults would get before the process started out of respect for this animal that was going to give it's life for their food. Keillor said that once when he threw a rock at the penned-up animal, he received the spanking of a lifetime for it. It's that kind of respect that we have tried to instill into our own children as well. Today most children, and most adults for that matter, have a disconnected view of where our food comes from. The pursuing of peace through personal affluence combined with media and entertainment have dulled our senses as a society about the realities of the world that we live in. What happened in New Orleans is living proof of that, not only was no-one prepared for the inevitability of a flood, but most sat and waited for the government to come and rescue them, and then were shocked when it didn't happen.

Yesterday we loaded up all three hogs, (which is always a thrill), and took them to a Mennonite community about an hour from our house. There is a Mennonite run butchery there that does a good job, and we gave them all of our wishes for the kind of cuts of meat that we wanted this time. In two weeks we should have over 450 pounds of pork, frozen and ready for the next Y2K, flu pandemic, or just barbecue for the coming year. Now we just need somewhere to put it.