What an awful night I had last night. Usually if the pigs are out at night, they bed down somewhere and snooze the night away. Not last night, though. At midnight, I heard the sheep go off and went out to explore. The pigs had knocked over a panel where the sheep were and the sheep were everywhere, all upset, and the ones who hadn’t gotten out were jealous, calling out. It didn’t take me long to get them back in, really. I had to stop cussing at the pigs and sweet talk the sheep, but once I remembered that they came right to me.
It was pitch black at the time, of course, so I didn’t know that the pigs had gone into that paddock and kicked Ella Mae out of her shed. I found them in there early this morning, and Elly was one unhappy girl. She needs to remember to use those horns more effectively! When I was herding the pigs out of that field and then went near her, she sure remembered then and helped me quite well. Get them out! Out!
Around 2:30 in the morning, I heard the geese go off, and sure enough, the pigs who hadn’t gone in with the sheep had knock the pallet over that I use to block the doorway for the ducks and geese. They were quite unhappy, but since I had no where else to put them in the middle of the night, I just shooed them under the deck where they hang out during the day all the time and they seemed okay with that. The dogs basically spent the night out after that. Too many noises to keep checking out.
When Aaron showed up around 7 this morning, the pigs were everywhere, causing so much trouble. I was ready to take them all to the butcher. I had back the trailer up next to the hoop house, and that really did work, eventually. We got enough ways blocked and put food and water in the trailer. We got six of them in there and one into the goose shed and that’s where they all still are. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with them all yet. Frank will be here on Friday and they may just have to wait until then. Grrr.
We got about five inches of snow, I think. More is coming on Friday, they say. Since we aren’t ready for snow yet (are we ever?) we have some thinking to do about what we are going to do. We don’t have places for the sheep to start breeding yet. The pigs have taken that into their own hands, so we’ll have spring piglets, at least. I keep thinking about how to get something set up for the sheep, somewhere, somehow. I haven’t been inspired yet.