We took two eight month old gilts off to the butcher today. These two girls were supposed to be sold to someone, who backed out, never showed up. I decided to raise them for us instead of selling them as breeding stock again. They were born in April, to Pomona, and lived their entire life out on pasture. I had so much fun with this crew. I spent a lot of time socializing them because I have the best job in the world. Petting piglets is my work.
One of them will go to the Community Kitchen, in Keene. That food bank gives us all of their expired food to feed to our critters, and their volunteers are so helpful. Their chef gets to decide what cuts they want, and they’ll need to pick it up from the butcher. I don’t know yet how many pounds of meat they’ll get. They don’t want the fat, so I’ll render that with my own. I’m almost out of lard, so just in time.
We also took Ginny down as well. She was a bad mother the first litter she had. (She was Minnie’s mama, and while I enjoyed having a bottle baby that one time, I enjoy good mamas better and like it when they do the raising and I do the playing, thanks.) I was going to give her another chance, just to see if she’d do better on her second time around. I always do that for my sheep as well, and it’s always worked. Ginny never got bred again, though. She spent three months with Harry at East Hill Farm last fall, but nothing took. He told me that Harry might have been the problem, so to give her another try, which I did. Albus got everyone else settled, but not Ginny. We sure can’t afford to keep a 500 pound pet pig. She had a nice life here, was a happy, happy girl.
Loading the right three pigs was something I’ve been dreading ever since we got our date with the butcher. We got a chocolate cake from the pantry yesterday and saved it to use this morning and it worked like a charm. We sort of got the three of them identified in the huddle, slowly worked them closer to the trailer and then Frank showed them the cake and they followed him right in. Yay, chocolate cake! A couple of the hooligans followed as well, and we just shut the door anyway and decided they could go along for the ride. I couldn’t believe how easy it was. Maybe we are figuring out this pig farmer stuff after all.
Just thinking that made Murphy come get his revenge. I got stuck on the ice, then hit a big rock and got a flat tire on the trailer. Not knowing what else to do, I just drove slowly slowly down to Gilsum Garage, where they banged the rim back into shape and fixed me up with a new (old) tire, all for a mere $10. They get pork chops on my way home!
Getting the pigs out at the butcher without the hooligans was a little tricky. I forgot that Ginny jumps, and she jumped out of the stall they put her in. Oops. She’d done that once before, at East Hill Farm, and was a right pain in the neck to load on my trailer. Four guys and myself surround her and she was about to charge when I called Disa, who figured out where I was and put her back in the stall in about two minutes. She got a round of applause. That’s my girl! I never go somewhere with animals without her anymore.
I wonder what these three are going to dress out at.