Sunday, May 13, 2012

And now we have....Pig

 There are a few things you should know about me. The first and most important is that I tend to jump into new adventures head first. I may take the time to look around and judge the distance or I might just decide to jump in and hope I don't hit bottom! Bringing our pig home was one of those times that I just jumped in.

We had been looking on Craigslist for a fair pig for our oldest daughter and weren't having much luck. They were pretty much snapped up as soon as they were listed so I was beyond excited when a friend called and told me that she had secured a pig for us. The only catch was she called on Tuesday night and we needed to pick up the pig on Thursday. Oh, and the kids and I were going to be in town ALL day/night on Wednesday. No problem says I! We'll just put the pig in the corner of the barn till we can build her outdoor home.

Thursday morning dawns bright and sunny and warm. I make breakfast and the most important drink of the day...my coffee. Around ten I head down to the barn to start cleaning out a place for the pig. I start shoveling out the hay that the goats had tossed around all winter. I keep shoveling and shoveling but I'm not hitting any dirt. Twenty minutes into the shoveling I finally hit bottom and I've only made about a half foot of headway in the corner. Quickly, I decide that cleaning the whole corner out wasn't happening so I decided to dig a trench to put my hog panels into. Twenty minutes later I'm on my hands and knees scraping out moldy hay and tons of goat poo to create a mote to be able to pound a couple t-posts into the ground and attach the hog panels.

Time is ticking because we need to leave shortly to pick up a large dog crate to bring the pig home in. After a few more attempts to dig my trench I round up the troops and head out. We arrive at our friends home to be greeted by a crate the size of a chihuahua. Hm mm says I... I'm no expert but this does not appear to be a three foot long/three foot high crate but at this point times ticking away because we have a home school showcase at six pm that night so we toss the crate into the van.

Two hours later we arrive at my other friends house to bring home the pig. I expected a piglet but let me tell you this was a PIG and I was more than a little nervous about cramming her into our little crate. Women are pretty resourceful and after just three attempts my friend and I managed to get her into the crate and into the back of our mini van. The ride home was an adventure all of it's own. That pig squealed and shook our van the entire 30 minutes it took for us to reach our house. We had the windows down, air conditioner running full force, and our TV on ( to help calm my autistic daughter who was NOT happy about having an "angry pig" in our van) and that poor pig was still louder than it all!

We arrived home and we quickly put the finishing touches on our makeshift pig pen and finally we were able to release the pig.





This post is linked to The Morris Tribe Homesteaders Carnival and Homestead Revival Homestead Blog hop

5 comments:

Jan said...

This was a delightful tale to read! My son wants a pig very badly, but we're not there yet! I hope you enjoy the little guy. :)

Candace G said...

I could have written this post! We "rescued" a free pot-bellied pig from Craigslist. We drove 40 minutes to pick her up. My husband didn't want to clean out his truck so we took the minivan. I mean, it was supposed to be an adorable pot-bellied pig. When we arrived at the place to pick her up, she was almost 160 lbs, and definitely not the adorable little pig that I'd imagined. We had the large dog kennel and once the 4 adults herded her into it, it was placed in my van. The pig squealed and grunted and relieved herself on the way to our house. In the dog kennel, in my van, with the kids. Windows down, a/c at full speed, heads hanging out the windows, nothing helped the smell. Anyways, I found your blog through the Morris Tribe blog and I thought I would share my pig in a minivan experience too!

The Farmer said...

I'm so glad to read that we aren't the only family who uses the minivan as a "livestock" trailer! Thanks for sharing!

Farmlife Chick said...

Hilarious!! We too used our mini van to bring home our 3 little pigs. But ours didn't make a peep the whole way home. Thank the good Lord!! Last year though was not as easy. Good luck!! It's a lot of fun~!
Stop by some time!
www.thechickncoop.blogspot.com

Georgi said...

We bought pigs when we were in GA, and loved them to death, even though we named them Pork Chop and Bacon. The used to run up and down their pen when they saw us com home and loved to greet us and play with the kids. they were a hoot.