The morning started out fine while I had coffee, made breakfast for Mrs., and read up on the news. Then my oldest daughter went out to feed the animals. She came back in soon and bee-lined right up to me and said “Bad news.”
Someone has dies out there. That is always how it gets announced. One of the animals has died, and she discovered it.
“Big Pig died.”
I was floored.
Big Pig is a 400 pound or more female Large Black Hog. She is not just a staple of the farmyard, she has been an anchor. She is one of the largest animals we have ever had, and she can devour just about anything. She could. She could devour just about anything. Poor thing was laying bloated and stiff among the weeds in her pen. She was not fully bloated, but on her way.
I tried putting rope on her and pulling her to get her up into the trailer to haul away to the dump where there is an animal disposal spot. That did not work out. The first rope broke, and then the nylon strap just tugged her skin from her. I knew this was not going to work out. She just weighed too much for me to muscle, or pull with the car or truck without doing something pretty gross to her. I messaged the local farmer I know, and asked if he was busy.
He finished up his business and soon came over. The pig had bloated more by then, and the heat was not being kind. It was nothing for him to lift her with his tractor, and he soon decided that it was better for him to drop her onto his farm than into the trailer and risk breaking the wooden planks that make up the bottom of it. Yeah, thinking on it, that is good! So he just drove off with her, and saved me a trip across town to the dump with a bloated, stinking pig in the trailer. Not that that is not a common sight in Preston, Idaho! I have been stopped at the light behind my fair share of cows in the same circumstances.
Naturally, I had unloaded the trailer of heaps of firewood, and the truck of heaps of wood I was moving from the shop to the barn, and got everything ready for that drive of shame. Well, at least that work is done. I can carry on from there when next I work on the cleaning up jobs we are handling this summer.
Pig’s death frees up a rather large pen, and allows us to rethink our property layout in ways that will affect it from the back to the front, all the way to the street. We now have space for a long drive that we can line with fruit trees if we so chose. I think it would be no problem to triple our current number of fruit trees, easily! But we will see. There may be far better ways to use the land than a driveway, eh?
Whatever the case, big changes will come. I won’t be replacing her. She was an expensive thing to keep as a pet. She was lovely, and like a big friendly puppy in many ways. I’ll miss her big brown, trusting eyes. But I have yet to see a puppy consume $1,200 a year in food! Especially food that is much cheaper than dog food!
Right, it is time to go to bed and put an end to this day. Glad for the help from the farmer. I owe him a day of field work for this one!