| Dear Reader
After last month’s letter Georgia
subscriber TC wrote, "I love to read about your family. I see you
are getting a new education. I was raised on a farm and most
everything will – bite you – kick you – run over you – or make you
itch. It is the best place to raise a family."
Maybe I’ve been out here too long,
‘cause that makes sense to me.
THE PONDEROSA
My daughter Liberty and her husband
Johnny decided to join us. Last year they sold their house in
Germantown and were renting while they waited to buy another. Since
they already had bought a trailer and moved it out here in case of
Y2K catastrophe, they figured they could save even more money if
they moved out here.
We’ve named every place out here. The
re-made log cabin where Susan & I live is called "The Shoe"
(because the old woman who lives in it has so many children,
etc.). The farm where Justin and Ellen lives is "The Top."
Surrounded by pastures, the whole place lies atop a broad ridge. The
wind misapprehends that this is Kansas, and so blows most of the
time. We named it "The Top" because it feels like the Top of
the World.
Liberty has named her trailer "The
Ponderosa." When I asked her why, she said, "I just can’t imagine
telling anybody I’m going to `the trailer.’ `The Ponderosa’ has more
class."
What do you expect from somebody who
belongs to the Junior League?
First thing we did once Liberty moved
in was to pick blackberries. Around here this has been a perfect
year for them. First time we went out four of us picked about 5
gallons, and that was just the first picking.
SWINE TIME
Princess had ten piglets on my
birthday, May 24. One was born dead, and a dog got another, but we
still have eight. Trouble is, what do you do with them?
Raising pigs is only slightly less
trouble than raising children. They can escape any pen, hence our
boar’s name, Houdini. Once they get out, they can run 1,400 miles
per hour, and make right angle turns like a flying saucer.
This is what Susan wanted to
capture and train to an electric fence.
After several phone conversations,
reading a book, and more phone conversations, Susan and I decided we
would have to drive down to our friend Charlie Ritch in Hartselle,
Alabama. Let’s see some electric fencing before we spend any
money. Two hot hours in the car there on Tuesday, a hot hour and a
half touring Charlie’s establishment and quizzing him about electric
fencing, and another two hot hours back.
Charlie, who patiently answered all
our dumb questions, always has a method. He pasture-raises
his pigs in fields fenced by electric wire, but first he
trains them to the wire. Out of four welded wire panels, he builds a
16 foot square pen. Just on the inside at piglet nose height he
installs a two strand electric fence. Then he puts the piglets in
for a few days to teach them the virtues of an electric fence. Once
zapped, they are forever wary, and then he can turn them out in a
larger fenced area. (If you don’t keep pigs in some way, they will
destroy your whole place. What they don’t root up or turn over they
befoul. Repeatedly.)
Armed with our new knowledge, Susan
goes to town and buys everything needed. While I am otherwise
detained writing a newsletter, she labours in the hot sun Wednesday
afternoon. By the time I break to see what she had done, it is
raining briskly. The piglets were running all over everywehre, and
catching them is out of the question, even with Susan’s six
assistants. After a few tries I finally convince her that the
catching will have to wait till the next day, when they will be
hungry and easily lured with food. Lure, don’t chase, is my
motto.
That wasn’t good enough for Susan. She
had built her pen, and she wants to see something swinish in it. I
didn’t witness this, but it was later reported to me that she herded
Hooey the 300-pound boar into the pen. Now the pen had not (as
someone had recommended) been reinforced with two more
T-posts behind each panel. Instead, at each corner there was one
T-post. The wire panels were attached with plastic
zip-ties.
For about twenty nanoseconds Hooey was
okay. Then his rear hit that electric fence. Grunt! Again, it
zapped him. Grunt, grunt! Now he was mad. He charged
the corner of the fence, scattering electric fence and wire panels
everywhere.
The next morning Susan repaired the
fence. Then she drafted all the children on the place and a few
strangers and went out chasing pigs. By the time I saw her about
noon her face had that dazed, bright red lobster look of sunbaked
tourists at the beach. The boys ran down every piglet (but one) with
a fishing net. Evidently Susan ran after them.
Once inside the pen the piglets
imitated balls in a pinball machine. They gaggled together, and they
would group in a corner. Somebody would hit the wire, sending the
shock through the whole gaggle. Squeals, grunts, and scramble for
the opposite corner, where again the same shock-squeal-scramble was
repeated.
By the time I took a break and
wandered over there, they were plenty stirred up. The biggest piglet
lay in the shade under the tarp, glassy eyed and panting.
What happened to her? I asked Susan.
The story came back that she got in the corner across the
electric wire, then grabbed the wire panel with her teeth, thus
forming a perfect pathway for electricity from the fence to the wire
and on back to the ground. Pigs make good bacon but terrible
electric engineers.
I grabbed the pig (that I could grab
her at all was proof of her dazed condition), threw her in the water
trough, and started splashing water over her. Zachie brought some
cool well water and by the time we had poured several buckets over
her, she was perking back up.
None of this was for sentimental
reasons. Come November, that piglet will be 250+ pounds of pork on
the hoof. Anyway, it’s two days later and those piglets won’t get
near that wire.
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