Hauling Hogs, Filling Up Shelters, Cookout Prep
It’s been a busy week. I like working with pigs. Except when it comes to hauling them to and from the woods. This week we did both. It was time to take growing piglets out to the woods and bring a group of full grown hogs back to the barn. Before Amy and the kids took off for a Knoxville meat delivery on Monday, we took down and relocated our pig pen setup used to corral and load up pigs from the woods. While they were gone, I worked on setting up a new paddock for the piglets. Building new pig paddocks this time of year requires an additional step of weed whacking the perimeter of the paddock to keep the electric fence hot. Moving the waterer, stretching out hoses, moving and filling up the feeder, putting up wire.
Amy taught another MailChimp class Tuesday after getting back from Knoxville. By that time I had the trailer ready, pens set up, and the paddock ready. Over the years we have dealt with disastrous attempts to haul pigs both to and from the barn. The chances of getting both groups hauled successfully Tuesday afternoon were slim, but with the rest of the week filled, we really needed to get it done. Thankfully, all went as well as we could hope, 26 growing piglets are now out in the woods (only a few darted through the electric wire), and 13 full grown hogs successfully hauled back to the barn.
Things didn’t slow down from there. More chicks ready to go to the field from the brooder. Wednesday afternoon was designated to hauling and putting more shelters in place, several of them needing repairs in the chicken wire or replacing broken boards brought on by winter weather and years of being tugged across the fields.
Thursday morning after chores, I got to get dressed up in a bee suit to help my uncle assess an upcoming honey harvest. Fascinating. Then time to catch and crate 600 chicks from the brooder to take out to the newly placed shelters in the field. 18 shelters to move everyday now. Chore time keeps getting longer. With the chickens growing and days getting hotter, they need watered twice a day now. Just as big chicks left the brooder for the field, another batch of baby chicks arrives to the farm to take their place in the brooder today.
On top of all the chicken and pig moving, we kept the cows moving and the meat moving. Now it’s time to get ready for a cookout!
Lots of prep work to do today. Mowing, hauling and setting up tables and chairs, trimming and seasoning lots of ORVF meat. 7 briskets, 6 Boston butts, a couple hundred wings, and plenty of hamburgers. We’re expecting a big turnout and hoping for pretty weather compared to some cool and rainy cookouts in years past. Amy did some pressure washing and cleaning at the barn yesterday after moving chicks. She’s excited about the cookout but somewhat stressed about making sure we have enough of everything. I’m sure we’re forgetting something, but it’ll be okay. Due to the cookout prep, she decided it’d be too much to try to set up at the farmers market too. She’ll be back next week.
Amy usually tries to discourage me from including long book quotes, but I couldn’t help it. This week I listened and re-listened to this section of a Wendell Berry essay “Some Thoughts on Citizenship” included in a collection of nonfiction writings called “The World-Ending Fire.”
“But it begins at home. It’s meanings become clearest, it’s felt most intensely in one’s own house. The health, coherence, and meaningfulness of one’s own household are the measure of the success of the government and not the other way around. My devotion thins as it widens. I care more for my household than for the town of Port Royal, more for the town of Port Royal than for the county of Henry, more for the county of Henry than for the state of Kentucky, more for the state of Kentucky than for the United States of America. But I do not care more for the United States of America than for the world. I must attempt to care as much for the world as for my household… The most meaningful dependance of my house is not on the U.S. government but on the world, the earth. No matter how sophisticated and complex and powerful our institutions, we are still exactly as dependent on the earth as the earthworms. To cease to know this and to fail to act upon the knowledge is to begin to die the death of a broken machine… And so conversely, the most meaningful dependance of the earth is not on the U.S. government but on my household, how I live, how I raise my children, how I care for the land entrusted to me… To assert that a man owes an allegiance that is antecedent to his allegiance to his household or higher than his allegiance to the earth is to invite a state of moral chaos that will destroy both the household and the earth. Since there is no government of which the concern or the discipline is primarily the health either of households or of the earth, since it is in the nature of any state to be concerned first of all with its own preservation and only second with the cost, the dependable clear response to man’s moral circumstance is not that of law but that of conscience. The highest moral behavior is not obedience to law but obedience to the informed conscience even in spite of law. The government will be the last to see the moral implications of man’s dependance on the earth.”
Have a good week.
Will