Drive - A Memoir 37th Installment
although,
we did keep a bunch of birds for our chicken dinners and for our
eggs. That’s why we had empty chicken coops and pens waiting for
demolition.
We
also raised pigs. I remember we always had two or three, and I
enjoyed the piglets when the sow would have a litter. They were fun
to catch and hold when they were small and pink with soft bristly
hair. The tiny pigs squeal was so piercing that it would make my ears
ring. We would keep the piglets until they were four or five weeks
old and then sell them as weaner pigs. A weaner is a pig that has
just been weaned off of its mother’s milk. We kept a breeding pair
and one pig to butcher and eat. The pigs were escape artists by
rooting down into the dirt floor of the pen until one would discover
he could root under the fence and race away. We build a pen out of
eight inch poles with a couple buried into the ground and this held
them until one figured out he could climb up the corner and escape
over the top of the fence. One day Vernon, Linda, Russ, and I were
chasing a fugitive from the pen by lining up and herding the pig
toward the open gate of the pen where we had put some of the pig’s
favorite food (a trough of milk). The food didn’t attract the
porker this day. The pig was really wild eyed, grunting, squealing
and moving very fast. Edith had come out to help even though she was
six months pregnant. She took her place in line, and as luck would
have it, the pig turned toward Linda, to Edith's left. Linda was
rightfully afraid of this wild–eyed boar and screamed real shrill,
as only a frightened girl could. The pig turned right and in two
bounds went between Edith's legs causing her to abruptly sit on the
boar's back. Edith rode the pig rodeo style for a few strides until
the pig changed its mind, stopped and backed up as she slid off. The
pig turned, giving up on freedom, and raced into the pen. After, a
moment of worrying if Edith was hurt (she wasn't), we all started
laughing. We laughed until we cried, and this became the yarn folks
told around the farms of Hamer for many years. We stopped raising
pigs when I was about twelve. I guess they were more trouble than
they were worth.
We also raised bum lambs; we would get several orphans every year.
Across the road from our farm a huge sheep outfit set up their
lambing sheds, and every spring the sheep men would bring in about
5,000 sheep. Sheep are seasonal breeders so lambing runs about a
couple of months before the sheep return to the mountain grazing
range. Russ and I would spend hours over at the lambing sheds talking
to the sheepherders and workers, but mostly we would
500 more words tomorrow
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