I just got off the phone with my mobile processors, and they'll be coming out on May 3rd to butcher Mike and Sausage, my Tamworth pigs that I've been raising over the winter. I am ready for the boys to be turned into bacon. So ready.
This morning I was sound asleep (and when I say "asleep" I mean it. I sleep like the dead), when my subconscious heard a small noise coming from the far end of the pasture. It was the sound of a hog touching the electric fence and squealing in surprise. How I did it, I don't know; but one moment I was in deep sleep, and the next I was wide awake and jumping out of bed without fully realizing what was going on. I can sleep through a fire alarm going off just outside my bedroom door (I've done it twice. Thankfully both were false alarms), I can sleep through toddlers running and screaming through the house as they play "good guy vs. bad guy", I can sleep through music playing, people talking, dogs barking... When I sleep, I sleep. So I had a hard time believing that I just woke up to the distant sound of a single squeal from a porcine beast. But it seems I did. My subconscious recognized the sound and I woke up because the only reason I would be hearing a noise like that in the first place would be because the hogs had escaped.
And they had.
Darn that walking bacon.
When I first got the pigs, an escape attempt was met with full blown panic, stealth mode capture plans, and headaches galore. Nowadays my manner is, "Oh give me ten minutes and I'll get out there..." I know the pigs won't go far, and when I'm ready for them I simply put some food in their pen, call them back and shut the gate behind them.
But still. I'm ready for the boys to go to freezer camp.
So May 3rd it is. A Friday spent doing one of my favorite things: turning livestock into edible protein.
Sausage = Bacon. And he's gonna' taste so good. :)
I know exactly what you're talking about. I've had mine 5 weeks now and already I am tired of hauling food twice a day. No escapes yet though. But I know they are coming. They are pigs. They do that. People ask me all the time how I can eat these animals. I just ask them if they've ever raised pigs. I could kill them myself sometimes. So I have NO problem at all. I did find someone who will come here to kill them, then take them to his slaughterhouse. But he wants it to be cold. Which means Oct. the soonest. And I cannot see feeding these 2 pigs 6 mores moths!
ReplyDeleteI know you will be so happy when they're gone. And all that sausage and bacon!