It has been a fun and exciting wind down. I have always enjoyed change, big or small! Since I last posted a fair amount has happened. For starters one of our "wild turkeys", the ones we let just roam around the farm, was eaten by coyotes. It was Jim and I who solved the mystery, I spotted some broken eggs on the path out to the chicken tractors and notified Jim who started the investigation. Then we found some bloody feathers from her, and that was near some tall grass so we searched around in there for her clutch of eggs. We found it sure enough but all but one eggs was broken. I grabbed the egg for Guy, I like eating eggs half a dozen at a time, 1 egg would just be a tease.
In other news, when I first arrived we had Boris the Boar separated from the two sows. But recently while trying to give the growing piglets some more space Boris escaped his pen while the electric fence was off and went to join the sows. Seeing as he is 500 pounds and only 2/3rds full grown there wasn't much at the time that we could do to separate him out. Jim could have lassoed him and then picked him up with the tractor or something but he didn't see the point. It wasn't until the sows started limping that we thought there might be a problem. By the time they were both physically incapable of getting themselves up we realized that Boris was perhaps being a little overzealous in his mating style. We tricked him out of the fence with some grain, and seeing as the sows couldn't walk it was fairly easy task. So now that we had seperated them again we had to start tending to the pigs. Jim told me that for the next week I was going to be a pig physical therapist. He showed me how to massage there back leg muscles and for the last week every hour I had to go and pick them up, these girls are 300lbs each. I was really just lifting the back of them and encouraging them to stand up, then I would bring there food and water dishes to them because they would usually flop back over as soon as I let them go. They started showing improvement about two days ago and are now able to walk around by themselves for about 10 minutes at a time so that is good.
Up until yesterday Boris just continued to hang around the edges of there fencing because he wanted to get back in with the sows and we hadn't moved him back to his original pen yet which was on the other side of the pasture. It was working out fine though because as long as the girls could re-cooperate it didn't matter if Boris grunted after them all day long. But like I said, everything was fine and dandy until yesterday. Yesterday I was re-configuring the electric fencing in the outer pasture to give the cattle more forage while still protecting the chicken tractors. I was walking through some tall grass to the north of the pasture that the piglets, sows and Boris share, to plant some electrical posts when all the sudden I heard an almost dog like bark and turned around to see Boris charging through the perimeter electrical fence surrounding the piglets. The thing about the pigs are in the words of Jim, "They can't see for shit." Ha, quite elegantly put, and very true. The pigs have awful eye sight and their ears hang low and are always positioned right over there eyes, I'm not sure if its for shading or what but for whatever reason, some loud rustling near Boris scared him and caused him to bowl through the fence that was still electrified. I quickly stopped my task of setting up new fencing and when to save the piglets. If Boris put the 300 lbs sows out of commision by mounting them, imagine what he would do to 100 lbs piglets, or rather, don't imagine it because it would be awful. Anyhow I ran into the pen, guns blazin! and started to push him off the piglets and away from them in general. The piglets didn't make it easy on me though because most of them were curious about this new addition to there pen, pigs are very curious critters, and they kept running up to Boris and I for a better look/sniff. All of my weight was required to push Boris but once I started smacking him on the rear and chasing him in the direction of his original pen I thought maybe just maybe I would be able to get him in there. Just as I thought this thought however Boris wheeled around foaming at the mouth and gave me a look as if to say, "ok farm boy, you got me this far but now I'm going back to those piglets." He started advancing towards me and similar to when I had my boxing match with hershy the billy goat, I went straight into wrestling mode! I put my forearm on his head/neck area, since there is no definitive end of the head and beginning of the neck its just all muscle. Before I go any further with the story I'll throw in the fact that since pigs are wallowers and rooters, meaning they dig their own mud wallows with their nose and root for buried nuts or roots with there nose all by raising their head up and down, quite like a bull. So they also have similar neck muscles as a bull which is incredibly strong. Okay back to the story, so I'm bearing down on his head/neck area with my forearm and start to slow him down when he easily just raised his head quickly essentially throwing me up into the air, simultaneously he starts running forward towards the little piggies again. So when I started my downward descent I landed right on his back and bounced around on top of him for a good 5 seconds, until I finally bounced off the back of him. Luckily I landed on my feet and ran ahead in front of him which caused him to stop briefly. I realized that my "heavy hands" wrestling technique wasn't going to work on this 500 lbs beast but I wasn't giving up, he started to make a move to go around me again and this time I let him pass just so that he was to the side of me and essentially I "took a shot" which is wrestling jargin for an attempt to grab your opponents leg to either pick him up and then drop him to the ground or any other variety of moves but basically it is a move to put your self in the dominant position. So I took my shot on Boris, and seeing as he has 4 legs and most of my opponents in high school had only 2 legs it took me a moment to decide which leg to grab. I ended up reaching for his far right front leg and I was on his left side, as soon as my had clasped around his ankle I threw my shoulder into him has hard as I could while pulling his leg toward me as hard as I could. It couldn't have worked better he flopped right over, as the saying goes, big tree fall hard.
He laid there for a second and then got up and looked at me, I resumed smacking his hindquarters and chasing him towards his original pen until we reached that point of him turning around again, at about the same distance from his pen as last time. This time however I let him start to pass me and then took my shot again and again until I wore him out, eventually he just got up and stood there looking as me and I was able to "gently" push him all the way into his old pen which just had the electric wiring up on the top notch of the post. The wires were up to allow the piglets access to his old pen but now that I had Boris back in there I quickly pulled the wire insulators out of my back pocket that I just so happened to have seeing as I was working on the outer pasture fencing before this whole fiasco had started. The electricity was still running through all the fencing in the interior of the pigs pasture so I just used the wire insulators to lower the wires into a position that neither Boris or the piglets could get through. Mission Complete!
This whole last week I have had the added pleasure of feeding the cattle in the mornings during chores. Even though the days still get to 75 it gets below freezing every night which kills a lot of the grasses that they normally would be eating. So I drive a bale of hay about a half mile out to their corrals every morning when the sun comes up so that they get that as a supplement to the dried dead grass they graze on through out the day. I enjoy doing it because all the cows and horses come running up to me and start munching on the bale before I even unload it. They are all huge animals and it is just a cool feeling to think about how small I am compared to them.
In addition to feeding the cattle I have been doing a lot of tractor work with preparing the pastures for the spring time. As you all know I already mowed and disced most of the fields and this last week I have been seeding them and harrowing in the seeds as well as setting up the flood irrigation pipes and checking on them through out the day. Checking the irrigation some times means doing it at night because once you start flooding a zone you don't shut the water off until it has reached the end of that flood zone otherwise that part doesnt get water. It can take up to 8 hours to water a whole zone and the last two nights I have been walking out there at 9pm in the pitch black with just my little head light and the whole universe stretched out above me. It is one of my favorite things about living in the country is the beautiful landscape and night sky.
A point about all my tractor work; what it has made me realize is that Diesel is an INCREDIBLE help to a farmer, it just would not be possible to do all that I have done on that tractor by hand with just 1 farmer and 2 interns. Ultimately what it has made me realize is that there is nothing black and white about the way our food is produced. I can now see the allure of Big Ag farming, accomplishing so much, feeding so many people all as a single person with vast amounts of diesel and technology. When I first got here, partially because of what I had learned in school I almost hated big scale agriculture, I had learned all the horrible facts and statistics about it and was of the mind set of, "why don't people get it! Why can't people see we are killing the earth??" But I now see the conundrum we are in, now that I know the amount of effort it takes to grow food for 16 families I see why we have Big Ag. Now that I have spent how ever many saturdays hand picking, sorting and washing enough lettuce, turnips, spinach,arugula and any other greens for our CSA members I see why we have Big Ag. After having each Saturday be a minimum of a 14 hour day and then getting up at the crack of dawn the next morning to drive an hour into town so that our CSA members can come pickup there neat and tidy bags of produce I see why there is Big Ag. And after haggling over a nickles and dimes with customers about the price of our organic retail produce I see why there is Big Ag. There is Big Ag because it is EASY, and we live in a culture of convenience where even the people who want to buy organic and come to the market and "meet their farmer" they still don't want to pay more than what they do at the super market or have wash dirt off their lettuce. However, even though I now see the reasons why Big Ag is attractive and I stand by the fact that the ends don't justify the means and that it is not worth having cheap veggies in your local supermarket and the expense of the earth. And now that I know from experience the kind of work that it takes to produce food sustainably in a way that is good for both humans and the earth I still see it has a valuable thing to put effort towards but sadly, I feel that unless the whole world gets behind this movement of healing the earth and growing good food at the same time, I think that organic farming at the current stage its at will merely slow down the rate at which our earth is destroyed.
On a yummier note! Sundog went hunting the other day and bagged himself a young buck which has more meat on it than he can eat. So he gave Guy and myself some venison as well as a large roast that he gave to Jim and Tina. Guy and I had the back strap, which is the cut of meet that runs down either side of the spine, on a cow it is where the filet mingon comes from and it is equally delicious from a deer. Guy grilled up some onions while I grill up the deer steaks and we enjoyed a very fine meal!
Then the next night, last night, was sort of my farewell party as well as a way to eat the whole roast that Sundog gave the folks in one sitting. Tina cooked up the roast, which is the hindquarter of the deer with garlic and rosemary. Jim made mashed potatoes, Sundog grilled some deer ribs and Guy, and I brought our appetites! It was a fun little party, the kids scampered off after 15 minutes but us "adults" sat around the table talking late into the night (9pm) at which point I realized I had to go check the irrigation. It was a true feast, I forget how many helpings I had but it was a LOT. After dinner Sundog and I said our farewells, he his a real little guy and I wasn't sure if he was down for a hug or not so I just shook his hand, a little to hard I guess because he pull it away shaking it and grinning at me, and then he hugged me, it was nice, he invited me to come visit him any time I'm in Arizona. He was a completely unplanned for part of this farm experience but I am really grateful that I was able to learn all that I did from him.
I spent today, Tuesday doing chores in the morning and then mucking out all the pens one last time for the sake of sentimentality. And then after lunch I started packing, I pretty much everything into my new pack that Jim gave me which is very exciting because it gives me a feel of how much I can take to Thailand. I did afternoon chores as well and now, I'm writing this, my last post.
I have a few pictures to end things on, just pictures of cute animals and landscapes.
This is Tiny in her cast, Colm dropped her and fractured her leg but she doesn't let it get her down!
This is a kitty sleeping in a chickens laying box.
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