Tomorrow, June 14, is Piggy Lou’s earliest possible due date. Which means three months, three weeks and three days from the afternoon her boar-friend Kong moved into the back garden Love Shack. That’s the average gestation for a sow. Of course, she could really be due anytime in the next month, since we have no definitive way of knowing when she actually got pregnant. We just know she is. Very, very pregnant, poor darlin’. We hope for her sake those piglets come soon.

The weather is really stinking hot here in Southwest Wisconsin – in the high 80s, with no rain for nearly a week and none predicted for another week more. I remember being pregnant in the heat of August with Maggie, my third. I actually went a little crazy there at the end – got dehydrated, lost my mind, and was positively convinced I was in labor three weeks early. So convinced, I made my mom buy a ticket and fly immediately from Pennsylvania to Chicago to help me. The baby came three weeks later, right on time, but mom and I did get a lot of furniture refinishing done.

Piggy Lou had been spending lots of time chewing up hay to make a nest in her shelter, but for several weeks she’s been pretty uninterested in her home life. All she really cares about is mud at the moment. She’s covered from head to toe, and apparently that’s a natural cooling mechanism. I did give her a cold shower from the hose today, but tonight she’s again like a chocolate covered pig. She’s friendly as ever, schlumping up to us and throwing herself down for belly rubs. We’ll keep you posted as things unfold here in the back garden at Circle M…