Circle M Farm

Monday was a typical day in terms of transporting animals – chaos, despair, more chaos, more despair and then everything suddenly somehow working out. I actually believe we have been assigned a large group of guardian farm angels – clever, burly dudes who would have been cowboys in the Old West if they weren’t angels.

I simply needed to get three of our eight hogs into the trailer. First I placed my fancy hog crate, a beautiful stainless-steel-floored double-door contraption that a friend welded from my own design, onto my tractor’s front loader and dropped it next to the hogs’ gate. As each hog stepped in, I’d close the back door and use the front loader to lift the crate to the trailer, then open the front door and the hog would be on its way. Instead, I spent two hours fruitlessly trying to lure them into the crate with tasty treats. Optimism turned to frustration and then to desperation as I wondered how I would ever get these hogs to the butcher.

Last year we had to postpone the butcher appointment when we could not lure the hogs into the trailer with any sort of food, in spite of the fact that we’d starved them for a day (a day without food is a long time for a pig). I eventually resorted to backing the trailer up to the hog pen and cutting a hole in the fence. I then blocked the entrance to the hogs’ house. After a few days the hogs were sleeping like babies every night in the trailer. Then one morning I shut the trailer door, hooked up to the truck and drove off to the butcher. (Note: Experience tells me the phrase should be “sleeping like teenagers.” Our babies never slept enough and our teens seem to sleep for ages)

I was determined to do things differently this time, and I did not at this point in the season have time to switch the hogs’ sleeping habits. This year was supposed to be different and it had to be: I was only taking three of eight pigs so we could fatten the rest up for another month or so. I had my new crate which was supposed to be a breeze for the hogs to walk right into, as opposed to the trailer which needed a ramp. In the middle of my despair I remembered another farmer telling me that he puts a 5 gallon bucket over a hog’s head and then backs it when it does not want to go. I’d been skeptical at the time, but now I thought, “What the heck, what could go wrong that hasn’t already?” And Kriss and the kids were not at home to see my attempt.

The first hog was curious about the bucket and looked right in. So I quickly pushed the bucket on tight and started pushing the hog backwards. I had to move him about 35 feet, and steer, while never letting him pull his head out as he thrashed like a fish on a boat’s floor. Of course there was a foot-deep puddle of hog muck right in front of the gate. Hog muck has a unique and powerful odor. As I pushed the hog through, I realized I would be washing my boots, insulated coveralls, jeans, and myself as soon as this was finished. But I was elated. I pushed the hog into my nifty crate, lifted the crate with the loader, drove it over to the trailer, open the door, and the hog jumped right into the trailer. Flushed with success, I was ready for hog two.

Hog two was a little less curious and a bit more wary, but I soon had him kissing the bottom of my bucket. As I backed him across his garden pen and through the puddle, he decided to just sit right down in the muck. It is one thing to steer a hog walking backwards on his heels, but something else to move a sitting one. The harder I pushed, the deeper this guy sunk in the puddle. I need a breather anyway, as I was gasping for air. As he sat and I stood in the muck I wondered if the poor guy was loosing oxygen in the bucket and pondering if that would make my job easier or harder. Perhaps an angel cowboy nudged him, because he stood up and I was able to push him into the crate.

I only needed one of the six remaining hogs to look inside my bucket. But the group had become very cautious now. I imagined they might be thinking of organizing against me. Finally, I was able to land my bucket on a hog. But this pig was not going to back up in a straight line for sure. We went round and round the pen together. Suddenly, at the puddle, the hog decided to rear up, thrash and paw at me. I was reminded of watching Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom on Sunday night as kid. Jim was always in a swamp wrestling a thrashing alligator while Marlin Perkins was narrating the situation from the safety of a truck. At last, with the probable help of my guardian angels, the hog flopped back into the crate.