If you live in the country surrounded by hundreds of acres of corn, a cow pasture, the wetlands and Virgina’s house do you call the large field of grass behind the house a yard? I always feel strange saying front yard or back yard because that makes it sound like we have a privacy fence and a swing set. We have some barbed wire and a fort built on the foundation of an old smokehouse. Just wondering. Please discuss this topic in great detail. Thank you and goodnight.
Oh, wait…I almost forgot…
The pigs are out.
The first time our pigs busted out of their pen was this summer and I grabbed my camera to have fun taking photos of them while we walked around with them as Clay repaired the pen.
The second time they busted out was when we were trying to load them onto the back of the truck to be hauled to the….butcher. I have no pictures of this event because it was six freaking o’clock in the morning, pouring rain and nobody was happy, especially me. It was two months ago, did I mention it was raining? Did I say we were covered in mud and pig crap? Did I tell you Clay’s head nearly exploded when Seth and I didn’t move quick enough to save the chute from tilting to the ground, allowing the pig we had been trying to load for a good 45 minutes to squirt out the side to her freedom? Yeah, it was a fun morning. For a few minutes Clay and I stood in our ‘back yard’ a good fifty feet from each other, not saying a word because we were both thinking we’d just set the pigs free, but were afraid to admit it to the other person.
We finally were able to load two of the pigs because they willingly walked up the ramp and onto the truck bed. We have zero skills in loading pigs.
Since that wonderful morning our remaining two pigs have grown so large and strong that they make match sticks out of the boards and crumple the tin paneling like aluminum foil. One of the pigs tossed Clay up in the air when he was nailing a board, just hooked her nose under his bent knee and flung him like a rag doll.
We are Ma and Pa Kettle when it comes to farming. If we weren’t on this DAD-GUM Mother LOVIN’ debt reduction we’d purchase new building materials to add on to the barn and make a bigger pen for the pigs and chickens. We built our pig pen and chicken coop out of old materials that were found on our property. It’s not pretty. Up until the pigs were huge it worked just fine, but now, not so much.
The last two pigs will be hauled away next week. Right now we have railway ties and metal and boards and concrete blocks holding their pen together. It’s a ridiculous maze of crap. Clay jokes about losing his architecture license if anyone sees his handy work. It’s our dirty little secret. The man that designs beautiful commercial buildings has a pile of junk behind his barn that he built for his pigs. Is this a contradiction or what? It’s life on Coal Creek Farm.
The pigs are out, just another day.
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I’m glad they don’t run away! I can’t wait to hear about how the hauling goes next week!
Don’t come to our house to see our dirty little secret: The environmental engineer who specializes in water remediation wastes a RIDICULOUS amount of water in his own home – I’m talkin’ daily 30 minute showers, & 5 minute tooth brushing activities w/o turning off the sink!
Your marriage has survived pigs!
I think it’s fine to call the back pasture the back yard. It just gives people a general sense of the area you’re referring to.
We raised pigs my entire childhood. My mama named the sows after ladies in our church. We had two sows that could get out of any fence. My dad still swears they could unhitch a combination padlock.
Danny works in construction. We’ve lived in this house for four years and started building three years before that. It will never be done.
The midwife who delivered Naomi was married to a photographer. She complained that they never had any family photos taken. I wonder if she delivered her own babies though.
I crossed a Coal Creek on I-35 not far from Emporia yesterday. I had a sudden urge to pull out a map and see if it went up toward Lawrence, but I thought that was pretty unlikely. I also waved at y’all as we went through Lawrence on our way to Ohio a few weeks ago. Did you see me? It drives Danny bonkers when I “wave at” or talk about bloggers who live in an area we’re passing through, so you *know* I had to do it all the way there and all the way back. There are consequences for making me sit in the passenger seat and not stopping so I can take photos.
And the shoemaker’s kids go barefoot … however, I married a chef and if this logic worked, I would be a skinny minny. um, nope.
So onto back yards. I do have a back yard, I do have a swingset but I do not have a privacy fence. Although I don’t really say the back yard. I say “out back”. The kids are out back. Where’s the tractor? Out back. I don’t have the answers to this dilemna. But I will carry on when you say the back yard. Or maybe you could call it the back 40? I dunno. Good luck and sleep well.
And send the kids after the pigs…
Ahhh…..the sweet scented memories that just came flooding back….
You know they say that pigs are smarter than dogs?
Be glad you have that back 40 of a back yard. Our pigs always ended up in the NEIGHBOR’S yard and believe me it don’t make for good relations! Good fences and all that…
When you move their pen, use that spot to plant a garden. It’ll be the most productive one you’ll ever have.
I am incredibly envious of your wonderful little farm. I live in a mundane boring little neighborhood with fences and swing sets and I would trade you in a heart beat. Well, except for those pigs. I don’t do pigs.
Did you know that in Ireland they call the “yard” the “garden” because “yard” to them means the concrete, not nice part?
I think you should call it the “back garden”…
Did you ever really read about Ma and Pa Kettle? I think it’s in The Egg and I. Soooo funny and makes you feel better about whatever your situation might be
I bet 5-10-15 ok, 20 yrs from now it will be funny to you…as far as building materials go,make do & use what you have or I’ll call Damn Ramsey on ya!
Oh, my Lord, I had the mental picture of Clay being tossed in the air by a pig.
You really crack me up, April; you’re definitely a bright spot in this world of blogging!
I DO have a “backyard”, and even with a privacy fence I still get chased and snarled at by the neighbor’s 2 lb “cheewawa”; that little booger scares me to death. One day, I swear, he bit me on the butt! I don’t know what I’d do if a pig wandered up.
maybe ya’ll should go ahead and splurge on a safe pig pen before your husband gets really hurt. Weigh it out, hospital bills—pig pen…bet the pig pen is cheaper in the long run.
When we’re at my in-laws farm we say “out back” or “out front” or generally “out there”… nice hogs.
Reminds me of my husband telling me about him having to “pull pigs” when he was younger since he had the smallest arms. Have you done that yet? That would be a fun post, huh?
I would be appalled at your pig pen construction if I weren’t familiar with it from my grandparent’s place. Is that a fly trap on that front corner post of the pig pen?
We have 20 acres – 2 used for homesite, 3 native grass, 15 in row crops rented by the neighbors as they have a couple hundred attached to it. I LOVE the 15 acres (currently in milo, last winter they had 150 steers on it – awesome!) I see the 15 from my living room and back porch. We call it “The West Lawn” and I love telling friends in Seattle how I’m “watching the West Lawn get planted/mowed, etc.”
Wish someone had left piles of crap here so we could enclose the pasture and get critters beyond our 8 hens, 1 pound dog, and 2 “dumped” kitties. Plese teach us about raising pigs…Please!
And 2 nurses here – our kids go to the Dr. for annual check-ups, and that’s pretty much it around here. 3 kids, 12 years and I’ve only had to get antibiotics twice.
I can relate to the use of scrap for building pens…my husband, the former carpenter, did this, and he’s quite embarrassed by it: http://mountainmeanderings.blogspot.com/2009/10/building-buck-house.html
As far as the back yard, I dunno. Our property is bordered by a National Forest, and I take the liberty of calling it our backyard. Technically its a forest, not a yard, and technically it’s on the side, not the back…but I’ve never been much a stickler for details. Here’s a post in which we head out to “the back yard.”
http://mountainmeanderings.blogspot.com/2009/10/family-hike.html
Good luck. I’ve got nothing to add except they don’t look like the cute ones from the beginning. What happened?
My sister and her hubby raised 6 pigs a few years ago. They raised them for the rest of the family (bless their souls!) so we could butcher and eat them. The day came to load them up and take them to the butcher. Lets just say we had quite a pig rodeo with 5 grown men slip-sliding around in pig manure/mud. They were sure they could just lasso them and “lead” them into the trailer. HA! Thats what they thought! Lots of choice words were spoken that day! Makes me laugh to read about your pig adventures!
P.S. My sister says she’ll never raise pigs again. She says she can still smell them!
Hey, I usually extend our tax returns until October 15th (I’m a individual income tax-specializing CPA) so I understand the licensure issue. LOL
Pigs scare me. I almost got mowed down by one, giant, muddy, beast at the state fair when I was 12. Shivers.
Hey, your building materials are the stuff good farms are made of!! I mean, I thought that was the whole point of living in the country– you can be all frugal and self-sufficient and crap. You oughta see our building materials… our goat fence is built out of an old scavenged deck and the ducks live in an old industrial packing crate… But it works and our place looks like the neighborhood scrap yard! I’m still hoping we can make some sort of happy marriage between “frugality” and “aesthetics” in the future.
I will always remember our first attempt at loading hogs. It was about the same as your experience and we did go ahead and become hog farmers for twenty years until it was no longer profitable.
I am sure you already know this but your pen needs to be much much larger for healthy pigs. Why four pigs in such a small space?
Hogs are very intelligent animals, it is just that humans have to figure out how to communicate with them and let them know what you are expecting them to do.
Yes, it’s a yard – front being the road, back behind the house, and side the lane… help any
We have a yearling and a calf that keep going through the electric fence. The rest use to get out until it was repaired. They never go far, first it was the beans but they’re gone – ate the leaves off the plants – now it’s the patch of hay behind the house.
Ask at the local lumberyard for the twisted boards and the cover pieces from the steel loads. See if you can get them cheap since they are usually tossed. My BIL just covered the roof of his garage in the steel pieces – multicoloured – and we use the twisted boards here for stuff. Just a suggestion.
I’ll chime in. My dad ran a heating and air conditioning company: we never had air conditioning.
But April, they’re pigs! What more do they need? You gotta watch SNL’s dog food commerical on Youtube. “Because they’re DOGS!” heh heh heh
Them are some big pigs. Oink Oink.
Coming from TN, hubby says that if you have to mow it, then it is a yard, we have a front yard, side yard & back yard. If you don’t have to mow it, then it is a pasture or a field. Hope this helps to clarify as it looks like your yard is mowed. If it has to be plowed or bushhogged, then it is a crop.
PS. Great big yummy looking pigs!
Yard is concrete and yes I’m originally from Ireland Leila.
Years ago some friends raised pigs that I swear were the size of a small pickup. Market time came. Big truck borrowed, ramp built. They tried to guide, encourage, then push, pull, lasso the male and he stopped at the bottom of the ramp every time. They quit for a while in frustation (and to clean off the mud). Next go-round, they tried to herd the female. She walked right up the ramp and turned to look at the male who went up the ramp to join her. They still laugh about not understanding pig psychology.
Do you read the Sugar Creek Farm blog? (www.osage.net/~themillers92/SCFBlog/scfblog.html) They do “commando animal husbandry” also, with cows, pigs and chickens on maybe 5 acres in Iowa. Well, you’ll have the last laugh over the bacon…
April, I’m just gonna try and share this with you. Your mileage may vary, and you may not even read this before those pigs need to go for their ride. But, it worked for us, so, here goes;
http://boots2008.blogspot.com/2008/09/march-of-piggies.html
http://www.fishseddy.com/browse.cfm/2,103.html
Just came across these and thought of you and Clay. Kind of cool. Maybe a floorplan of a pigpen is in the future?
Um…well…I hate to say this, really I do..but that first picture? The close up of the pig? Well his beady little piggy eyes are boring(ha! Get it? BOARING) right into mine. And he looks sweet, and kind and full of personality and love. And I can’t quite take the thought of ever eating porcine products again. You’ve turned me into a porci-vegan.
Off to watch re-runs of Charlotte’s Web and Babe,
Maria
Oh I wish I could tell you how I made it onto your blog, but I have the memory of a gnat sometimes, anyway I love the photos of your back yard…I moved 3,000 from a home with a nice size back yard to nicer weather but no yard really and if you could see the addition my neighbors decided to put on their home you would be in shock I still am. My point is I loved your photos it brought back such wonderful memories of my childhood visiting a friend who had pigs {and oh piglets are so cute}and most of all I miss that my kids don’t get the chance to climb trees and run free.{we are all fenced in, really 6′ fences surrounding our tiny yards} Just wanted you to know how much I enjoyed looking
Love your pigs! We had a pet pig when I was kid. He definitely thought he was a dog. We didn’t even keep him in a pen, he just rooted around the yard and followed us kids around. He would have made some tasty bacon, but he committed suicide about 2 weeks before bacon time. Daggum pig jumped off a bridge and broke his neck.
If A is success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut.
My husband just walked in and asked what I was doing.
I said, “Reading.”
He said, “Looking at pigs? Everyone needs to.”
The end.