Loading Pigs

I grew up watching pigs being loaded onto trailers. Once they were on the trailer, I knew they wouldn't be coming back. My parents explained that they were going to be meat, which is how I explain it to my kids with our own pigs. When we loaded pigs last week, it was quite a significant day for us.

Once my husband had all the gates in place, the first thing I did was to make a trail of kitchen scraps for the pigs. Much like Hansel and Gretel following the breadcrumbs, I was trying to lead the pigs into the trailer. I can usually get a couple of pigs loaded just by their own gluttonous nature, they are pigs afterall.

When I saw our eight pigs look into the trailer, I realized that they were contemplating taking the step up into the trailer because they wanted the carrot peel treats, but they were too fat to make the effort. Similar to a person that just had knee replacement surgery looking at a flight of stairs would contemplate taking the elevator to the second floor. My husband used a car jack to lift the front of the trailer, so the back would be lower and entice the pigs further.

(Video is 3x faster than real time.)

Half of them loaded up nicely when we showed them which way we wanted them to go with the red plastic hog panels. The other half decided to cause mischief when our backs were turned. One troublemaker used his brawny nose to lift the gate leading back into their pen in the opposite direction of the trailer. We hadn't secured both ends of the gate, which we quickly rectified.

We went slower with the last four just because they were more agitated, and we really didn't have reinforcements if they got through one of our loosely secured fence panels. The last four loaded one by one just to get back to their mob.

The three hour drive to the locker was uneventful, but when we got there it was brutal. We watched other farmers unload their animals, which didn't make me happy. These animals have less than 12 hours to live, and their owners are pissed they won't get off the trailer. I feel guilty when our pigs walk off the trailer into the holding pens because I'm leading them to their death. They can smell the blood. I feel guilty if they don't put up a fight. Many people scoff at me when I say that because the common attitude is to not think twice about it. How can you be a farmer and feel bad about it? Well, we've had these animals for six months; my kids give them treats everyday; my husband gives them their wake-up call every morning; how could someone not feel something for these animals? We know they aren't pets, but they still need to be taken care of.

When my sons saw the empty pens when they came home from school, they asked if today the pigs went to the butcher. I said yes, that today was the day. There were no tears but sad eyes, I think I would have preferred the tears.

New Year's Eve

Our family has many Christmas and birthday traditions, but by the time that New Year's Eve rolls around we are exhausted from all the merriment. This year we found our tradition that we will continue through the years. We celebrated the end of 2018 with my friend, Serena, who cleverly introduced us to it. Everyone had so much fun and all the children were asleep by 8:15pm.

Serena came up with activities to do each hour leading up to midnight, which was actually 8pm. Since our kids are young enough, they can't tell time.

At 7pm pretend time and 3pm actual time, the kids opened up a card that read “Mad libs and guessing jar.” In the bag, there was a mad libs story and a jar filled with M&Ms. We took turns guessing how many peanut M&Ms could fill the jar, and picked words to the mad libs story.

At 8pm pretend time and 4pm actual time, it was time for a dress-up photo shoot. Serena had collected New Year's items for the kids to be silly with while we had our cameras snapping away.

At 9pm pretend time and 5pm actual time, we enjoyed supper, which was fondue. We dipped celery, carrots, apples, olives, peppers, tomatoes, crackers, bread, and sausage until we were stuffed.

At 10pm pretend time and 6pm actual time, glow sticks were cracked, lights were shut off, and music was turned up for an epic dance party. The kids spent the entire hour wearing themselves out while we took turns DJing, enjoying music from the 90's.

At 11pm pretend time and 7pm actual time, we introduced the kids to Pop Rocks. The plastic champagne flutes were filled with Sprite and Pop Rocks for toasting in the New Year.

At midnight pretend time and 8pm actual time, an excited countdown led to a balloon drop and confetti poppers spraying tissue paper everywhere.

Ten minutes after screaming happy new year, the cherubs turned zombies were snuggled in their beds and kissed goodnight.

The adults did a quick vacuum and tidying, while we congratulated Serena on an awesome execution of New Year's Eve. The tradition has now been set. Happy New Year! We can't wait for all the exciting adventures in 2019. 

Evolution of the Blog

As the year's end is days away, I'm reminded to reflect and evaluate, which I come by naturally. I started this blog almost three years ago and visit it occasionally just to read what we were doing when the children were three years younger with two less siblings. When I visit, I'm reminded that three years isn't all that long of a time period when compared to someone's life, and at the same time become overwhelmed with the amount of things that we jammed into those years.

My first blog was written the day I resigned from teaching. With a little over a month left of teaching, I documented each day. Those thirty two blogs helped me get through the end of one career to start another. It also helped me realize that I love writing. I've never been one for journaling, but this is what started three years of documentation.

That first year saw over 112 blogs, which were mainly focused on the children's activities. I wrote about experiments and art projects; trips and birthdays; baptisms and holidays. Our preschool like schedule meant that everyday we were doing activities, and I wanted to hold on to every moment. That year the kids weren't in school and I wasn't teaching. We were free to just be together.

The second year was the year of changes. Our two oldest started preschool, 3-year old and 4-year old, which meant I shuddled them around. I was pregnant with our fourth child, which meant I was doing everything not to vomit all the time. Then we moved to a different town on our little piece of land, and livestock followed shortly thereafter.

This last year we welcomed our baby boy, and settled into farm life. It has seen fewer and fewer blogs, which is because I know the kind of environment that I write well in, which doesn't include farm work, house work, or the children. I have had so much to blog about this year that its been hard for me to focus.

In the coming year, I'm hoping to blog more giving equal attention to family life and the farm, LimeStone Station. I see blogging as writing my own history book for our family. Its become a hobby that I see value in. So here's to the New Year, and more for the history books.

Harvey

I was rushing to the teacher's lounge with my lunch in one hand and my phone in the other, when I saw that my husband had left a voicemail. In typical fashion, I skipped the voicemail and went straight to calling, which saved some of my precious twenty minutes for lunch.

As I slid into my seat at the usual table, I informed the other teachers that we were the proud owners of a pig. They bombarded me with questions, to which I could barely answer. A friend of a friend at my husband's work found a pig on the side of the road, and it needed a home. We said that it could come to our house, which started a new round of questioning because we lived in town.

My 6'8 giant of a husband had this little piglet in his Carhartt coat snuggled against him. The piglet was all scrapped up, which resembled road rash. His deafening screams when I touched him made me think the poor thing wouldn't survive. We put him to bed in his straw nest that I had penned in with Rubbermaid tubs in the garage.

Like parents putting their baby to bed, we started talking softly so he wouldn't be disturbed. My husband explained that he was found in the country where a gravel road intersects a blacktop with a four-way stop. His rescuer was on her way to work and noticed him beside the stop sign. We spent the rest of the evening speculating how he got there.

I predicted that the farmer was weaning him by moving the piglets to the nursery in a trailer, when he did a Houdini act and jumped out through the slates in the trailer. With that reasoning, it was hard to imagine how the fall from the trailer hadn't killed him or how he hadn't been run over.

After two weeks, he was thriving like Wilbur from Charlotte's Web. He was even mischievous like Wilbur when he got himself stuck in the arm of my old fleece coat that I had donated to him to keep warm in the cold spring weather. However, he was too cute and too stinky for us to keep, so we packed him up and took him to my parent's farm.

We never named him because we knew he was destined for the freezer. However, my mom had no qualms and immediately named him Harvey. My parents had operated a farrow to finish operation for over ten years but sold off everything in the mid 90's. Aside from my siblings and I raising animals for 4H and FFA, my parents were out of the business. This stray pig brought them back into it, and started a partnership with us.

Harvey sparked our passion for providing the highest quality of meat with the best conditions for the animal. We saved Harvey only to kill him for our freezer, but he gave us the realization that our food should be personal. It should cost more because it's a life. Harvey woke us up to what the food system could be. After Harvey, we started doing the marketing for my parent's pigs, which they started raising in their pasture. Then we bought our acreage, and started raising them ourselves. Now the same customers that bought from us in the very beginning, buy from Limestone Station. Harvey is where it all started for us. Eight years later, we are still perfecting the art of producing pork.


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LimeStone Station

Our rented light blue Toyota Camry kicked up a tornado of red dust as we sped down the narrow dirt road into the Outback. The cloudless sky added to the endless horizon where red met blue. Aside from the occasional goat or donkey wandering through the bush, we were alone. As my thoughts drifted looking out the window, I couldn't help but wonder, “What kind of a farm tour were we going to have with such sad looking land and roaming goats and donkeys?”

As we drove through the rusted gate, my husband was very excited to see abandoned vehicles and their parts littering the yard. We knew then, that Limestone Station was our kind of farm.

In the shearing barn, we watched as the sheep baaed their complaints while they waited to be wrestled. The state of the freshly shorn sheep was pitiful, like a proud lion getting it's mane shaved off. As they were led outside to the paddock, they seemed embarrassed to be naked.

Leaving the barn for the fresh air and blazing February Australian summer sun, we came to a pre 1940s flathead Ford V8 engine with aluminum heads and an aluminum intake. I imagined we found it exactly how it looked when it was pulled from its owner. It reminded me of home, of the exact engine that my husband and I purchased months earlier, only ours had a truck to go with it.

As the tour moved to their olive and carob trees, we discovered their methods for raising produce in such extreme conditions. Their white pots gave me goosebumps as they described the huge poisonous spiders that could be seen by birds, which would otherwise go unnoticed on black pots. The birds gladly lending a sharp beak.

As I wandered through the rows of potted plants under the black shade cloth, clicking pictures of the interesting carob plants, I heard my husband ask about a motorcycle. I glanced at the open garage door and saw a V8 engine on a long wheelbase with a seat and handlebars, which looked nothing like any motorcycle I had ever seen. As I walked into the garage, the smell of oil and junkyard rust reminded me of our garage at home. The owner detailed his plans for his land speed motorcycle, which was quite impressive. Even more impressive, when he explained that he would race later that month on the salt flats of Australia.

Ten years later, we purchased our small farm with it's black dirt, green pastures, and 83 ¾ feet tall white pine trees framing the northwest corner of the property. It's apple and pear trees that attract deer all year long. The pig paddocks that permit wallowing, running, and rooting. The laying hens that run wild through the garden in the sunshine and roost in their coop at night. While we molded our farm this first year, we took great care in naming it. It was only appropriate that we name our farm LimeStone Station. We have molded our farm to meet our needs and drive our passions just as its namesake has.  

Limestone Station combined our greatest loves: agriculture and engineering, our passions for producing food while building something new with something old. They did all this in the middle of the Outback with so little resources. This place was an inspiration for my husband and I, which is why our farm is it's namesake. Our farm is Limestone Station's baby that grew up to live far away from it's parents and didn't want to be like them, but realized that it had it's parents to thank for everything and started to act like them. We were on the other side of the planet and it still felt like home. Limestone Station was where it all started for us, and ten years later we are paying homage.

Daddies Change Diapers Too

Five years ago, after a long day of teaching I walked into the high school office to fill out a trip request form when the secretaries asked me how my sons were. At the time, they were still babies, so talking about crawling, walking, and eating habits were pretty common. My principal came out of his office and said that he was babysitting this weekend. Everyone was quiet waiting for him to explain his comment, and I was just hoping that he wasn't going to say he watching his own kids. He did indeed confirm my suspicion that he was "babysitting" his own children when he said that his wife was going to be out of town. I will never forget that conversation. I remember being angry that a dad would say that, but so grateful that my own husband would never do that. How do I know my husband would never say that? 

When our first son was born, it was pure joy. When our second son was born it was profound harmony in our family. My husband did everything I did. When the baby woke up in the middle of the night, my husband would get out of bed, tip toe to his crib, and bring him to me for his 3am feeding. When he was done eating, my husband changed his diaper, swaddled him, and rocked him back to sleep. When it was time for me to go back to work after maternity leave we didn't have daycare yet, so my husband took vacation to stay home with our son. 

When I was teaching, my husband was forced to be more involved because I was expected to be married to my work. Since I was in a man's job, it was expected that I spend the majority of my time building an excellent Agriculture program. I spent even more time with that program making sure it was a success because so many people expected me to fail because I was a woman. My husband never complained that I was working too much or missing out on all the important things. I was pregnant with our third child before I realized that I would never give up trying to be the best Agriculture teacher, which meant I couldn't be the best mom. So I gave it up. 

Now I get a little irritated when old ladies at the grocery store praise my husband for being able to get groceries and handle all four kids all on his own, or when they say how lucky I am to have such a helpful husband. I roll my eyes and think where the hell is my parade?! My husband knows that I'm not upset with him, I'm pissed as society. The same society that thinks it's okay for fathers to call watching their own children "babysitting."

My husband doesn't babysit, he co-parents. He is raising his children. He is being the best example of what a father, husband, and parent should be. My friend once told me that I got one of the good ones, referring to my husband. I would say that if every father taught their sons how to be a father then every husband would be a good one, not just mine. 

4th child: 4th baptism

As I was tucking my 5-year old into bed, he asked me if he was baptized. I said yes. Then he asked me if his brother and sister were baptized. My yes only encouraged him to keep listing extended family members. When I had to stop saying yes and move into the "I don't  know" category, he said he would talk to God about it. He ended the conversation by rolling over in bed, which was my cue to leave and be thankful he would be asking God the hard questions.

The baptism of our then 5-month old son prompted my 5-year old to ask these questions. Bracing myself for the all encompassing, "Why?" I started making a mental list of the reasons we baptized our children. He never got to that question, but here are the reasons:

1. It's tradition. The church where our baby boy was baptized was the same church my husband was baptized, where we were married, where my in-laws were married, where my husband and I received first communion and first reconciliation, where we were confirmed. Our sons wore the same baptismal singlet my husband wore.

2. It's a welcoming ceremony. It gives our children a sense of belonging, belonging to our family, belonging to the church, and belonging to our community. It gives them something mysterious and magical, kind of like Harry Potter. Not really, but it does make them believe in something bigger than themselves.

3. It's a starting point. They can believe whatever they choose, but we are the ones to give them their first lesson in beliefs.

4. It gives my babies more support. What could be better than having another set of "parents?" For that matter, who doesn't want to be a Godfather or Godmother? Add a raspy voice to Godfather, and it's a sweet movie impersonation or wings and a wand to the other for making all your dreams come true. Our siblings have all been wonderful Godparents, gangsters and fairies.

5. We celebrate. A baptism is always cause for a family party. We eat meat, potatoes, salads made with cream of mushroom soup or with mayonnaise, and big cakes. We usually entertain special guests like the priest that did the baptism or family members that flew across the country. Family members all dressed-up eating and drinking together is my favorite.

Leading up to the baptism, I was scrambling around making food better, making cakes bigger, and making my husband crazy. With this being our fourth child, it occurred to me that if this was our last baptism we better make it the best yet. With that in mind, I made three cakes, three different flavors, three different frosting flavors, and three different frosting decorations. We had prime rib, but thinking that wasn't enough we added pork loin. I put Baby's Breath on the tables as centerpieces. I asked my parents to bring their portable air conditioner to put into my in-laws garage, which is where the party was held. In my defense, I had gone a couple of weeks without air conditioning, and I wanted everywhere I went to be freezing. My parents did not indulge me.

I'd like to think that if I had made this list before we baptized our son, I wouldn't have been so focused on the extra things. Regardless of the food or the cake or the pictures, the outcome was the same. We baptized our baby boy.