Once again, this was on my blogger blog so you aren’t seeing double. Feel free to read THIS one though!! LOL
I was only in my early 30s when we farmed so that explains why I worked as I did although I know older women who do it day in and day out.
When we moved from the farm (to a NON working farm, the non part is important, it’s like a giant lawn or deer feeding station, my husband wants to make it that working thing again?) I thought I was getting soft so I started digging up the sidewalk in front of our house which was OLD and cracked and uneven, smoothing the ground and then putting it back. AND THEN for fun my daughter and I dug a yard pond and used an old stock tank to line it, the big kind of stock tank. People said we couldn’t do it. That’s a really big incentive most of the time @ least for us. Yard pond is still there with my one lone water lily in it.
WARNING gross things next. I told you now, uh huh, you said I didn’t warn you now, uh huh. (if you don’t know 70s music you won’t get the last line and I can’t remember the name of the song)
When we were @ the real farm @ first I was just learning all about the ins and outs of raising pigs. You see I’d never really touched a pig much before we started raising them. (real estate agent in high heels remember?) When you castrate the boy pigs sometimes there is an opening between their scrotum and their abdomen that leaks out intestines to be exact.
So I was doing my first bunch of castrations, all was fine till I did this to this pig and his guts were showing quite literally, wasn’t a big opening though so I thought maybe I could take him to the vet. So we did, the kids and I, she explained that it was not in my medical ability to stitch the opening up which was like a hernia. (I learned how to do it and could make it work on most pigs that weren’t too bad by the time we quit farming. Can’t sew up a pig, my rosy red…. anyway) The kids were with me, I think the two boys and my youngest girl, and the vet had to kill the pig because she said it wouldn’t be cost efficient for her to sew the pig up and it probably wouldn’t work. So she had to put poor piggy to sleep. We got to take him home though and since we were pretty blase` about dead things and he was in plastic he was in the back seat.
So we stop @ Farm and Home which is just down the road. (Farm and Home=Wal Mart for farmers) We start to get out of the car and the kids ask if they should lock the car. I say “why should we lock the car, what are they going to steal? Our dead pig?” For some reason (maybe because we were so poor) the idea of someone stealing our dead pig from the backseat of the old car was hilarious. I mean pee your pants fall down hilarious. You have to remember we were poor so we didn’t have much to steal but a dead pig that weighed like 5 lb? I can see someone sneaking across a parking lot with him…… You guessed it, the line “what are they going to steal….our dead pig?” has gone down in family lore.
So we go home with our dead pig. City people won’t understand this so much but we had a burn barrell for trash. Call me inhumane or cold and cruel but the ground was frozen so I just through said dead pig on top of the burn barrel. We had two dogs, Sam who was a blue heeler/australian shepherd (I know I said just blue heeler on the last post but I was tired and lazy) and Jolie who was a crazy Australian Shepherd, she only bit friends and family and not hard, just a little blood. Strangers she was terrified of till we moved to the other farm with the built in dog herd and she suddenly decided she had to be friendly dog or she was getting left out. She was crazy because someone shot another dog that she was fighting while she was fighting it. That’s before we got her.
Back to to the story, it’s later in the afternoon, Saturday and I usually got out of Saturday evening chores cuz hubby was still home @ that point. I was puttering around the kitchen and I notice the dogs are acting STRANGE. Almost like they were drunk. Falling down, staggering, then they’d get up and do it again. I panicked and ran out to my husband, he didn’t know what was wrong, he hadn’t seen them eat anything strange.
We figured it out in time. The dogs had been eating the pig that the vet had put to sleep. Thank goodness they hadn’t gotten enough of whatever she gave the pig to kill them but it was enough to make us think they were going to die.
I set the trash of fire, we burned lots of things making sure the poisoned but tasty pig was gone.
If you want to know you have superhuman strength and can do anything you should try farming. I was an outdoorsy type person, fished in tournaments, helped cut wood, mowed, gardened, landscaped, hunted mushrooms, before we farmed. Outdoorsy took on a whole new meaning when we farmed and so did every other aspect of life. I could peel a pot of potatoes for 6 or 7 people and have it on the stove in 5 minutes, then I could go back outside and help him till I thought they were boiling…..put the pork chops on, we ate alot of pork…….and so on. I’ve already told how I could do a pen of pigs which includes castrating them in 5 -10 minutes. If you are grossed out easily don’t look @ the link @ the end and quit reading right now. I would feed the leftovers from castrating the pigs to the cat and the two dogs. Calico Cat, Sam a blue heeler puppy, and Jolie an old crazy Australian Shepherd. The wouldn’t fight, they’d all sit in a semi circle around me and wait their turn and I would toss them what I would toss them and they would catch it. Was quite amusing. I would also sing to the mama pigs when I was doing this all to quiet them. If they didn’t quiet they got sprayed with antibiotic which they did NOT like but they usually decided I might be boss then. You haven’t lived till you’ve heard 30 HUNGRY sows throwing a fit, especially if someone slept in till say 7 am? Then the first time I sang to them it’s like huh? and they got weirdly quiet.
There were the sows that would get out of their pens during the night and we would play a few rounds of merry go round the farrowing house, forget jogging chasing a mad sow or being chased lends something to the whole running idea. Sometimes they would just bop back into their pens, it was actually quite amusing, they would look guilty as they could be. Sometimes they would forget that pigs are smart animals and try to get in the same pen as another mother breaking several pens down in the meantime and setting the whole tone for the day. I said we repaired the farm building, we couldn’t afford new everything and it was a total disaster held together with baling wire slightly rickety.
Of course we had to watch the first few litters being born, I mean I checked on all the mothers like every two hours when it was farrowing time but we STAYED out with the first ones I know as a family. We ate ham sandwiches and sat on upturned buckets (the barn was sanitized @ that point, didn’t last long) and ate ham sandwiches and drank iced tea.
I still have the cap I wore all the time in the winter and it was camo, only think camo I’ve ever owned. It also had ear flaps, do you want to talk rubber boots? I remember when my husband I were not so newly married and we would fight over discuss who had the newest rubber boots, it was a very important subject.
Speaking of the proper attire for farming I liked rather loose sweat shirts. There was a reason other than just warm and comfy. I had to strip to the waist 4 times a day or get a shirt sleeve wet until we drilled another well. You ask WHY would you do such a stupid thing dingy woman? The water leaked, I had to turn it on and off to the big barn where we farrowed for awhile and to the nursery. Pig nursery, full of teenage pigs. You ask why did I need to be an exhibitionist to merely turn water on and off? The turn off valve was like 2 feet underground down a shaft full of water …….because the water leaked. This fun feat often included draining and rolling up hundreds of feet of hose because something was frozen. Also if the feed augers didn’t work I had to carry it over there by hand in a wheelbarrow…… I didn’t have a weight problem @ all for years. And I learned to rebuild electric motors that ran the feed augers!
So we lived a mile from the highway and 1/4 mile from another house which was good for the stripping thing. Farm naked was my motto. JUST KIDDING, actually all the kids would be gone and I’d think I was all alone miles from civilization and no one could see the house so I would take a shower and NOT BRING A ROBE or my clothes. You can guess the outcome? Invariably we would have company drive up. It was more special when it was male preachers. Enclosed porch and front door was directly by only bathroom, “could you all just step outside or maybe just turn your back for just a minute PLEEZE.” Go see the pet pig, the chickens, or the calves that call the lawn their home.
Lastly if you want to be grossed out go here. I’m not sure if this is a joke or photoshop but I REALLY hope it is one of them. I may have nightmares. I warned you.
I painted this still life, it’s oil, 3.5×2.5 inches. It sold long long ago on ebay. But that is the still life and here are the pigs! This story is also on http://animalsthatgivepause.blogspot.com/ which is my blog too so it’s all OK, do not look @ the man behind the curtain.
I really don’t know if I’ve told anyone here this before but when my husband and I first got married we had elementary school age kids, (boys, his) and teenagers, (mine, girls) and he was determined to spend more time with them than he had his older kids. So we farmed. We were newly married you see and in love. I lack the farming gene. I swear there is this gene that makes you think all this farm stuff is grand. (it’s called the crazy throw money away gene sometimes too) I’m not a city girl but the first time I tasted homogenized milk (I was 6,on a train, going to KS to see my brother with my mom)I thought I was in heaven. We had a dairy when I was growing up. I did a post on this before, sort of I think? We drank the milk from the cows. We sold the cream, what we drank was NOTHING like whole milk or 2%, think lumpy skim milk. I wasn’t much on the butter thing either but believe it or not I have churned butter. Farm life is just not what it’s cracked up to be. I think my problem was I grew up on a farm and then was Mrs. Earth Mother for most of my first marriage. (Mother Earth News was my primary magazine, I made my own yogurt and potato stamped wrapping paper, I’ve split lots of wood, we had 3 gardens and sold watermelon as a hobby for the kids, for years my kids we not allowed dessert except on weekends and pop only when someone would sneak it to them but that’s another story, I was mean mean mama but they were healthy, of course I made all my own Christmas presents, macrame, crocheted).
Anyway we had this farm because this was a man (new husband remember we are in LOVE) who would work and farm (and the bottom would fall out of the farm economy AGAIN). And we had pigs. (I was a real estate agent when he met me, I wore skirts and hose and high heels and hardly ever smelled pig poop but we were in LOVE, did I say this?) When we first bought the farm we were going to raise cows, we had some bad luck and lost a bunch of calves and could get a contract to raise pigs and had all the equipment and buildings albeit was OLD and needed fixing. We fixed and fixed and fixed. We had 30 sows farrowing (having baby pigs) @ a time. I timed myself and I could do (cut teeth, tails, iron shots, antibiotics if we had a problem, and castrate the males) a pen of pigs in between 5 and 10 minutes, one of my skills. We eventually had over 1600 head of pigs on the farm @ one time. Then we went REALLY broke and my husband had to go back to driving a truck and I raised pigs with 3 teenagers and one almost teenager. One would not come out of the house but that’s another story. She’s the one who raised the runts in the house and kept house for me.
What brought this on was a post by Jan Mader on her blog Animal Talk. She told of someone having to kill a badly injured squirrel. It is necessary and humane and kind but it doesn’t feel that way when you are doing it.
I can’t remember many of the times we had to kill animals on the farm which was a blessing. I remember lots of times I wanted to kill some animals, you haven’t lived till you’ve looked for cows in a thunderstorm or been shocked by an electric fence one too many times.
We tried to raise the runt pigs in the house. My daughter was pg by this time, I hope she doesn’t mind me telling this. Her runt pig died. Like I think it was in BED with her, do not judge us, I drew the line @ sleeping with them. Prettiest little runt pig and she was nuts about animals. This is the daughter with 7 dogs now and 4 kids. She came around the corner bawling and saying “how can I raise a BABY if I kill PIGS” insert horrible crying noises. She’s a wonderful mother btw.
The next story is my runt pig story, it’s not a pretty one but this pig was determined to die. This was a tiny pig, teeny, we gave it special food and more antibiotics than it should have survived. It was sort of the pet pig if you can have a pet out of 1600. (I did and one was named Velveeta, he SOLD Velveeta, she was the prettiest shiny black pig and followed me everywhere, this story is not about Velveeta though).
I was feeding on the feeding floor which is a large slab of concrete angled so the rain runs off of it and with sheds for shelter for the pigs @ one end, much of our activity went on on the feeding floor. Anyway there was another building close by that was semi enclosed that we didn’t use. Runt was like several months old by this time and we knew we’d never be able to sell him or even let him live in good conscience, Runt was an UGLY pig. Butt Ugly, looked like a white razorback with allergies and weighed like 20 pounds soaking wet when he should have been close to 100 or so. I actually figured up the cost of the medicine we had given him and with the expensive antibiotics it was well above $40, part of the reason we were broke I suppose.
I’d fixed Runt a nice little box in the semi enclosed building, it was early spring and he could get fresh air but yet be by the other pigs. He couldn’t stay too close to any of the others because he just didn’t fit in. You’re thinking Runt was this sweet little pig that was ugly and misunderstood? Nope, he was spoiled and had a nasty little personality. I think it was just because he was our first true Runt that we kept him alive so long. I’d cut off the antibiotics and he was getting weaker. BUT Runt had one habit that was infuriating. He had a nice warm wooden box with rags and straw, his own food and water. Every morning I would go to feed and Runt would be on the feeding floor if he could make it or stuck in the mud if he couldn’t. He would be getting trampled with the other pigs or flailing in mud in front of the feeding floor, I’d wash him off and dry him as well as I could and back to his nice nest. EVERY MORNING, 7 days a week for a month or more. Runt wasn’t friendly, I guess it was all the shots and I really do think he lacked brains along with health. One morning the mud was deep and runny. I didn’t find Runt for awhile. I didn’t save him that time. I actually held him under as he was half drown already. I can still remember it. Not a happy story and most will disagree and say I should have killed him earlier, taken him to the vet to be put to sleep, not killed him….etc. but I killed him.
More farm stories in the days to come, hopefully cheerier. OK, they aren’t real farm stories, they are me on a farm, there IS a difference.
For those of you who weren’t with me when I had my mental breakdown lost our dog Mugsey this summer we no longer have the lab in this film. He was such a sweet puppy, his name was Mugsey because he looked so much like the dog on the flea control commercial…..some of these mugs may have bugs but there aint no bugs on me! I think he looked and always was as destructive sometimes acted like Marley from Marley and Me? Enjoy and if you want to read more about him go to the top of the page to In Memory of Mugsey.
My blogging friend Nadine over @ The Healing Art of Pet Parenthood has generously donated an hour of holistic pet consultation to an ebay auction with the proceeds to go to the Red Cross for their efforts in Haiti. I checked out this auction when I first read about it and then just now and it’s got two more bids in like an hour or so ……
Dispatch and Mugsey playing one of my favorite pictures. Notice Dispatches tail, Mugsey used it as a handle.
Give to Haiti and give your pets a present with pet consulting. Nadine has many insights in her blog too. Check it out!
Courtesy Of Small Paws Rescue
We still need a foster home for this bonded pair. They are being boarded in Tulsa. They are darling boys from an owner surrender to a kill shelter. We can fly them to you for foster care and we are also accepting adoption applications as well. There will be a two-for-one- adoption fee for them both! Meet Schotzy and Sassy! They are both darling and are a bonded pair. They may be siblings. They were surrendered to a kill shelter in MO. Got room for two more??How to Become a Much Needed Small Paws® Rescue Foster Parent!Fill Out an Online Adoption Application! Small Paws Rescue
This is TC now…..help me keep my marriage, get these dogs before I do. I can’t judge other people but to surrender these two to a kill shelter makes me ill. Thank goodness they will be fostered or adopted now….. hopefully. Check out their other bichons and mixes and if you can’t do anything else donate to them or your local animal shelter. I’ve got two big garbage sacks of clothes to go to our thrift shop that is ran by the local animal shelter. Every little bit helps. I’m serious, I’m going home soon and these two would make wonderful playmates for Dispatch but he would have no Daddy or says Daddy so SAVE ME FROM MYSELF….please?
Just think, if you adopted these two you could have TWO blogs about bichons….. JK, I have two animal blogs and only one bichon…..it is possible to live without a bichon but you just feel sooooo much better with a little teddy bear face staring @ you sleepily in the morning with one eye cracked open. Or have a little furry body snuggle to you for comfort ….or bark @ Daddy if he just raises his hand to knock on something.
This is Dispatch looking for the jake brake monster in the truck. Don’t knock the floors, I’ve spent more on truck carpeting than most people have in house carpet and this is easy to clean plus I’m getting a bumper sticker that says PAID FOR!! LOL
This was going down the road, taken with phone camera explains the fuzzieness somewhat?, see Dispatches bed? Daddy bought a seat cushion and then didn’t like it, guess who got it?
Not sure what he was looking for there but I’m sure it was coming through the floor to get him like so many things have………NOT!! But who knows what goes on in a bichon brain?
Here he is in his favorite place in the truck, Daddies seat, problem is he wants to be in it while Daddy is driving and although Daddy is talented this is a bit dangerous for any more than a minute in the middle of no where. So Dispatch has gotten this habit of sitting @ Daddies feet and looking imploringly @ him to pick him up or doing the steering wheel trick. Daddy won’t tell Dis no (shades of our child rearing days, I get to be the bad guy) so I have to tell Dis he can’t sit between Daddy and the pedals. So we are arguing, the dog and I that is, I actually chained him up in the back and stayed in back with him for awhile, he starts trying to go in front of Daddy every time I’m ignoring him. So Dis stands there and you can see the light bulb go off in the wee fuzzy brain and he sticks his bony butt in front of Daddies seat and BACKS in front of Daddies seat!! It was so hilarious, this might have been partly caused by me tugging on his tail to get him to come out. Maybe, but it was FUNNY, no hate mail about pulling the dogs tail, he could care less most of the time and I don’t hurt him, I just get his attention. He knows what I want anyway if he’s smart enough to back in? LOL Post on the “other” animals blog about Dispatch and the border patrol, we might not ever laugh if it wasn’t for our favorite fuzzball!!
This is also on my animals blog @ blogspot. Lazy? Perhaps? I may be obsessive and stubborn but I’m not a total idiot. It’s easier to get traffic on blogspot. Therefore I will not give up my blogspot blogs. I had my reasons for starting these new blogs and they haven’t left but if I can write for 3 blogs I can write for 5. So sometimes you will see duplicates (often) on the two animals blogs and sometimes you will see duplicates on Tresa’s blog and Florenceview. Confused? Just read them all and FEEL FREE to click on any of the links therein. Therein, that’s a big word huh?
Dispatch has always been a busy dog. He’s always been a people dog too, accommodating and sweet smelling. Here he is above making sure Mama doesn’t make the mistake of leaving him in the camper as he’s pretty sure he wants to go in the car where the suitcases are…… sitting in the street should work? Here he is directing the morning gathering of a hurricane crew cleaning up after Katrina in Biloxi MS. His Daddy and “brother” are the two biggest ones.
Here he is either washing Matt’s boot or checking air pressure in the tires with moisture?
He is keeping Daddy firmly in the chair later in the week. Daddy had gotten staph from a chainsaw cut on his leg and a case of Daddy telling Mommy I don’t need a bandage anymore a sock is fine……took 6 months and we both had staph by the time it was over. For the med geeks it was MRSA too! Daddy wasn’t even supposed to be out in the heat but he thought Mama couldn’t boss the hurricane cleanup crew as well as he could, he was probably right. Dispatch was keeping Daddy weighted in the chair. Daddy isn’t a good patient. Dispatch even smells good when he is so upset he doesn’t know what to do? Mama took him to the vet and they had a groomer there too. Horror of horrors. He’d never met a real groomer before and this was first in a long line This is also when the vet confirmed the French Canadians we lived by in FL were right. They said “ee es sich a sweet beeechon (bichon)” (talking about the dog when I would walk him) I said in my Missouri drawl, “hez a podoll, don’t chall know a podoll when ya alls sees one?” (I maybe exaggerated my drawl a bit?) But I am digressing he still smelled fairly good.
Part of the problem is his Daddy has a nose like a bloodhound and always has. So when Dispatch started getting bad breath we looked to the teeth, a bit of tartar but not much, so we went with the treats and the bones designed to clean teeth. This was in September or October I think, I bought doggie toothpaste and until you’ve used that on a dog you haven’t lived. We finally just stick it on a paper towel wrapped around our finger (plastic finger thingy was gone out of our toothpaste for dogs) and I disinfected his toothbrush and use it because I forgot mine. Yes I use the dogs toothbrush but get over it, IT’S DISINFECTED!!! He only used it once anyway, that was enough for me and him both. His breath wasn’t much better, in fact it was getting worse. So I said OK, he can do peptobismol so how about listerine and water on a paper towel and swab out his mouth? After this he seemed to prefer his Daddy over his Mama so much more? Wonder why? Every time I went to the pet store I forgot to buy anything for his breath. So yesterday Daddy and I were shopping and I’d refrained from buying the breath tabs for dogs @ Wal Mart because lets face it, Dispatch is picky, if it’s not cheese, milk, ice cream, or meat it had better be really sweet or he’d better be starving. He refused to eat pork except for bacon or ham for years. The breath tabs are mint flavored. Daddy said let’s try them as Daddy can smell the dog clear across the truck. Do you think he would even get CLOSE to them? Does this look like the face of a mint eating dog? He will struggle but let me do almost anything to him. He let me dig @ his head once with tweezers to get a partial tick out of his skin. I break the breath tab in half, I plead with Dispatch, get a death grip on his head while he’s on my lap and stick the mint in his mouth and he sort of chews on it in an effort to push it out of his mouth. After about 3 of those sessions the breath tab is mostly gone and I stick it in his food hoping he’ll have a change of heart. The mints do seem to be helping.
Tomorrow maybe a post on Doggie flatulence….. yes he passes gas and it’s HORRIBLE!!
I will share some of my Katrina pictures taken right after the public was let into the destroyed area around Gulfport/Biloxi. The pictures say January 1st of 2006. They were mostly taken in Pass Christian and Longbeach MS, the one of the dog was NW of Gulfport a stones throw away from where Brett Favre grew up in Kiln. The dog is standing in my office, so many phone towers were down I had to go up on the hill to get phone service or internet for awhile. The apartment building was in Biloxi I think or right between Biloxi and Gulfport. Most (except for the one that’s obviously on the beach) of these pictures were taken blocks or 1/2 mile or more from the beach. Remember the United States had her own disaster not too long ago, let’s help our close neighbors in their hour of extreme need. Please?
I’m really good @ coming up with catchy titles that have no actual bearing on my subject matter in any truly constructive way? In other words people aren’t going to be looking for memories on the search engines to come up with a video of a bichon and a lab playing but….that’s the way I roll.
BTW, I don’t normally say or even think that’s the way I roll, it just came out. Maybe I’m ill? This is sort of a tribute to Mugsey, I was looking for pictures of Dispatch and came across these. Sorry they are long.. enjoy.
Oh and I know I’m not supposed to let the bichon latch onto my arm growling but it’s soooo much fun and I doubt he turns into killer dog but you never know. Plus he has been fixed and he has to get his jollies where he can ……don’t cha think? My brother says the bichon thinks he’s like dominating me and preparing to hump when he grabs me like that…I think bro is just trying to gross me out?
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