Well, I can not blog about our farm with out telling you a story about how we started with farming! Scott and I have this mini farm and had nothing 'growing' on it. My sister's husband suggested we begin to raise our own meat. Although now we do not eat pork, (we now follow the biblical dietary guidelines) at that time we did.
So we got a baby pig. A male. He needed to be fixed. We did not know how to do that, and really did not want to just start cutting on him, so by the time we did the job, he weighed about 50#. We waited too long. (your suppose to do this very early on)
My sister and her husband come over to help; it took her husband and mine to hold the pig. He weighed so much and was very wiggly. He squealed and squealed as my sister and I began to cut very slowly, with a sterile scalpel, it took us about 10 minutes and the pig finally just passed out. After -by the next day, he was bruised (he was a white colored pig) for about a week. When we were finally done, I said-should we suture it closed?
Scott and I learned the hard way to be farmers. We just jumped in with both feet...and met any challenge head on.
Our 'boar', who was our 'daddy' boar, got ill, so we had to give him antibiotic. As we were chased around the pen by a 500# boar that had not moved for 2 days, but suddenly had the energy to chase us down, (if someone would have just videotaped this, we might have won money on the tv show funniest home videos!!!) We finally gave the shot to him in a 'very tender' spot. He had finally went to lay down next to the fence with his back end pushed up into the fence, so we stood on the other side (the safe side of the fence) and gave it to him...in that tender male area... It was the only place that little needle would go into (pig skin is very thick and tough-I learned to get a bigger needle not some little small size that you would use on people)
After all of that, we learned that they make the same antibiotic that you can just put into their food or water. Duh! That would have been a lot easier!
That pig was so big; we actually had to put him on a diet later when he was well. He got too big to move!
I am so glad we no longer eat pork! I am esp glad we no longer raise pork! They are dangerous and messy, very unclean. (is that why GOD never called them food?!)
One of our sows (female pig of child bearing age) that we knew would have babies soon, delivered a week earlier than what we had figured she would. We had not yet moved her to the safe area for birth, so the boar that was still in the same pen, laid down on the babies and killed them. Well, we thought, why move her out now.
A week later, she began to labor again!! What?! Yes, she had another litter!
We figured she must of had a double uterus!
So my hubby began to pick up the babies and RUN! (That is the only way we could get her to move into a safer area with the babies) See, if the baby squeals, then she will notice they are being moved. Scott made it out with the first few, but the last ones, one squealed, and up she came running after him. Pigs CAN run fast when they want to, and they can KILL a person! So there is Scott running across the pasture with baby pigs in his hands, being chased by a huge sow, a huge angry sow, and as he gets to the fence (5 foot high) he jumps over it, landing hard on the other side (thankfully she did not go thru the fence-we have had that happen before). The other scary thing is none of us was out there when he was doing this, so if he had he tripped inside the pasture-well he might not be here! (We have since talked about NOT doing dangerous stuff alone)
He seemed fine all afternoon, but by that evening said his back was hurting more and more. Finally he could not even stand up! I took him to the ER, and after some tests, they said he had a ruptured disk. They gave him a huge amount of pain med, (finally after being there for over an hour) it helped as we were being discharged. It lasted about 1/2 hour, so I knew it had to be really bad if it did not last very long. They suggested we speak with a dr the next day, that would do surgery that week.
That night when we got home I had our second son come and help get Scott into the house. Scott could not stand up at all, but could crawl. So he crawled to the back door, very slowly. As he crawled up the steps, and into the house, our son looked at me and said-"I have never seen dad in this kind of shape-this is bad".
We did talk to a dr the next day that spoke more about our farm animals (he was from a big city-just moved here to 'corn country', after always living in a big town, ) so he was very fascinated about farm animals! I was a little frustrated; would I be charged by the hour here???
He wanted to do surgery right away, that week if possible, but we said why? What would happen if he does? Well he would remove the damaged disk, and fuse together the bones. Ok. What would happen if we do not do surgery? Well the bones would fuse themselves. Ok. Why pay you to do that?
Scott never had surgery, but did do extensive rehab for his back, which helped a lot. He is still going strong today, moves a little slow, and we know that he may have to have surgery in the future, but he would have had to have surgery in the future anyway even if he had surgery way back after the accident! They said they would prob have to repeat it again.
So that is our beginning of farming. We have learned a lot, and now, we are not so 'green'. But I am still so gald that we do not have any pigs anymore!!!
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