I’ve been reading Coop by Michael Perry (it’s not as good as Truck or Population: 485, but it’s okay) and his descriptions of the two pigs he raised are making me miss my summer 2010 piggies.
They are absolutely single-minded in their dedication to destroying what I had built, but they are just so playful about it all. Absolutely vandalous creatures, but gleeful in their depredations.”
I also enjoyed Perry’s description of the pigs running:
. . . [O]ftentimes Cocklebur gets so worked up she stampedes herself in tight stiff-legged circles, her chunky body teeter-tottering fore and aft.”
Exactly.
My mom — who has perhaps raised too many pigs in her lifetime to delight in their antics quite as much as I do — seems to have nevertheless caught enough of my newfound pig enthusiasm to want to farrow a couple of litters for me herself. She and my dad got a couple of really nice bred gilts (pregnant females, for those of you not up on the hog lingo) from my grandpa recently. Here they are chewing on ground ear corn in my parents’ barn. It’s not actually snowing in the barn — the camera’s flash just picked up the dust in the air.
My dad fashioned a little hut for them, which helps to trap the gilts’ body heat and keep them warm in the big, uninsulated barn. I didn’t get a photo of the gilts in the hut, but when they finished eating they got right in it and settled down side by side with their noses pointed toward the hut door. They looked snug.
While we were visiting my parents this past week, Elden and I helped clean out the old farrowing house (a building set up for pig birthing) where my parents will house the gilts closer to their due dates — toward the end of February. Even though it’s probably been 15 years since my parents had any hogs on the farm, the teeth cutter, ear notcher, and piglet scale are still hanging in the farrowing house, and the propane space heater fired right up after my dad dusted it off. I can’t wait for piglets!
Stone's Throw Farm 
The last litter I farrowed was for your 4-H pigs, Catherine. That seems like yesterday sometimes, like centuries ago other times. I’m glad to be back in the pig business!
Piglets sound like toddlers. How many do you expect to raise this summer?
I’m not sure; we’ll see how many piglets these gilts have and then I want to see if I can line up takers for the pork before I even bring them up here.
Having recently spent 3 days with a toddler, I feel confident in saying that pigs are much more self-sufficient. Although perhaps if you put your kids in a pigpen diaperless with food and water and a heat lamp to sleep under, they would do just fine on their own. Think Sarah would agree to such an experiment?
We’ll Fedex Oliver to you in May, pick him up in September, and we’ll see how he does.