Grow some hair on that chest

See this cute little guy?

We are one less.

You see, today was a sad day on the farm.

Last night the girls and I were doing our chores outside with the animals and I noticed that one of our four newly acquired cute little piglets was out of the pigpen. As I walked closer and closer to it, I realized that something wasn't right. It was shoving its face in the dirt and scooting around like a wheelbarrow.

I was mystified about what exactly happened and why he was acting so weird. With three years under my belt as a vet tech, I thought I was going to do something about this and go CSI on the pig.

As I went to pick up this little guy, I heard something come from him that I didn't even know existed in the world. There is great truth to the saying 'Squeal like a pig'. It should be 'Squeal like a pig, then pee your pants'. The shriek was deafening and I knew instantly that he was in pain.

I discovered that both of his front two legs were broken. Somehow he broke them during his escape from the pen. My heart hurt for him because I knew what was in store for him.

I wanted to be like Fern to the rescue in Charlotte’s Web and take 'Wilbur' in as my very own and push him around in a stroller and feed him his supper in a bottle and dress him up in bonnets. And then reality set in. I do that with my own human piglet. That is what the mama/girl in me wanted to do. However, I knew if I were going to make it as a farmer's wife I had to toughen up.

I consulted with farmer Jason about this last night over the phone because he was at the fire station. Although there wasn’t much said about this piglet’s fate, we both knew what had to be done.

How could he live like this? He was in too much pain. It would have been different if it was just one leg, but both of them.

Jason got home this morning gave me the ‘I am man’ look and headed straight out to the barn, gun in tote with his pants tucked into his boots. I wanted no part of the details. I just wanted to remain in my state of toughness because it had taken me sooo long to get there.

I know that you must be thinking ‘They were going to kill it anyways and make Christmas ham out of him’. Although that may be true, he didn’t get to live out his life’s purpose.

I have had to come to grips with that very fact. All animals here have a purpose. We grow and raise some animals solely to eat them. That’s it. How sad is that? Our goal is to let them live a life free of stress and grow up to be big healthy animals so we can eat good healthy meat and know exactly where it came from and exactly what we are consuming. Our pigs eat grass and for scraps they get our fruit and veggie clippings. Not buckets of slop with a bunch of miscellaneous in it.

Jason is amazing to me. He was somber and yet strong at the same time. He has a good balance. I know that must be so difficult to do something like that and remain sane. But then again, I forget what his other job is too. He truly has the mind of superman to be able to do the things he does. And he most definitely has what it takes to be a farmer. I need to take a course is Farmer’s Wife 101 or something. Do they offer that in the Ag Dept at A&M?

We could see the vultures from our back porch. And occasionally I would catch the two of us gazing off into the pasture in that direction with blank stares on our faces. Then we would look back at each other, sigh, and go about our day.