Rain, rain, rain...and pigs!

Ok, so let's just start with the big news: we are pig owners! We allow ourselves up to one new animal a year (and children count). We had yet to acquire anything new in 2016...until today! Yes, we are crazy and overwhelmed and have too much on our plates. This is precisely why my beloved parents are finding out that we have pigs through this blog post, and not by me seeking their counsel as to whether we should or should not do it.  It seemed only wise to seek counsel if we were open to taking it...  And all the stars were aligning for us to do it; it seemed the universe was affirming our step into pig ownership. So here we they are!  They arrived this afternoon just as the rain set in, followed soon after by neighbor friends who came to castrate them. Hardly a warm and friendly welcome to Tangly Woods, but I hope they soon find it to their liking.

So why now, why these pigs? Recently, at a neighborhood kite fly and potluck, we learned that a friend was raising American Guinea Hogs (the breed Jason was interested in us raising some day). We expressed our interest in doing something similar someday, learned a bit about his experience and that was that.  Well that same friend and his wife are expecting their second child soon and in an attempt to simplify they butchered the two sows and were looking to sell the two male piglets they had. To sweeten the deal, he was willing to loan us all his pig equipment (shelter, electric fencing, waterer) and bring that and the pigs to us (not to mention arrange for them to be castrated).  We went to visit them (always dangerous) and decided to put out some feelers (also dangerous when you put out feelers to other pig lovers or to people who were enthusiastic about us getting them). I was not eager to raise pigs on feed - if we could keep costs low by feeding them mostly what was growing fresh where we had them stationed, and extra food we could acquire that felt positive. But I didn't want to just feed them any food. I wanted to feed them things we could be ok eating ourselves (since we plan to eat them).  What ensued was some great community connections, and our first installment of mostly locally and organically sourced restaurant scraps is here and we'll soon be getting extra milk from a local farmer.  Between that and knowing we can get in on a major hog butchering neighborhood event in February where we can learn to do this ourselves, it was just too good to pass up.  Mom and Dad, we hope you like the new additions to the community. :)

I cannot end this blogging marathon without mentioning the rain - I noted that at the beginning of May I noted what a rainy time we were having. It has continued to date... I'm so not used to hanging laundry out to dry that I forgot about it in the excitement of the pigs arriving - it was dry from a morning of sun and is now drenched so it will just remain there in eager anticipation for tomorrow's sun! Everything is lush and we are grateful that no huge damage has been sustained by the wet weather. There is much to be grateful for. I'm not inclined to complain about having an abundance of water.  It has just factored heavily into the arrangement of our schedules the last number of weeks and has contributed to us feeling more than a tad behind.

The rain helps plants grow - those we want to grow and those we don't consider useful in particular locations. I feel like we are marking off one task for every 3-4 we add (which reminds me that I need to add "hill potatoes" to the list).  We are in danger of losing a significant percentage of our onion crop if the ground doesn't dry off for Jason to get in there to weed (and the job is getting larger and more complicated by the day).  And the plants on the porch are getting bigger and eager to spread their roots into the soil!

It reminds me of when we were at the orphanage in Bolivia and we talked about how "the emergencies had to get in line." Everything felt urgent and timely, and we somehow had to choose what to work on first.  Right now mowing/mulching the peas and weeding onions/putting on compost/mulching are both in desperate need of being done - and both are big jobs which together will take several days of work. We haven't had a full dry day on a work day for Jason in weeks...

So I'm getting a lot of practice at attempting to let go. My how bad at that I am!

We did get most of our tomatoes and peppers in (since it was too wet for putting in seeds but we needed to move on something). We did it after the 10 day looked free of potential frost. We should know better.  Jason will be scurrying to get electric fencing up for the pigs before dark and all the tomatoes and peppers covered as tonight and/or tomorrow night we might get a frost.

Well, the baby is stirring so I'm going to leave some updates for Jason - stay tuned to hear about our trip to Polyface Farm. Also, Jason is ahead of schedule and will be working on his May book report soon, which will appear here when done!