PIGLETS

Over the last week or two I have had a growing list of things to blog about. That list is now up to 6 items but this post will have to stand all by itself and be about one and only one thing: Tangly Woods has piglets!! Oh, which pictures and videos should I share. We have just a few to choose from. :)

It's mostly but not entirely a happy story, and maybe that is partly why I have been hesitant to put anything on the blog. No, that's not really the reason - I just haven't had any moments to spare (see future blog post - yet to be written - about all the other things...).

This goes back a ways, as most stories of pregnancy and birth do! We had borrowed a boar last fall and were eager about spring piglets. We did a great job of convincing ourselves that both our female pigs were pregnant. No spring piglets! We had given the boar back by that time and weren't sure how to proceed until the offer to buy him came along. Now you may wonder why we went ahead and purchased a boar that had failed to impregnate either of our sows! Well, he was on the young side when we first borrowed him and so we thought it possible that he just wasn't fertile yet. So we wanted to give him another chance. But some of us were determined to not get our hopes up this time around until there were piglets in front of our eyes!

That said, we also wanted to be prepared so we were keeping track of both sows' cycles and noted that the black one stopped cycling. So we figured out her due date and it happened to fall right on the weekend we planned to be in WV with friends. Sigh! Still saying "if she is pregnant," we warned our house sitters and accumulated a list of "on call" folks that new something about pigs (lots more than we do any way). We left last Friday hoping, IF she was pregnant, she would wait until we returned. She did, but not by much!

We got back Sunday evening and the only pig-related excitement that evening was that our other sow (the red one that is not yet pregnant as far as we know) decided to add to the complexity and chaos of transitioning home after a trip and was seen by our neighbor walking up the driveway adjacent to ours. After considerable effort (why would she want to leave the chestnuts once she found them), Jason got her back in with our neighbor and Kali's help. He checked the fence only to discover that he had forgotten to turn it back on Thursday when he moved them - so the electric fence was off all weekend while we were gone. Another thing we are very glad our friends didn't have to deal with while we were gone!!

Monday morning Jason got up to check on her and do chores before I left for a long day in the office. Sure enough she was in active labor and Jason could see at least 2 piglets. I ran down to see for myself before tearing myself away. For this "wanna-be-doula" leaving a birth is no small thing!! I got an update or two throughout the day and by day's end she had 5 piglets (or so we thought - later it turned out there were actually 6). The sow didn't seem to have any trouble and the piglets were nursing even before the mama was done laboring. By the time I got home and checked on her she was sacked out (snoring!) and there was a wriggling pile next to her.

This is the sad part of the story. We are now down to 4 piglets and one of the 4 remaining seems a little different but we can't tell if that "different" is a problem or just his way (he's the only little boy left). Jason found two dead on the second morning after they were born. Since we didn't see any other problems, our hypothesis is that she mistakenly laid on them but we really don't know. As you can see, she is quite large and they are quite small. It's kind of nerve-wracking to see her going into the house and rooting around and the laying down, especially since sometimes they are all piled under straw and you can't see anything but straw moving.

The mama seems to be adjusting to motherhood pretty well. She is up and around some now but lays around a lot letting them nurse. I'm so fascinated by the process and of course am thinking of my own experiences as a lactating mother. I'm really glad I just nursed one at a time. :) I do think I've figured out that she makes a different sound when her milk lets down. The piglets will be rooting all around and not settling and she'll make occasional grunts. Then she'll start grunting rhythmically and then they will settle into sucking steadily!

She is funny in her nesting behaviors. The one day Jason finally got in there with her to put some straw into the back of the house where the piglets can get away from her if need be (to not be rolled upon). As soon as he did that, she came over, went in and started pulling it back out of the house. Then when we brought her a large stack of weeds she took them and started taking them into the house. Silly gal! She's finding her way though! I just wonder if she likes her new role or if she is baffled by how drastically her life has changed in the past 4 days!

Here's a few more pictures of the little family (minus dad who we have congratulated but has no idea what has happened). I should add that the dad has acquired the name "Mister" (or you might think of it as "missed her") from Jason, since he tries really hard to mate with our large red sow but so far she is just too tall for him. But clearly he didn't miss on this one!

 

They are pretty cute and we are pretty happy to welcome them to the neighborhood. I hope they will find Tangly Woods a good place to live out their lives! We'll do our best to make it so!

Here's a video of all 6 of them play fighting when they were not more than about 24 hours old:


And here's one of the remaining 4 nursing while mama does the aforementioned grunts:

Starting September right!

The timer just rang, announcing that the last canner loads of applesauce are done! What a fun day and it's not even 4 p.m. yet! Since my mom admitted to me, upon receiving yesterday's blog, that she was going through "blog withdrawal" in August, I better up my game! Don't want to disappoint my greatest fan (and honestly the person that often makes it possible for me to carve out time for blogging)!

Yesterday, before we hosted 40-50 of my work colleagues, students and their family members, my parents dropped off 3 boxes of wild WV apples for us to add to the bag previously delivered to us for sauce making. What abundance! So today was slated for doing up apples and also picking all our remaining grapes for juice. But we first enjoyed a lovely evening with all corners of our home filled with amazing people, little and big. I got some amazing baby snuggles from the youngest guests, 2 and 5 month old baby girls. That helped fill my tank! We were also so grateful for the weather, with the thunder rolling in right as folks were finishing eating and the rain just spritzing until all the guests had left and then it poured. Maybe we won't have to get the irrigation hoses out quite yet as we got about 3/4 of an inch.

As soon as I woke this morning, after not the most restful sleep as Terah didn't sleep well for some reason, I got apples cooking (chopping them with still slightly bleary eyes but thankfully no mishaps)! Now at 4 p.m. those 4 vessels of apples have turned into 50 quarts of applesauce - delicious and flavorful with 1 ingredient!! Jason got chores done and then picked grapes so we could get juice started simultaneously.

Emily and Ivy came over for a few hours this morning to play, chat and help. It really is my favorite kind of day. The cloud cover made it cool and comfortable to work with windows open. There were kids having fun all around us. It's a great food processing task for a group of people and doesn't include a lot of thought so good for conversing while working. The limiting factor today was decidedly the number of burners available. I had both propane burners on the porch going almost continuously and then had 3-4 of our inside burners also occupied most of the day, with pots in the wings waiting for their turn.

We got 9 quarts of grape juice from Tangly Woods grapes - a first for us to have enough grapes to juice - and 2 containers of grape pulp for the freezer. As of today we are out of narrow mouth quart jars so any future food processing will have to be in pints, wide mouth quarts or our 1.5-2 quart jars. It's that time in the food processing season - canning shelves mostly full, freezers filled to the brim, and things still coming in for fresh eating.

So today's team effort has paid off and we are done in time to head to friends' for a house concert tonight. So this day will have a little rest in it after all! But first another load of dishes and a shower...

The last day of August has arrived!

In a few hours, we will be hosting an all-CJP potluck at our home. This can be seen as both the kick off of the new academic year or the conclusion of the most chaotic month of our year. Either way, it's a good thing! And it's a good sign that I'm sitting down to at least start this blog while Terah "swims" in the bathtub next to me and the older girls snip the beans - yes, we are still picking green beans!

To make one "scrapbook submission" for the month of August is just plain silly but here goes. It may be as disjointed as this month often felt. The month was colored with many wonderful family times, busyness on the homestead and at my work, and challenging due to me not feeling very good physically for much of it. But we made it and September (one of my favorite months) is just hours away!

Just a quick note on some of the garden highlights: We have more okra in the freezer than ever before and even some quarts of pickled dilly okra. Our cucumber vines, despite a rough start due to being shaded out by our "dill crop" have been the gift that keeps on giving. And I'm still canning tomatoes every few days and the root cellar is becoming more colorful by the day with a growing percentage of filled jars over empty ones. Fruit has been abundant in August too - with us currently enjoying blackberries, red raspberries, white raspberries, grapes (enough seedless for a pie!), apples, cantaloupe and peaches all from Tangly Woods. 

We kicked off August by attending my Mininger Family Reunion (this happens every 3 years and I've been on the planning committee for the last reunion and then this one). It was such a meaningful weekend of connection (both new connections and re-connecting). The theme of our time together was gratitude and I did feel very grateful as we hiked to the top of Cold Knob, as we ate wild WV apples, as I cuddled the newest member of our extended family who was only 4 days old, as cousins connected and had fun with each other, as my great aunt who is in her 90's read us a Mary Oliver poem, as we swam in the river at the base of Seneca Rocks... Jason and I practiced May Erlewine's Grateful song and sang that as part of my reflections on gratitude. I refreshed my turquoise fingernail polish before the reunion as much of my reflections on gratitude were inspired by our experiences of losing Nora and more recently Norah Brubaker's death this spring. It was the first time I had played guitar for years and years, which felt momentous in a number of ways.  

The reunion felt like the last hurrah of summer, as the week following our WV trip I coordinated a two day retreat for the faculty and staff I work most closely with. That kicked off the busiest few weeks of my work year (only late April pre-graduation competes with August). I felt so very grateful that my parents decided to spend 2+ week at Tangly Woods in April - I told them it could be my birthday and Christmas presents for the rest of my life. Yep, that is how badly I felt the need for some tangible assistance and moral support this month! I don't have the words for how thankful I was for all the ways they chipped in and made the month easier on me and Jason and so much more fun for the girls. I was proud of myself for getting one photo of mom sitting still, but this was probably one of the few times she was found sitting down relaxing during those weeks. I am sure she wondered on a daily basis how I would have survived without her - very good question and it may not have been pretty!

A few markers of kids growing up happened in August - one for our youngest and one for oldest.

Terah decided she is done, and really truly completely done, co-sleeping! It was kind of cold turkey. She had a few attempts at her own bed over the last few months but normally she lasted a few minutes. Something flipped in her and she was ready for her bed! Even if she wakes to go pee in the middle night she will sleepily say, "I want to go back to my bed." No more of this sleeping with mommy and daddy - she can't even be convinced to do it when it would be convenient to give her bed to a friend sleeping over for the night. Now, that said, she still wants us to sing or read to her in her bed but once asleep she sleeps great there and I think Jason and I are getting more sound sleep than we have for some years!

Terah's speech is also changing. She can now say her "l's." The cute this is that yellow has now gone from being "yeyow" to "lelow." I'm not ready for her to get it all figured out quite yet. I need her to still feel a little like my baby!

And my oldest baby turned 16! She could now officially drive...if she wanted to. Her parents are not pushing her on that front at all! From my observations, she enjoyed the crossing over from 15 to 16! There were some good rains and impressive clouds leading up to her party, including several power outages, but her party was able to be outside as planned. The tradition has become making pizza pockets over an outdoor fire and then making homemade ice cream. In lieu of presents she asked her guests to bring a pizza topping and/or ice cream topping - encouraging them to aim for something that could be used for both! 

A few friends were able to sleepover and others joined us in the morning for a birthday brunch. Terah was the most excited about the present part of it and was happy to be the one to bring Kali things to open! We were all so very happy to celebrate with our incredibly generous, thoughtful, intelligent, patient, funny and helpful friend/sister/daughter/granddaughter!

Another tradition is our yearly trek to the Rockingham County Fair. We were joined by Emily, Jonas and Ivy for part of the evening. Part of my physical symptoms this month seemed something akin to vertigo so you could not have paid me to go on rides. But I enjoyed watching the family have fun! Each girl stretched herself to try rides she hadn't done before/felt nervous about doing - and was rewarded by having a fabulous time in the process!

Then with travel and birthday festivities behind us, we entered the second half of August and my final stretch up to orientation. Jason and I had our yearly crash and meltdown - it still kind of surprises us as much as it also feels somewhat familiar every time. The days were long, the nights were short and I felt very disconnected from home. I even missed corn freezing entirely, which Mom, Jason and the girls accomplished on one of my long days in the office. I'm still trying to be at peace with the idea that summer will come to an end and I won't be part of processing corn this year. But I'm not going to miss making applesauce or grape juice so I think I'll be ok! 

We did a few things right this year. At the end of the first day of orientation, Jason and the girls came to get me and we had a family night at a friend's pool. That was a very wise decision. I could have fallen asleep while floating with no trouble at all. The other good choice was scheduling a sleepover for the girls at Ivy's on the last day of orientation, giving Jason and I some time to reconnect and them something fun to do on the same day that Grandma and Grandpa left - easing the sadness of their departure! I'm hoping those might also become yearly traditions!

Well Terah is done with her bath and I better get rice cooking and myself cleaned up before folks begin arriving. But I can't conclude this post without mentioning one of the biggest events of this month: this past Tuesday Kali had her wisdom teeth removed. She is not that much of a chipmunk anymore and has done incredibly well with the whole thing. She was pretty nervous the morning of, enough that she took the one anti-anxiety pill that they had prescribed. I kind of felt like it would have been nice if they would have also prescribed one for the parent that had to sit in the waiting room. I was a mess when I left the room after watching them get the IV going and knocking her out. I immediately went outside and called my parents so I had someone to cry to (since I had our only phone so couldn't reach Jason). But Kali was fine. She was so silly with the laughing gas! I wish I had a video, but this picture is just seconds before she was out.

When I rejoined her about 45 minutes as she was just waking up she was really emotional. She started crying and blubbering a bunch of stuff I could not understand. Finally, with tears streaming down her face, I made out, "I'm so happy...I'm so relieved..." Phew, she wasn't hurting or really upset, just glad it was over.

They sure moved us out quickly - they had already done 2 surgeries before hers at 9:30. She was still blubbering and teary when they were ready to get her in the wheel chair and out to our car. I will be honest that the thought, "you are sending her home with me like that?" crossed through my mind. :) By this point she seemed to be kind of interested in the whole thing - she was super chatty all the way home, making it hard for the gauze to stay where it was supposed to be to stop the bleeding. She kept saying, "I'm awake...." and "I think I will remember this..." and then "Oh, there are two of the same car in front of us so maybe I'm not normal yet..." She was cracking me up and it took some restraint for me to not see if I could get other things out of my pretty private daughter while she was in the mood to talk my ear off! I was so relieved to be back home with her and see her ready to play a game with Alida almost immediately.

We did laugh when she also "fed her chin" her first oopsicle when she was still numb (I had told her that I did that after my surgery). Terah and I had run out to get liquid ibuprofen for Kali after she had had such a hard time with the pre-surgery antibiotic pills. I could not imagine her trying to swallow pills with her mouth numb. While out, we got some popsicles that I think Alida and Terah ended up eating a larger percentage of than Kali. She followed all the recommended procedures to a T and as of right now is hardly swollen on the one side and just slightly on the other. We are all glad that is behind her/us! She was decidedly less swollen than her mother got!

I'm much more eager to welcome September than I appear in this picture. :)