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The important part of this entry is down a bit but I feel I need to set the stage.
Sydney and Erin just finished up their 4-H project of raising and showing their pigs. The project took three months and the pigs go from 65lbs to 250lbs and get judged at the local 4-H fair with all the other beef cattle, sheep and pigs. Getting the pigs on the truck to take them to the fair where they would be housed for the next two days was an ordeal. We really didn't have a great way of getting them on the truck. The plan was to back the pickup to a stone wall about the same height as our truck and walk the pigs from their pen onto the tailgate and into the truck. Sounds easy enough right? Wrong!! As soon as we let one of them out of their pen it took off running in circles, like a dog doing a little spaz run. After it calmed down we tried to lead it around the barn towards the truck feeding it Little Debbie snack cakes as a treat. Well we got it all the way around the barn and up to the truck when the pig looked into the back of the truck and wanted nothing to do with it, and did an about face taking off across the yard with me clamped to his back trying to stop him. It looked like one of those cartoons you watched as a kid. I learned an important lesson, you can't make a 250lbs pig do anything it doesn't want to do!!!! After a brief rest we used a few 2 x 4 foot pieces of plywood to herd the pig back to the truck. When he was just about to step or not step on the tailgate I rushed him from behind and hit him with my whole body like a linebacker hitting one of those blocking sleds on a football field and in the truck we landed!! One down one to go!! We decided to take the one we had over to the show and come back for the other one, so as to not push our luck trying to get another one in the truck and have the one in there get out when we opened the tailgate. Off to the show we go. At the show we just pushed him out of the truck and slid him down a ramp and into his pen he went. We took the other pig over the next morning.
The really great thing about the farm show is that once your there, your there all day. Picture a gym sized building with hundreds of animals, all in their pens and the kids are all taking care of them. Getting them food and water and bedding, cleaning out their pen, making sure they are cool and comfortable. They are not worrying about what they are wearing, or texting all their friends constantly, or talking on their phones, or playing computer games, of surfing Facebook. They are helping each other and playing tag and investigating all there is to see, using their imagination, just the way its been done for a long time.
Sydney in the show ring.
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