The Pigs

Yesterday we sent off the pigs. After a year of enjoying their time here, they were sent to the butcher to be made into chorizo, italian sausage, canadian bacon, loin roast, pork chops, tail, snout, jowls, feet. The whole shebang. I was told not to name any of the animals that were going to be slaughtered. However, two achieved names. One was Chester:



Chester wasn't named by me. He was named by the farmers when he was a piglet. Chester was the dominant pig in the bunch. This means that he was the most aggressive when the pigs were fed. He would be the first to get milk from us. He would guard the feeder until he was satisfied, roaring like a lion and biting into pigs' ears when they were in his way. He was a terrific brute. A real son of a bitch pig.

To feed the pigs, we carry over the milk-water mixture that is used as runoff when the milking machines are cleaned. This happens after bi-daily milkings. The pigs absolutely love this milk.



When the pigs come to get the milk, we have to be quick. Largely it's a competition between us and them. It's a wonderful thing; to see the pig's ears perk up when the sound of maggie's collar jingles in the not-so-far distance and they realize the greatest period of their day is about to arrive: breakfast.


Here is a photo of the new pigs running after me.


And then enjoying their breakfast, madly.

The pigs run like nothing you would think a pig would run like. Their whole body lifted in a heave. You think an animal that fat couldn't run the way it does.

I don't think pigs are the smartest creatures, but that's why i like them. They're simplicity is something to be adored. In a way, i think, it surpasses our intelligence, subsiding anxious neuroses and complications for the sake of what's empirically there. A pig has no reservations other than the now, and in that, is completely terrified or ecstatic.





people use this expression, that "pigs could fly," to somehow render an impossibility possible. In dubious conceit, they assure themselves of a security within our world. Pigs can't fly. they are too fat. too dumb. too pink. whatever. I have seen a pig fly though. And it happened on a particularly crazy day last month.



This is the only picture i have of the scene. One of the pigs, who we'll call Sally, kept escaping the pen. The pen is held by an electric fence, which isn't much, but usually good enough because pigs, like bears, test things with the most sensitive part of their body, their nose.

But this pig kept escaping, kept leaving her pen. It made this day particularly awkward because the farmer i work for was being interviewed by the Portland Press Herald about a petition she had signed. (You can click on the link to see a picture of the runaway pig & read an article somewhat about the farm!).

We were able to coax the pig back into her pen, but between the end of the day and the start of the next day, she escaped four more times. The farmers thought that it was because she was in heat. Oftentimes, when pigs are in heat, other pigs will pick on her. A pig in heat is a sow, and even though most of the pigs we have are female, they don't shy away from mounting one another.





They are female, but it's largely prison rules. I can't quite explain it.

So the next morning, quite coincidentally, we were going to pick up a new set of piglets. Sally was huffing and puffing, and even though we put up a good line of sheep fencing, which is a pretty heavy-duty grate of electric wire meant to keep sheep from jumping over it; the pig did not care a bit. She just ran right through it. So it was decided. There was going to be a pig slaughtered on tuesday. It was Saturday. If we could only keep her penned up until then, things would be okay.

It was a hell of a time baiting her. I don't have any pictures of it, unfortunately; so, sorry. I can assure you it was ridiculous. We took big metal fence sections, and three people stood as walls to guide her towards a sheep pen. I tried to lead the way, by dropping peanuts in front of her. She was mildly interested, but mainly she was crossed between a terror and an anger that i can't quite explain other than a woman, excited preternaturally by a instigant longing in her loins, finding herself shuffled through a crowded area by strangers, as if on a subway and being careened towards the back car. And while this is happening, a nervous looking man is dropping peanuts on the car floor so she will be enticed to follow him. And smiling the whole time, a nervous, half-click smile, trying to entertain the easy fracas of the day: "free peanuts! free peanuts!" he exclaims. And she's just getting mad, upset, confused. Bewildered by the combination of her own crazed animal instinct coming in contact with an imperatively sleazy baiting.

Finally, we get her caged. In a sheep pen. And we put a bucket of barley in there. Some water. Some peanuts. We tied the metal gates up with twine and thought, okay, if she can make it till tuesday then no problem. and we ambled over to the piglets' pen and started to think about the future.

Sally was circling her cage, her huffs becoming more and more audible, obstinate, engaged in a sort of frantic paranoia. She was realizing that it was a cage and that she was penned. And as hell hath no fury as a woman scorned, farms hath no fury like a pig in heat encaged. So the next moment, when all of us, having our backs turned to the pen, turned suddenly when we caught sight. The pig, lifting herself up on her hind legs (and keep in mind she's a 200 lb. animal), made her way, half-stilted by the fence grate meant to hold her in, leaps, and like nothing I, nor any of the farmers had ever seen: the pig flew.

She flew over the fence and into a sheep feeder, and with a loud harumph!, she hesitated a moment, stunned at her triumph. Just as the farmers, mechanically gravitating towards her, uncertain, leaped over the same sheep feeder and contained her movement. Mesmerized, but at the same time working against her will. They grabbed her legs, and with a pig screech that sounds like a train stopping, she was lifted and put back into the pen.

"I've never seen a pig do that before," said Lee. He's been a farmer for more than 30 years. It was said that when a pig learns to jump as a piglet, they never forget how. But we put plywood up, against the sheep feeder, weighed them down with cinder blocks and thought, this ought to hold her.

Oh, huberis. Always getting in the way, beckoning conditionals of when pigs can fly after pigs have flown. And not more than two minutes later, she flew again. Against the plywood, she knocked it down. The cinder block came tumbling and Lee, jumping up to stop her, was ransacked by a pig kicking up like a wild horse. He was thrown back and he landed on a 4x6. The look on his face. a look so penetrating none of us moved, even the pig. We all stood back uncertain of what just happened, as if time froze on his face. We thought he was impaled.

He broke a rib. His air was knocked out. That really didn't matter, because his adrenaline was so engaged that his body was an airplane on auto-pilot. Damn a downed engine, the pigs not escaping again. So she was put back into her pen.

We called the man with a trailer who was going to take her to slaughter on tuesday. He said he could be down in half an hour. And for that next half an hour, it was like the short story "The Yellow Wallpaper." The pig ravenously tore around the pen, searching for her way out, while Lee and me knocked her snout away. Each time, a contemptuous yelp then huff, then the search began again. Trying to upend anything with that mighty snout.

Then finally the trailer came. "Guess she's going to have to enjoy a couple days on the countryside." So the farmer broke a rib. And she was made into kielbasa and pepperoni.

If there's a moral to that story, you'll know it when pigs fly.

***

The pigs are mighty creatures, not to be messed with. I think their power is something to uphold. The wild pigs in Hawaii are the biggest pest, eating any and every crop. It's said that a pack of hungry pigs could devour a human being in eight minutes. Actually, I learned that from the movie Snatch. It could easily not be true.

The new pigs though are called linebackers. They are called that because they are mighty, like Ray Nitschke, Dick Butkus, Lawrence Taylor, Mike Singletary, Ray Lewis & Chester. They are funny little guys, sheepishly sneaking up to the edge of their cage when you near, a ponderous look on their faces. They wonder in some way, 'What is this giant doing! Why is he here!' I think of them as the stereotypical tribe of savages in an old movie. Transfixed on this strange new creature. then approaching:



and approaching...



Then Ah shit! They're cannibals!



These pigs will leap over one another, squeal excitedly and tackle like a healthy group of young brothers clamboring for the last piece of a candy bar. When we enter their pen, they inspect us the way a group of savages would inspect a dr. livingston, having known no social mores, and believing you can eat and dominate anything, they try to lift me from my boots and bite into my feet like candy. And i am trying to give them milk or day old bread or barley, but they are insanely curious, the way a fire spreads insanely curiously.







But even after all that, all that mad toughness and deep rooted genetic power; they are still my favorite animal on the farm. They are sun-lovers, who are bathed to be pink by solar warmness. They sit all day in the sun, eating and tanning. They are very clean for an animal accused of sitting its own filth. Occasionally on hot days, they roll around in mud. But they don't shit where they eat and they manage to only get two things in the dirt, their feet and their snouts. They uproot sod like it's a buried salad bar and they sleep huddled like camaraderous soldiers. It just seems so fraternal, relaxed and clean: a whole life on vacation.

Here is my favorite pig, Everest:



She was the last pig that got a name. She was just a fat beast, with huge jowls. And she never tried to push me out of the way when i gave her milk. She would waddle up, sometimes fast, as fast as pigs can fly, and smilingly, sink her head into the feeder and gulp until heart's content. Then she would waddle off, caring about nothing, being fat as the day, and simply loving it. My heart goes out to you, pig. You've lived a good life.

Planes

It's weird and awesome when objects confront you. The slightest detail seems to be that much more extraordinary when looked at outside of the box. Pictures help with this, because they isolate moments. You can see the image in perspective, admiring things with the force of speculation.



A blue shower door added on to a pale golden timber frame barn. The colors accentuate the angles which accentuate the structure. Timber frames are popular here because they are age-old and sourced locally; and they are strong and they are beautiful. Does its innovation in being so natural make it more beautiful?

In a weird way, everything on a farm looks similar.







Because it's so redundant, so repetitive and numerous; you forget you are a part of something. I love the elemental aspect of this job, being with food, with animals, with light at its first moments.

You see the sense of life begin to begin around you, the idea orchestrates itself in the slow breathing of plants who emerge, half-asleep from the comatose homeostasis, limbo in the shell. Crack open and begin to engage in a long DNA strand of identity, there reactions are precocious, because they are catalogued in such a way that interprets them before they hatch. Selected into the future, they are an almost perfect shape of themselves.


This is an acorn germinating into the ground.


Sometimes, you can see the seed husk on one of the first leaves of the plant, even as they grow up and get really big.


This seed husk must be lost, eventually. But we can assume there are some lingering arbitrarily at the tops of trees.



The animals, with instincts piloted for them, are created in a world unto themselves. Lambs know to run up to their mothers, and they all fiercely engage the udder the same way--like madness they shoot themselves upwards and begin suckling from the tit. Pigs know how to eat sod almost as soon as they wake up. Healthy lambs begin to walk in their first hour of life.

They are fascinating in their ability to entertain just by living. The aquarium notion. An Israeli once told me we are always entertained by two things: babies and fireworks. On a farm, however, that assurance goes into almost everything. One is always taken aback by the mere simplicity of pleasure. Of eating and of fighting for fun. There is a great redemption that comes in animals enjoying themselves. It means that there is a world of contentment to be lived so easily entertained by the things around you.



A stick, it becomes a tool. Just as a pig, becomes the herd's latest gossip.



Just as you become the spectacle. Terrorizing with your ability to control, to manipulate to overpower. Or maybe just an easy fascination with another species. Sheep look at you like you look at them, guessing what they're thinking and furthermore, interested in the next thing they're going to do.


"We turned at a dozen paces, for love is a duel, and looked up at each other for the last time."


Go ahead, punk.

But then it sort of ends when you start playing the game as well. When it's interactive, it's no longer entertainment: it's business. That is your playground, aquarium to all other things. They look at us as we look at them: nature.


or sometimes they too don't have the time to look at us at all.

Nature is like an emotion that happens just after you see life created. It is a feeling that you get in the satisfaction of knowing change, by seeing differences. It is an autonomy that is perfect in every way, because it exists in everything and there is nothing that is not it. And yet, there is a way around it. There is a way to build on it and from it.


Here are pigs outside of a greenhouse. They eat the sod that would grow grass in the area we will be sowing crops. Their system interacts with our system and makes a key step towards sustainability. We are engaging the diversity.

While it appears we construct ways to block nature, it is more like we are letting it sieve. The way a dam blocks water and gently lets it pour out so we can control its power to make invention. They way we garner plants into perfect conditions, abutting nature's frenetic indulgence with itself, letting its random parts play with themselves until only the strong survive. we never create nature; we explore its possibilites and expand its potential by inhibiting its wild, destructive force. We consume nature (just as nature consumes) and process it into a viable, understandable thing.



Despite the abstraction of its obtuse, estranged artificiality.



We are merely playing its game in articulating its mystery. Nature is always abstraction until its conjunction. Then it's a system, or part of a system. Our mission, in essence, is to help complete nature. To abide, abet and surround nature with itself and our company. A stout homestead, an actuating force of cooperation.





Everywhere around us, we are surrounded by things. Mysteriously beautiful because we attribute an austerity to something natural. And the more that they are captivating, we are cultivating. A part of nature is on its way to being a part of us.

And when they become so immediately understood, and we no longer examine them for they are just a part of the routine; it's just a moment to step away. See the plane. Understand both its utility and its isolated abstraction.



But there is phenomenon, every step of the way. Every leaf is an adventure, as every part of the plant came from seed. And every sprout you eat is a baby plant that was cut from its stem. And every morsel you eat is a cluster of molecules in food cells that create a whole universe of palatable intricacies.



The camera sees so much life in the everyday, just by stopping it. By holding it in a single frame, commanding it to be remembered; you experience the birth of a second that had passed on. It then becomes a frame of your nature, of your odyssey through recognizing who you are, what you are, and where you're from. We are eating animals, and plants, and eating life and giving life, as part of a gigantic system of breathing things that exist to feed an existence. It's mesmerizing to once in a while gain hold of the structure that has held you up forever, and shake out its feathers and see it for it what is: naked.