Tonight was bittersweet, we sold the last of our pigs and sent her off to be butchered tomorrow. The loading was . . . difficult, that's probably the nicest way to put it as she bucked like a wild horse or bull. I watched dh and Melissa's hubby, Jerry, try several different ways to get her and even when they finally got her roped on both ends, she fought like nobody's business. She tipped the scales at a whopping 260 pounds and will probably provide a bit over 200 pounds of meat for their freezer. Treva will miss her adopted baby, Miss Oinkers. She kept mooing at us while they tried to round her up and loaded, she knew how the story would end. Now she will be alone once more . . .
I pray that the next batch of pigs are as nice as these were. They were an awesome bunch and made for a really tasty lean set of meat. We will definitely be keeping the same diet this next time around.
In other news, we took Valentine to visit Marian. I wanted her to know that her baby was safe and being taken care of. At first she didn't notice that we'd brought her out, then I sent dh to get her. She came running when she saw Valentine and sniffed every inch she could. I was sad, Valentine didn't know her and was cold. I pushed her closer as she kept backing away and finally Marian, moved on. There was sadness and sweetiepie attempted to try to intervene. She came over and once more Valentine ignored her attempts to get closer. Treva came over and soon Marian came back too. The two ladies tried to get some kind of response from the girl but nothing.
We took her over to the house and left her outside to play freely behind the house, she seems to like playing around the large round pen. AR checked on her and she was in her usual spot, a few minutes later HG went to check on her and came in to say that she had moseyed down into the road. I don't think I have been that scared in a long time, I ran as fast as I could, looking for traffic and hearing the mooing from the crowd. I scooped her up in my arms and brought her back home, she will be haltered from now on. I was happy to see that the cows were still looking out for her, even Lot was mooing like crazy at her. I remember how they ignored Quinn, even when he was out and could get hurt.
The reason we'd left her to play was because I'd come in to find that Sammy had killed one of the chicks. Their new cage made it easy for them to squeeze out and he likely got excited, like when he sees a wild bunny. He has since been banished to the outdoors and will have the dead bird tied around his neck, so that we can make certain this never happens again. I love him to death but I cannot risk him endangering our food.
All in all this day has been trying on me emotionally, or maybe it's just pregnancy hormones? Either way, I'm hoping that tomorrow will be better.
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