Busy Saturday, pigs

Mama and I had to be up early Saturday morning. Bro. Zach was scheduled to come over at 7:30 AM to help me load the sheep into the truck. And Gracie was being dropped off so we could get her to the church Monday morning while her family vacationed. Given the choice between vacation and Church camp, Gracie chose camp. To prepare for loading the sheep, I attached the racks Friday evening and had the truck at the gate to the paddock ready to go. It takes three people to load the sheep. Mama has to hold the gate I put across the opening to the barn – once we get all the lambs into the barn. When one of the sheep are caught, Mama carefully opens the gate enough for us to get out with the sheep in tow. Bro. Zach found out that the sheep are harder to catch than you would expect, but he figured out how to get hold of them on pretty quickly. Once you have a good hold on the sheep, you can walk them where you need them to go by holding their front legs up and letting them walk on their hind legs. Except for Little Bit, they were all pretty heavy. And they fought being put into the bed of the truck. But we did it. We had them all caught and loaded in about fifteen minutes. It would have been difficult to do without help; especially getting them into the truck through the gate installed in the racks. Once the lambs/sheep were loaded, Mama and I fed quickly, then packed Gracie in the truck with us and headed to Bridgeport. Mama had promised to take Mr. Plumley to Trade Days.

Mr. Plumley as not quite ready when got there but he got dressed and was out the door in just a few minutes. We headed to Bowie only a few minutes behind schedule. We needed to have the sheep at the sale barn by 9 AM. It was 8:15 and we were over a half hour away from Bowie. We made it but it was not a comfortable margin for me. This time our sheep looked pretty good compared with the other animals already in the pens. We will not know how we did until maybe Wednesday when we get the check, but I do not have high hopes. If we break even on our little experiment with sheep I will be pleased. But as it stands, I expect to lose about $300 overall. On the bright side, we got to watch the lambs be born, we got to bottle feed one lamb and we kept one lamb to be processed. For farm living, that is about as good as can be expected.

We spent longer at Trade Days than I had wanted to, but Kim Cantrell met us there and she and Mama looked for craft ideas and pricing. Mama and I did buy two Pro FX bracelets while we were there. The magnetic bracelets reminded me of what we used to sell when we were trying to make a business out of Nikken; only much less expensive. The man selling the bracelets did a strength test on me and I was impressed by the results. The test revolved around my cell phone. He had me set my cell phone aside and tested my strength by having me extend my arm outward from my side. I did pretty well when he pressed down against my arm. Then he had me hold my cell phone over my heart and extend my arm outward. I did very poorly. Then, with me cell phone still against my chest, he placed the bracelet on the shoulder of the arm I was extending outward and pressed down against that arm. It was like it was locked in place. Very strong. Since Mama and I had once done the same demonstrations on people we were well aware of the reasons behind the outcomes. I bought us each a bracelet.

Within an hour, my back pain began to ease. It has continued to get better through the weekend…and I did a lot of work later on Saturday. I strung heavy fencing, finished welding the pipe fence, moved the trailer in place to load the pigs this afternoon, moved sacks of feed out of the shop as we prepare to buy more feed today, built ramps to help the pigs get onto the stock trailer and walked a total of 13,000 steps. All with less pain than I normally have in my lower back. I was happy with that outcome.

I am taking a half day vacation to make sure I have enough time to get the pigs to the meat market. If all goes well, I will simply open the gate in the pig building, and they will walk onto the stock trailer. Otherwise, it will take some coaxing to get them where I need them. Mama is not going to feed them very much this morning, so they are especially hungry this afternoon. I am hoping that by placing the feed on the trailer they can be enticed into loading themselves. They each weigh close to three hundred pounds. I certainly will not be able to manhandle them. We have not had a lot of problems in the past and I pray that continues. Regardless of how much effort it takes to get them on the trailer and shut them in, I will be happy to have them gone.

It will take a good bit of effort to clean up the mess they are leaving behind.