Pigs and feed, herbal mistake

I left work at 11 AM yesterday to make sure I would have enough time to get the pigs loaded and delivered to the butcher shop in Muenster. As things turned out, I did not need nearly that much time. When I got home, Mama was frying bacon to make BTL’s. I was hungry but I wanted to get the pigs on the trailer before I sat down to eat. Since the trailer was already in place, I had only a couple things to do to get ready to open the gate in the pig building to let the pigs have access to the trailer. I moved their feed trough onto the trailer – near the front – and proceeded to fill it with feed. I opened the gate and stood aside. At first, they were hesitant, but once they understood that there was feed in the trough they happily climbed on board and began chowing down. I closed the sliding gate on the trailer and let myself out through the front gate of the trailer. When they were secured in the trailer, I moved the trailer to a shady spot and went back to the house.

Mama came out about that time. She was freaked out that the trailer was gone. I am not sure what she thought, but she did say that it crossed her mind that the pigs had gotten loose, and we were in for a long process of getting them loaded. I assured her that was not the case. When she understood that the pigs were loaded and ready to go, she got a little upset with me for having gotten them loaded before she could get out to help me. Fortunately, she is always quick to forgive me. We drove to Muenster without incident. Once we got to the meat market, the pigs walked off the trailer one at a time – as Mama requested – to be weighed and penned. One weighed 325#. The other weighed 295#. We had a lot of people praying that loading the pigs would go smoothly. Those prayers were much appreciated.

When we went inside to outline how we would like to have the pigs processed, I was pleased with those outcomes as well. Mama and I are trading one pig for hamburger. All we requested off the pig to be traded is the bacon. Mama asked if they could make the bacon low sodium and they have a process for doing so. We are not going to have the hams cured. I was not happy with the way the hams have come out in the past. They were too dry. We can buy hams when we need them; which is not very often. So, all the meat that can be made into roasts will be cut that way. We will have pork chops and tenderloin, roasts and breakfast sausage. Plus, whatever hamburger we get in trade. I am not sure how that will work out, but we need the hamburger more than we need the pork. On the way out of Muenster, we stopped to buy feed. It was a very good afternoon.

Once home, I parked the trailer, stowed the feed, hooked up the brush hog to the tractor and cleaned up our back fence while Mama rested. What I thought was elderberry growing along our back fence was not. It was actually poke weed. Which is kind of interesting. Bro. Plumley started the discovery process. With plants he is rarely wrong. When we got home from Trade Days Saturday afternoon, he looked at the plants I had been so carefully tending and announced, “Boy, you sure go the poke weed. You can make salads all year long on that.” Of course, he was correct in his identification. So, we started researching the plant. Blogs about poke weed range from it being highly poisonous to being delightfully tangy. From taking one to the brink of death to recipes for salads, syrups and jellies. One person claimed that just getting the juice from a single berry on his hand caused him a severe rash. Right. We have never been bothered by it, but the syrup I made with it was of little or no benefit to us. With that new knowledge, I cut it all down. Leaving only the wild blackberries along that fence. It was a disappointing discovery, but a harmless one. I will have to order dried elderberries to make my syrup. Not the worst outcome. I will not make that mistake again, but I do wish they had been elderberries.

By the time Mama got up, I was too worn out to have her help me setting the fencing in place on the new paddock. I have it all rolled out, but I cannot stand it up on my own. That requires two people. Instead we cleaned out the coop. that was long overdue. After Mama and I took a walk down our road and back, I was ready to sit for a while.

I registered 10,850 steps in that half day of activity. A good day.