On Wanting to Come Home

I lost my piglets four days ago...

Stopping for a bite to eat, feeling very discouraged.

I lost my piglets four days ago.

Wait, you say. Piglets? What piglets?

Let me back up.

We’ve long been interested in where our food comes from, what means were used to grow it, and how fresh it is. One of the responsibilities I volunteered for, to serve my community, is to maintain a list of fresh and local foods and provide it at request to anyone who is looking for quality sources, especially outside of the industrial complex and grocery stores. For example, I know where to find organic produce, raw dairy, pastured raised (and finished) beef, and unpasteurized honey. So that’s what my family eats, and folks ask me where to find it all.

I also like plants. Like, really, really like plants. In the early 1990’s, I had to find a science class, any science class, for my batchelor’s degree work, and well, “Spring Wildflowers” didn’t sound as ridiculous as “Physics of Light and Sound”—the one I had previously taken and drowned under. Anyhow. Hunting wildflowers on weekends with my boyfriend to learn how to key out and identify them ignited a passion for botany, which led to pharmacognosy (ooo what a great word), which led to western and holistic herbalism, which led to gardening, which led to growing my own food and medicine. You see how it goes.

So is anyone really surprised that I grow garlic, play with honeybees, harvest turkeys, milk goats, butcher chickens, and collect duck eggs from my backyard? I think not. True, some of those were yesterday, but they are also tomorrow in my mind.

And. We like bacon.

Thus, after many piggy people proclaiming the ease with which pork is produced (ponder that, will you, my profound poetic gullibility), we decided to give it a go. We found a corner of the property where the breeze blows away from the house, a lovely area with massive cedars and plenty of shade and room. Then, we hired a man who has spent thirty years raising pigs to repair the sagging fence that was already there and add hot wire around the base. My husband and son built a lovely shelter and set it up along with a place for food and water. Easy, just like we were told.

Four days ago, we brought our two little piglet gals home. Gilts, they’re called. And, maybe fifteen short minutes later, they tested the fence, squealed, and found themselves underneath and on the very wrong side of the fence where I suppose the pastures were greener. Somehow, and I do not know how, the men that were here caught them, and we put them into the dog run while we problem solved how to bolster up the pig pen.

The dog run is a simple chain link fence, but was secure all around and thought to be satisfactory for the next day while the other fence was repaired. Mind you, this wasn’t ME deciding either pen was secure for two small baby animals; three well seasoned pig farmers gave the thumbs up! Both piglets settled in for the night, but neither was hungry or happy with the commotion, understandably.

The next morning was altogether pleasant, mid 70’s and all that, and I could see the two piglets roaming around and being their piggy selves. I headed into the kitchen and not ten minutes later I heard terrible grunting and squealing. I ran out to the pen, and saw…only one distressed pig. Where did the other one go?!

Squinting closely around the perimeter, I found a loose section of the fence. The piglet had squeezed underneath, and I have zero idea why. Nothing was disturbing the peace whatsoever, not even a woodpecker. Food and water, as well as space, was abundant. Her buddy was still within the pen. But the other side was greener,blackberries I suppose, and there she went.

Of course, most of the young adults, my husband, and neighbors were all at work. So, myself and a young mother from next door with some pig handling experience managed to corner the escapee. But, alas, the piglet bolted into the woods, and as quick as you can say, “WAIT FOR ME!” the second one slipped underneath the fence and joined her. Both were quickly lost into the brush and brambles of the woods, the young mother rightly returned to her children, and I was then alone to go looking as my visiting daughter watched over the household.

One of the pig farmers drove over and joined me for the first couple of hours in the hunt, though I admittedly scoffed when she showed up in a sundress and flip flops to traverse through blackberry vines, downed logs, and nettles. I wore pants, a sweatshirt, gloves, and a pitiful face. Supposedly, piglets will come to you and follow you like the Pied Piper if you shake a bucket of their feed and sweetly call out, “Here, Piggy, Piggy, Piggy…” As we made our way further and further in, I decided that my piglets must be deaf.

After sundress farmer left, I spent the rest of the day looking for the pale pink girls, and discovered where the rooster and cows live that I can hear from my yard. I had water with me and a hunk of goat cheese, and ate a lot of fresh blackberries. I “Here, Piggy, Piggy, Piggy”ed all that long day, and although I found them THREE times, each and every time they wanted nothing to do with my singsong voice nor the food in my bucket and I would lose them again. I recall being so forlorn, “I can’t even find a stash of mushrooms with all of this hunting!”

This is where I lose track of time. My son comes home from work and joins me in the hunt. He finds a game camera and is smart enough to (a) know what it is and (b) talks into it with his name, what he’s doing, and gives my cell number. My neighbor returns home and helps me look as well. We talk about pig pens and what his plans are (which sounded more like the Ft Knox Deluxe I should have had), and we meet other neighbors as they graciously allow us access onto their properties. One of the pig farmers brings me a third piglet (100 percent crated 100 percent of the time) as bait to hopefully lure the other two home. My son three thousand miles away puts out a call on the local Facebook page and manages it. We make half a dozen calls looking for live traps and get nowhere. People give us all kinds of advice of what to use, how to “Here, Piggy, Piggy, Piggy”, even to bring out the cello into the wooded bush to play low long tones of music to, I dunno, hypnotise them into coming hither. We get texts—from game camera man, from neighbors, sightings, trackings, here the pigs are, there the pigs go…

Somehow, my husband, son, game camera guy, and my son in law (always an adventure when he visits from Texas), finds and captures one of the piglets two days ago. I didn’t know what was taking them so long to just leave food and water in the vicinity, but they came home with one piggy in the crate. Since then, the lone piggy has been sighted and my son actually had it by the hoof before it bolted and escaped.

And there we are. One is happily stretching out her legs in the new, hopefully escape-proof pen with not one but two electric wires and extra-extra fencing. The other is either miserable and scared, or living her best life rooting in the woods. A large live trap is coming tomorrow and we’ll make our way back into the woods where she was last known to be hanging out. Hopefully she is hungry and not eating the neighbor’s potato patch, and hopefully she will be curious enough to take the bait within the trap and start the journey back home where she belongs.There’s a whole lot of “hopefully”.

All this to say. Stuff happens. Life happens. Stress happens. The unexpected happens. It doesn’t matter sometimes how much you prepare, who you ask, how confident you are, or how secure you think your boundaries are. In those times you just need to have a good cry (or three), ask and pray for help,keep nibbling on snacks, show up to just keep trying, and suffer as well as you can. All things, even a lost animal, is in the King’s hands, hiding in places only He can see. I’m praying not only for my own open eyes to find her (again!), but for the lost one to want to come home.

If you’re looking for a simpler, more purposeful life outside of the rule of technology, perhaps you can glean from my experimentations in seeking a more present life. Learn more about the book (and how to get it) by clicking on its image.