Picked the pigs up yesterday with my two-year-old as co-pilot. Last year she was old enough to toddle around with me during morning feeding chores, but even so, I was surprised when she watched me building the pen this week and asked if we were getting pigs. So when I asked her if she wanted to go pick up pigs today, she lit up, said “Yup” (got a little Scandinavian goin’ there), and headed for the pickup. We had a vibrant conversation all the way over and back, covering everything from horses to dump trucks to the price of diesel. I admit the diesel conversation was one-sided. The subject of dump trucks was raised when we got stuck behind one going up a hill. “Big dump truck!” I said.
“Duhtuck?” she replied, looking at me quizzically.
“Dump. Truck.” I said, enunciating.
“Oh,” she said. “Okay.”
That made me laugh out loud.
My favorite part of the pig release – as usual – was when we put them in the pen and in under three minutes the ginger one hooked his nose in the subsoil and started prying sod, followed shortly by the rest. These are pigs that have spent their entire young lives on an elevated crate, but when they hit terra firma they know just what to do with it.
Camera photos of the new lodgers below. Since it is hard to judge with nothing for scale, I will tell you these pigs are roughly the size of a beagle. A very densely-packed beagle.
