Farming, homesteading, Life, Photography

Pigs like buses

I was sitting on the veranda steps in the afternoon, head down, tying up the laces of my work boots when a large slow moving shadow passed across blocking the sun. “Out Boo,” I said, “you are in my light.”

“Grunt” said Sheila steaming past me and disappearing by slow degrees around the corner.

Boo moved up behind me and sighed. Ton immediately took off in hot pursuit of the resident farmy whale.

“Ah.” I said. (Luckily Inaki was close by and took this shot for you with his phone.)

Sheila is a very good pig. But she is also a PIG – headed pig. She will only change course if she believes this is the best direction for her. And when she is steaming along in a particular direction, like a large ocean going liner, it takes her a long time to negotiate a turn. And she has to really, really want to turn. Unfortunately the direction she was heading in was to one of the newly planted vegetable gardens. So a turn had to be engineered. (Do you know those buses that are so long they have like a concertina wheeze box middle. Sheila needs one of those).

To turn she leaves her back feet in one place, kind of treading water, while she slowly moves around with her front feet – sideways -following her head, her front feet taking bigger steps. Like a compass I guess, her back feet being the sharp end and her nose the pencil. After a couple of apples and the power of the bucket I was able to get her to turn all the way around and then we led her back to the barn with the promise of a nice cold mud puddle.