There is a rather well known country western song sung by Johnny Paycheck that comes to mind when I think about the day I had the other day, hence the title to this my latest of musings. Every once in a while, it seems at least once a year, I have one of those days when I ask myself: “What on earth am I doing trying to be a farmer?”. Darrell always seems to know when “one of those days” hits me and he will patiently listen to my ranting and raving, interjecting a thought now and then until I have burned myself out and come once again to a more rational and sensible state of mind. A cathartic cleansing accomplished so to speak!
When I came back from milking Lass the other morning he must have known by the look on my face that something was wrong. Goodness knows what thoughts ran through his mind… did Lass not have milk? Had my milker broke down? Had she suddenly turned into a nasty old bugger and kicked me? Since I did not immediately elaborate on why the change from “happy go lucky” to “definitely grumpy” demeanour in which I returned to the house, he had little choice but to wait until I stomped inside and began the routine of taking care of the milk.
It was one of those days… I had gone off to milk Lass and while the milker was doing its job I grabbed a bucket of grain to feed Mary her early morning breakfast. Normally I open the little door to the farrowing area telling Mary to move back which she obligingly does. She then turns round as I say “Out” and heads outside to her food dish to wait until I place the grain in her pan and say “OK” at which time she starts to eat. But this particular morning she was very hesitant to step outside the house. She grunted and waffled and just acted as if she did not want to take that one step across the threshold to the outside pen. I finally swatted her bum and repeated the command “out” and she reluctantly stepped down and went outside. As I followed her I saw why… a tragedy had occurred and the lifeless body of one of her piglets was there by the doorway. Poor little chap, he must have followed mum outside and possibly as she was heading back in so he tried to follow and the result was not pretty. Mary must have inadvertently trod on him as he was trying to negotiate the step back up into the farrowing stall. I was devastated.
Now it is not uncommon for a sow to lose a piglet or two after farrowing, even farmers who use farrowing crates can and do still end up with piglet losses as it is hard for mum in those early days to sometimes keep track of all those little piglets swarming around her as she gets ready to lie down in order for them to nurse. Mary had 13 of the little things to keep tabs on. What made it so upsetting to me is that I totally blamed myself for this accident. The step from the cement floor of the farrowing house down to the outside pen was something I had told myself I needed to fix way back when I first brought Mary in to the birthing area, but I procrastinated. I was going to haul over one of the heavy cement footing blocks we have so as to make a better, more gradual step down… had I done so this tragedy would not have happened I kept telling myself. I was berating myself for having four sows bred and due to farrow before we had even got the extension built on our farrowing house to accommodate them all. I felt I had once again put the cart way before the horse and thus was asking myself what on earth I was doing trying to be a farmer.
Darrell stoically put up with my ranting and raving, my berating myself for the piglet accident, letting me get it all out of my system and wisely at that point never mentioning the words “I told you so!” Wise chap that he is he knows I occasionally have to go through this as I do tend to jump into things willy nilly at times. I get grand ideas and before I know it they have run away with me creating scads more work for both Darrell and I. Another example comes to mind: I had planned on raising between 8 and 10 feeder piglets this winter for butchering in spring, a couple were for us and the remainder for our meat customers. But I made a blunder. When mentioning I was setting aside piglets for the butcher pen I had people calling and writing to request a “half” pig so I jotted down their names quite happily… until I started adding up my “halfs” and suddenly realized I had committed to raising 17 piglets! Now even with Darrell and I dispatching 5 to 6 pigs at a time this will still end up being quite a pig butchering season.
So as all these thoughts wove through my mind, the doubts building up, the grumpiness sitting heavy on my shoulders it was Darrell’s sensible rock solid: ”Well let’s just get out there and fix things” attitude that brought me back down to earth. We spent a good part of the day working outside not only revamping the offending step from the pig house to the pen but doing other things that have been on my “to do list” for a good while. As the day drew to a close I was back to being thankful for living the life we live and being in the place we are and would I change anything? Maybe to remember another country singer legend and favourite of ours Merle Haggard and his great rendition of “One day at a time Sweet Jesus… one day at a time….”
