Bringing Home the Bacon

I don’t think that I have mentioned this yet, but Vaughn has a farm... a pig farm... with over 250 pigs.  Every few weeks, Vaughn and his farmhands load up some pigs to sell at the market.  This is not an easy process.  Somehow, pigs seem to know that getting into the back of a truck means that they are going to end up as sausage links.  They are anything but compliant to being loaded up and hauled off.  Aware that I am a Kansas boy, Vaughn assumed that I must have rassled a few pigs in my day.  Unfortunately, I don’t know the first thing about wrestling down a pig.  He enlisted my (and Dustin’s) help anyway.  The reason Vaughn wanted the extra help this week was because in addition to the usual 15 pigs, he had to haul off a 400 pound boar.  This boar had gotten too big to breed and was starting to crush the sows (and any good pig farmer knows that you can’t have that).  The first round of pigs was fairly easy to get into the back of the truck.  We herded them from the back, and they pushed each other up the ramp.  The second round was a little more difficult.  I quickly learned that when a pig turn to face a certain direction it is almost impossible to redirect it.  You have to keep it facing forward.  Otherwise, at the first opportune moment it will let out a hellish squeal and charge the other way (regardless if you are standing there or not).  And a charging pig is a lot like a train... a small, feces covered, angry train.  After getting most the pigs in the truck, we had to face the boar.  He was ready for the showdown after having watched all his friends get loaded up.  It was quite a challenge to even get this huge pig to move... as you can see in the video below.  Edward, one of the farmhands, is attempting to get Monster Pig down from the stall...

After struggling to move the Monster Pig, Vaughn stepped in with a shovel and in a very aggressive and Non-PETA approved manner, convinced the boar that the back of the truck was the best place to be.  After watching Vaughn get the boar up, Dustin was inspired and managed to “convince” the remaining pigs into the the back of the truck as well.  All in all, it was a successful morning of pig wrangling. (Even if a few pigs jumped out of the back of the truck on the way to market... Don’t worry... they still made it to market.)