I have had numerous comments saying they have missed farm columns so I thought this might be the perfect opportunity to jump back into my life on the farm columns.
As I was writing the story for the front page about the Agriculture Fair I looked at my co-worker, Missy, and asked her if she thought it might be fun to enter my pig, petunia, in the competition.
She agreed that it might, so I called Troy and asked him what he thought of the idea.
There was a brief pause at the other end of the phone before he laughed at me and said it was not a good idea.
It seems the animals that are entered into the fair are trained to walk and stand still and since I have never trained my pig to do either of these things we would not do well in the event.
Okay, so maybe next year I might take one of Petunia’s babies and train her to perform with me for the fair.
There are several other lessons that I have learned in the past year with my time on the farm.
One of the most valuable lesson is to not touch the hot fence with ANYTHING, especially if that thing is wet.
I really did not expect the electricity from the hot fence to travel through a hose and shock me when I was watering the pigs.
But I guess when water is involved the electricity will travel…
Mud is another thing that I am learning to appreciate.
I have watched Troy glide across the muddy areas like he is skating on ice and figured if he could walk so easily so could I.
WRONG… I cannot count the times I have tried to walk through a muddy area in an attempt to feed the calves or pigs and found myself stuck.
The one thing that is worse than being stuck is when I walk right out of my boot and end up standing in the mud with one boot stuck and the other behind me somewhere.
It is very uncomfortable to stick a foot, with a muddy sock, back into a boot and finish whatever farm chore I am working on.
Troy always shakes his head at me in wonder when I get into such predicaments. I have tried to explain that we did not have mud like that in the Florida Keys and sandy beaches never steals a flip flop the way the mud steals my boot off my foot, but he just does not understand.
I have enjoyed this farming season and actually have four live calves that I have bottle fed.
Okay so I started out with seven but heck I have over 50 percent survival rate and I think we can recoup the cost of the calves by selling the survivors at the stock yards. So I am a little better at this than average.
I still think the neatest part of farming is feeding the bottle calves and I never minded getting out of bed early on Saturday or Sunday to feed the little fellows.
All four of mine are now eating food and no longer need my attention anymore so I am ready for more babies.
My pig Petunia has been moved from pen to the sow lot with the other mommas and will soon not be a gilt anymore.
Considering that one of my very first columns about farming was to question what a gilt was, I am becoming very educated in the farming world.
Next year I may actually have an entry for the Agriculture Fair that will take place next weekend.
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