Popular with the Pigs

I've always been popular, but this week has been rather remarkable.

Monday I started my new job as an intern on an organic farm that raises heritage hog breeds. Everything is new so far. Eventually I will be very good at doing chores: watering and feeding the hogs, but for now I am slow and clumsy. I love it though. When you start the feeding on one end of the farm, the word gets passed along and all the critters are ready to eat and let you know very loudly with much grunting and squeeling. My favorite group is the young hogs on the pasture. I fill two buckets of corn and go inside the fence to scatter the food. If the hogs were bigger, I'd be trampled. I can barely walk as it is because they all crowd around in excitement. It is difficult to fling a bucket of corn without the use of your legs, but totally entertaining.

My first job after learning to do chores was weeding the electric fence where the gilts (young females) are kept. As you pull weeds you throw them behind you into the pen (yes, I was on my hands and knees inside a pig pen). All morning I had friendly pigs gathered around me grunting and chewing on the greens. Some love it when you rub them while they eat. Others are skiddish. Some stationed themselves right beside me and seemed to want me to simply hand them the weeds as I pulled them up. Slowly slowly I am beginning to remember them for their unique qualities. There is a wide variety of hair lengths and curliness, of snout shape, of ear shape, of leg length, of fatness, of friendliness. I loved these pigs when I first met them, now I am getting to know them personally and better able to love them.