HOMEinSTEAD

[VINCENT]

I sent several hours in the yard yesterday with my animals.
#1)the pig is huge and needs to go to butcher but he only take in animals monday thru friday and i work all week.- i'm still trying to figure out that one.
#2)i cleaned the yard- its amazing how stuff you set aside just builds up.
#3) i did some repairs to the chicken pen/lock down- ive never had any intruders, but time and weather have taken their toll and provided some entry points. Thats all fixed now.
#4)i moved some bunnies around, and moved the males clear to the other side of the yard. With the females in new/different cages i had one of the two females immediatly begin pulling hair. Already had a little nest this morning.--- wish me luck
#5)found one of my hens sitting on a nest of 8 eggs. She is one of the piar that went broody a few months ago. When she and her sister hatched out the chicks, the other sister took over raising the babies. Apparently shge has decided its her tunr now.
#6)what little egg production i had going on(3-4 per day, has all but ceased. 1 egg in the past 2 days. Hoping for more today, but not likely since the cold spell hit this week.
#7 decided i need to build a larger enclosed area for the chickens, so i need to be on the look out for more materials to recycle, reuse, and repurpose for covered/enclosed pen building. Then i will move the current one. Or perhaps get 1 or 2 turkeys again next year. They always do great until i let them out into the yard.

[VINCENT]

Tex i will bring you a bottle of booze. But all i need is sweet tea and coffe to drink. I've had my share of spirits. Hell, ive had my share, and your share, and ad's share, and aa's share.......... You boys couldnt keep up if i was still a prac ticing professional drinker.

[kickstand]

Vincent,
Ya know, we all give ya a bunch of crap, but I can't begin to tell you how proud I am to say I know you. It takes a hell of a man to stop doing the things you were doing. Well done...
We now return you back to our regularly scheduled trouble causing comments....

[VINCENT]

So, everytime i think i might be getting a handle on this farmer thing i get put back in my place.Infact i have been given the "IT'S OK TO QUIT, YOU GAVE IT A VALIENT EFFORT" speech multiple times now. but im not going to quit. i like it, despite all the headaches.

2 weeks ago. i lost momma goat....didnt know why.
wed/thursday this past week, one of the baby goats wasnt looking good. by the next morning it was dead.
saturday---with the help of Al Gore's interweb, and our very own goat guru TEX, i was able to diagnois and treat the other baby goat who was now showing syptoms. and i went ahead and treated the rest of the heard too.
i've been treating them every morning since....until today. i had other things to do today so i will be treating them tonight in the dark.

today-----well today was enouight to make my lexapro earn its keep.

the idea was load the pig into the horse trailer and drive to the butcher then to work..... yeah, so anyways.... that WAS the plan.

So, in reality what happened was this.

saturday i parked the trailer out by the cage with just enough room to open the doors.
left it there for several days so it wouldnt be a new scary thing to the hog.
did not feed the hog monday night in preperation for tuesday morning load up.
woke JTJT and head out to the cage. opened sliding door and directed pig into trailer while offering feed.(keep in mind we have done this many times over the years with 600lbs tigers and never had a problem)

so this is where things go sketchy.
pig gets half way into the trailer and we shut the sliding door to tthe cage... pig decides the trailer is bad...very bad
he pulls back from the trailer and decides he want to go see whats on the other side of the gate/door that JTJT is holding.
so with the flat of his forehead he forces the door open and JTJT nearly off her feet. then walks his way past her.

he stops to root and sniff and nibble while i run around him and try to steer him back twords the cage or the trailer....yeah...not happening. he hears the monkeys or the lion or something next door that causes him to take off at a trot twords the exotics on the next property over. i calll for JTJT to grab the gun from the front seat of the truck while i tear after the pig.

she brings me the gun just about the time the pig gets the idea he doesnt like the exotics, because now he has done a 180 and is headed back to me.
i try to sweat talk him back across the acre of land he has crossed. needless to say he is non-compliant. infact he notices the dense woods behind on the back of the property.
AND HE IS OFF LIKE A RACE HORSE!!!!

so, here we are. sun still not up yet, and im headed into the woods after a giant hog. wearing muck boots, and armed with a revolver. and no flashlight.

40 feet into the brush i'm abl;e to get a shot on the pig. first shot hits him and he leaps. second shot stops him in his tracks but still standing. i stop for the 3rd shot....still not certain if i hit him or not, but he starts walking slowly. im fighting my way through the brush and vines that are the florida forest. eventually im within about 10 feet. next shot drops him, number 5 puts him on his side. im begining to wonder what is going on. shot number 6 ends things.....so i thought...until i grab hold of a rear foot to start trying to haul him out of the woods. thats when he begins to kick and thrash again. shot #7 is at 2 feet and just above the eye. all movement stops.

remember how i just said i was going to haul him out of the woods.....

i lied


nothing is that easy. we pulled and we tugged, and we push and we shoved and we moved all of 3 feet.no happening. so back to the drawling board.

i got a length of rope from the truck and fed it through a rear leg between the bones. then like mules(dam i should have used the pony) we drug the fat ass pig out of the woods.

i moved the truck and trailer to the edge of the woods. we huffed and we puffed, and we hauled that pig until the ass end was in the trailer. but that was it. we couldnt budge it another inch. try as we might it wasnt happening.

my chain had dissappeared from the truck so i went for a length of aircraft cable in the shed. fed it through the window of the horse trailer and again through the rear leg of the pig and JTJT got into the truck and put it into low 4. she slowly pulled that pig up into the trailer until its hind end was in the air at the back of the trailer. i took the oportunity to slice its throat and bleed it out while i had gravity helping me.

within minute i was off to the butcher.....an hour later then i had intended.....

well the butcher was less then elated that the pig was dead. why??? i dont know. days befoer he had made a big squawk about having to feed it for 2 days until he was ready to kill it on thursday. i figured i had saved him the trouble. and now i didnt have to pay the kill fee.

at first he tried to tell me he couldnt take the pig.... i stopped him mid sentence. i reminded him how he had canceled on me twice and how he had put me off by more then a month. so he had already cost me an extra month cost of feed AND i was going to be paying him more because of the weight the hog had put on in that 30 days. i told him i would be very unhappy if i had to toss the pig and lose all the cost of the pig and food and raising it, the 10 months of work, and that it was totally unacceptable. i didnt care if he just dressed it out, and hung it in his freezer, but he needed to take it. so he said, he would hang it now, and let it finish bleeding, and he would make time to gut it and skin it today.

so and hour behind schedual i went home, and showered, and dropped off the trailer. and made it to work an hour late. no big deal, i just worked through lunch so no lose of hours but im exhausted and sore. i can only imagine how JTJT's back and neck are feeling.

did i mention something got two chickens last night that refused to go into the locked cage??? no? i didnt mention that??? well, time for the traps to come back out and the .22 to be loaded again.

[VINCENT]

[southernmom]

Durn! Glad it eventually worked out

[Kessler]

Glad things are "normal" in your neck of the woods!

[VINCENT]

lmao! thanks kess. it really is normal for my luck

[VINCENT]

one more thing.... while i still think a .38 special is a "decent" man stopping bullet, they dont do shit to hogs. i shot that pig 7 times in the head with hydro shock .38 special rounds. from now on i wont bother with anything less then a .357 round. i probably could have ended the entire fiasco in 1 or 2 shots of .357

[Rockntoy]

I was on Catalina Island for a speacial hog hunt. I was using my bow but had a 357 for a big pig. I did get a shot at one with the 357, it hit mid shoulder and bounced off. Pig just looked at me and started to walk off. Second shot went just behind the shoulder and made a thru and thru. Pig walked about 20 feet and bleed out. Tough sumbitches. Friend that was with me put 3 arrrows in his before it dropped. Have also shot really big pigs off of the hurst ranch area in Kalifornia with 30-06 at around 200 yards. They looked larger than the dead cow we had for bait at that distance. I like pig control hunts.

[angeryamerican]

Shot placement Vinnie, I took one down with a .38 snubby, shot it right behind the ear, didn't even oink, just fell over dead.

[W.Lynn]

Congrats on saving baby goat, always glad when something goes right for you.

Hope JTJT's not too achy after all that with the pig.

did i mention something got two chickens last night that refused to go into the locked cage??? no? i didnt mention that??? well, time for the traps to come back out and the .22 to be loaded again.

How old is that biggest kid? Think he'd trade off shooting midnight varmints if you promise to let him out of school the following day? Then you could maybe get a full night's sleep.

[Kessler]

Shot placement Vinnie, I took one down with a .38 snubby, shot it right behind the ear, didn't even oink, just fell over dead.

Heck, that ain't nuthin' . I shot a 600 lb hog with a sling shot loaded with hard candy and brought him down with the first shot. It really is all about shot placement. Shot a durn copperhead one time with a dried up cow patty and when I took the shovel to move the dag-gum snake, the sob bit the shovel handle. Handle swelled up enough to get a cord of wood out of it!

[Gena.KY]

Heck, that ain't nuthin' . I shot a 600 lb hog with a sling shot loaded with hard candy and brought him down with the first shot. It really is all about shot placement. Shot a durn copperhead one time with a dried up cow patty and when I took the shovel to move the dag-gum snake, the sob bit the shovel handle. Handle swelled up enough to get a cord of wood out of it!

Where is "the full of shit" button when you need it?

[AmericanBTGoG]

Gena, you are being mean!