Pig Farmers

Every summer we raise some kind of bird.  Pat claims it's for the boys, but I'm the one that does the daily chores.  The last couple of years we've been late getting birds so they don't have them readily available and I have to order them.  Ordering means you have to get a minimum of 25 birds.  We don't go through that many chickens in a year, even between us and Pat's parents we don't use up 25 chickens.  This year I said that if we had to order chickens we weren't doing birds.  At first Pat wasn't in agreement.  The next morning, however, he was very agreeable.  He walked in the door and told me it was ok if we didn't do birds.  I looked at him and said "so what are we doing?"  It would be way too easy to not do anything.  So what are we doing?  Pigs...

 We started out with the idea of 4 pigs, one for each family.  Well, if you get 4 pigs you may as well get 10. We could probably get rid of 10.  Well if you do 10, you may as well do 20.  So Pat set out looking for someone to sell us 20 baby pigs.  The problem?  They come in groups and no one wants to sell less than 50.  So we ended up with 55 pigs and sold 5 to a neighbor.  We'll butcher some for ourselves  and some family and friends, and the rest will go to the sale barn when they are finished.  The boys think it's great.  Granted, they are pretty cute, for a while anyway.  Pat even gave their hog farm a name: COTA KASH farms.  COle, TAte, KAra (Pat's neice), and SHelby.  The money from the pigs will be split among the kids.  If nothing else, it's a great way to get a start on college tuition!

I also broke down and got some birds.  Just 10.  I picked them up today.  Hopefully they survive Tate's handling.  He's not afraid to pick them up this year, but he doesn't quite understand not to squeeze or grab them by the wing.