Bringing Home the Bacon

During the late 70′s, my family moved from town to a three acre hobby farm.

A neighboring family lived about a quarter mile up the road. Real animal lovers, they kept 7 house dogs in varying sizes, had a stable of six or so horses, and their chicken population grew steadily because they didn’t have the heart to butcher the birds. Roosters crowed from dawn until dusk, eliminating any need for an alarm clock. The neighbors also kept a couple of pigs.

In late winter or early spring, before we moved to the farm, one of the neighbors’ pigs had been born with crippled back legs. When the mother pushed it away, the neighbors quickly rescued the piglet and bottle-fed it until it was weaned. Then they let it have the run of their yard. The pig’s crippled legs kept if from running too fast but even so, one day in the early summer, the piglet disappeared. Although the neighbors looked high and low for it, they couldn’t find it. They figured they had seen the last of the little piglet.

Behind our hobby farm was a slough bordered on the south by our neighbors’ cornfield. My husband couldn’t wait for October 16, the opening day of pheasant season. At the time if a farmer didn’t post a no-hunting, no-trespassing sign, hunters were able to enter open or unfenced areas without first obtaining permission.

Wouldn’t you know it? On October 15, we had the first blizzard of a winter that would become the worst Minnesota winter in 30 years. The snow was still coming down on the 16th, but my husband was undaunted. He put on his gear and he and his golden lab went out to hunt the slough. There were no pheasants in the slough though; the heavy snow had driven them to seek shelter in the cornfield.

My husband didn’t get too far into the cornfield before he heard his dog barking, accompanied by squealing such as he had never heard before!

The squealer was the neighbor’s pig! Because its crippled hind legs had never matured, it had to sort of walk-crawl to make its way around. It was no longer a little pig since it had spent most of the summer in the cornfield. In fact, my husband said it was one of the biggest pigs he had ever seen. There was no way the pig was going to get out of that cornfield on its own!

My husband drove up to ask our neighbors, if they knew who owned the pig. Of course they did. It was their pig! So back they all came- Mr., Mrs., and their three kids. The neighbors brought a toboggan with them, shoved it under the pig, and pulled it out of the slough. Then they had to walk the quarter mile home through a foot of newly fallen, unplowed snow, pulling the pig along on the toboggan. Their parade made quite the comical site!

We were lucky to make it to town and back most days of that snowy winter. We didn’t see our neighbors again until spring. When next he encountered them, my husband asked what had become of the pig. They told him that soon after they had brought the pig into their house, it had developed pneumonia and died. They buried him in the cornfield.