This year our beach trip was scheduled 7.21-7.28.17. We had a glorious vacation away from it all with low humidity and highs in the mid to low 80s! It was the first time in a while we had vacationed with just our family, with only our summer French Au Pair Coralie Menard joining us! She has been a wonderful addition to our summer, sharing the language and culture with us. Little did she know, she’d be helping to deliver piglets in the middle of torrential downpours! I couldn’t believe how quick she was to jump in and help! While I shouted directions and crys for help, she probably had no idea what I was saying but used the context and her great sense to figure it all out. See the challenge was, I hadn’t planned on their arrival minutes after we pulled into home from our 6 hour trip from Virginia Beach.
Excited to do the afternoon feed after 7 days away from it, even if it was pouring rain, I declined Genevieve’s offer to do it one last time for us. We had plenty of time before we needed to head out the door to the yearly CYC fundraiser! I eagerly got in my feeding uniform and ran to the barn. Seeing the ponies pacing the fence line with more interest than ever in the pigs on the other side, I sensed something was going on. With buckets of rain coming down and buckets of feed in hand, I fed the ponies and headed to the pig paddock. Instead of licking their buckets at length, the ponies were nudging and pawing the gate into the pig paddock. That’s when I noticed we were one pig down. I hollered and shook the grain bucket but Syd did not come trotting. After a few minutes of searching, I found her burrowed down into a fairly dry spot. The only problem was it happened to be the spot where all of Dr. Bird’s glass medicine bottles had been buried. So there we were in the pouring rain, Syd laying on a pile of glass and the 10th piglet coming out. The others were huddled together soaking wet in the brush, minus one which I’m guessing was the first to come out alone and cold as ice. I immediately grabbed him and held him close while I ran to get the others for help. We carefully loaded the other 9 in a wheelbarrow, dipped it down to mom’s nose so knew where they were and started chasing it and then there was me, sprinting backwards to the barn with a 500lb sow chasing. Lets not forget the pouring rain, galloping ponies, squealing pigs, it was quite the site. Once we got close to the barn, mamma sow knew where we were headed and settled down. One heat lamp, a bowl full of apples and lots of helping hands later, all 10 were snug, dry and latched on! A big thank you to Coralie Menard, Michelle Albornoz, Samson Moy (whose fear got the best of him when the ponies started galloping and bucking all around the moving, squealing wheelbarrow and I heard the frequent, “oh shit, I’m outta hear!”) Genevieve Fulcro and of course the kiddos. Maddie about had the barn all mucked and freshly bedded by the time the squealing wheelbarrow arrived! We have 6 males and 4 females....boars and gilts, barrows and gilts.
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AuthorCatherine Moy Archives
October 2020
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