One thing about farming, the animals keep getting hungry, again. Thankfully, on a grass farm, most of the animals only need a fresh pasture every now and then. Except for the pigs. Pigs eat grass but they can't live on it, so our pigs receive a home mixed grain feed that includes milo, oats, sunflower seeds, wheat, and barley.

Ellen and I went to brave the weather and keep our fat pigs from starvation. Not that it was pouring rain, but in this area, if it has looked like rain in the past week then you probably have boot swallowing mud up to your knees. When feeding the pigs, rain, shine or mud, you must understand that you will come back filthy. I don't know how it happens, it just does.

First we had to grind the feed which is the nice part of feeding. There is the risk of developing some lung problems due to breathing large amounts of ground grain. We have to grind the grain because pigs are not known for chewing their food properly and so it tends to come out exactly the way it went in, with no nutritional benefit to the pig.

After grinding the feed, we load it into five gallon buckets and cart it in wheelbarrows to the appropriate pastures. We currently have five separate pig pastures, the big pigs which holds the sows and barrows ready for slaughter, the medium pigs (between 50 and 100lbs), Louie's pen (our young boar), the little pigs (just weaned) who are more often in the wrong pen then their own pen, and Levi's pen.

Of all of these, the medium pigs and the big pigs are the worst because of sheer number. Our pigs are harmless . . . as huge, muscular, animals who have no manners usually are. In other words, they aren't out to kill you but you might feel like it if you see 20 or so 100+ pound animals charging you to get their head in the bucket first. So, we went to feed the medium pigs.

I went in first when the pigs are all still convinced that they are on the verge of death by starvation. Aidenne (a Labrador Retriever) is our pig herder, which means she sometimes makes enough noise in the right direction to momentarily sidetrack the pigs from the humans with the buckets. She helped keep the pigs away from me some. Unfortunately, the opening to a gate is usually the most muddy part of the whole pasture and this one was no exception. The wheelbarrow got momentarily stuck.

As I was leaning into it to keep it moving, my boot got stuck without my foot. So there I am in 8 inches of mud, pushing off my left foot, leaning into a wheelbarrow, with my right foot out of the boot and my knee in the mud. Thankfully, about the time my foot came out of the boot the wheelbarrow moved so that not everything was stuck at once.

Whew! I am now inside the gate. I retrieve my boot and put my foot back into it mud and all. Then, before I can really get going again, there is a complication arising from the melee around me. One of the pigs tried to go under the wheelbarrow, but instead of going between the legs and the wheel, it went inside the U shaped legs.

It didn't fit, and it didn't like it. If it had the good sense to back out everything might still have been okay. But honestly, when have you heard of a starving, stuck pig having good sense? Nope, it barged through with much squealing. In spite of my attempts to hold it upright while the pig worked out it's own salvation, the wheelbarrow dumped.

Now I have one boot full of mud, a crazily barking dog who still thinks she's helping, a tipped wheelbarrow, 20 hungry pigs swarming me, and 15 gallons of pig food being trampled in the mud. Ah, well. That was only the beginning of the day.

So, after that we mostly fed the pigs uneventfully. We managed to feed the big pigs with the tractor and not get it stuck. Although, seeing a tractor sway and slip in the mud is a little unnerving. While we were feeding the big pigs, we noticed that one of their water troughs had somehow been drug to the middle of their mud hole.

Pigs must have mud holes in the summer, because they don't sweat and they will overheat if they don't have mud to cool off in. The Big Pigs' mud hole is maybe 20 yards roundish and about 2 feet deep all the way across. The rain hasn't made it any prettier.

Now we had a choice, we could wade out into 2 feet of thick mud and wrestle a metal, slimy, heavy water trough out of it, or we could wait for the mud to solidify over the next few months and leave the half submerged water trough to become a permanent part of the landscape. Ellen decided we had better go get it now.

In she wades. The mud on the edges is only about a foot deep so that her boots are still useful. It's not long before one boot fills with mud and the water trough is only starting to break the suction. At this point, Ellen ditches the boots and goes back in with just her socks on. She says it's pretty cold. She rocks and wobbles and wrestles the trough to the side where I finally come in useful. We haul it out.

Ah, the joys of an East Texas winter.