Baby, I'm Ready To Go

From the Rooftops Shoat it Out

There was a storm on the horizon when David pulled his truck and horse trailer into my driveway. It was past noon, which means I’d been up for eight hours and was hopefully wrapping up the manual labor part of my day, but that had a lot more to do with pigs than preference.

David was here to deliver the first hogs of the year. We’d been playing tag over text about the delivery date. Poor weather was on the horizon for the days ahead and neither of us wanted to wrangle wet pigs (or worse, capture escaped pigs you just paid for) in a downpour. We had to find a break in the rain. Between the storms I got the text he’d be arriving in 30 minutes.

The two-horse trailer behind his pickup was a familiar sight. Out here a two-horse trailer is the all-purpose small-farm livestock mover. Not because they’re the best tool for the job, but because there is always plenty of them available to buy second or fifth hand.

A lot of people get into horses out here. They get the animals and the barns and buy a trailer thinking they will be taking their steeds to events and classes and trail rides, but in most cases, trailers end up growing weeds around them in the yard. So a lot of folks sell the trailers, keep the horses as lawn ornaments, and then suckers like us moving pigs and sheep buy them second hand for less than the cost of an Ikea sofa.

Your rural working-class anthropology lesson for today: a 2HT is the all-purpose sport utility trailer of my people, and today this one was bringing me pigs.

The Republica song, Ready to Go, started playing in my head as David parked. I was 14 when that song came out and used to listen to it walking to my Jr High School a few blocks from my parent’s house. From the rooftops shoat it out. I sang under my breath, swapping the lyrics to make sense at Cold Antler. David opened the trailer’s Dutch doors to let me look down at the precious cargo - five beautiful young pigs, also known in the trade as shoats.

David never fails to make me smile. Before he was a farmer, he worked as an actor in NYC. Sometimes I still catch a glance of him on old episodes of Law & Order and can’t help but giggle at how life brought us both to pigs. He still works in entertainment, hosting outdoor concerts and events at his lovely farm and teaching acting. The man loves music, art, and agriculture and that’s my favorite type of person. I was proud to be buying pigs from him.

I was already coated in sweat from preparing for the delivery. There was stuff to move around in the barn, and areas to prepare for feeding, bathroom, and sleeping requirements. Pigs have this unearned reputation of being messy—and while my pigs certainly enjoy a wallow on a hot buggy day—most of the time they want to be dry, clean, and warm like the rest of us.

Their indoor area always has to have piles of hay for nests and dry bedding. Their eating stations separate from where they sleep, and their bathroom zone usually outside the barn in a corner of the pen. I got most of it set up in time, with some last-minute adjustments and electrical work to finish after David left. You want pigs trained to respect fences when they are still too small to break out of them by brute force.

I have a few weeks to figure out pasture and pen expansion while they are this small. Right now they have a 2-room indoor condo with an outdoor yard. It’s fine for pigs their size, which is no longer weanlings but too small still to call boars or sows. They’re shoats; pigs that are weaned fro their mother’s but not sexually mature enough to be classified as adult boars, barrows, gilts, or sows. The mix he brought was anywhere from 30-70lbs and I was happy to see it. Their larger size made up for the later delivery. These need to be market large by January.

After some conversation and ideas about how to move five pigs a hundred yards (from trailer to barn) we settled on the most direct approach. I suggested loading the pigs one at a time into a large dog crate and dragging the crate to the barn on a sledge. Mostly, because I didn’t think it was possible to maneuver the horse trailer through the yard with the ridiculous amount of obstacles in the way. There was a well, a giant tree, a deck, stone walls, gardens, hammocks… my farm isn’t some vast operation with rolling acres and a gravel parking lot. It’s a hamlet in a forest, a house, a few open acres around a small house and the rest woods, swamp, and ravine.

David was confident he could back up the trailer to the barn if he went slow. I trusted him not to take out the well or have his trailer slide down the steep slope, but my fingers were crossed. These kind of big swings can often end bad.

But his word was good. The man is a legend.

David masterfully backed up to the barn door. It took some readjustments but not many. It was the most impressive driving I’ve seen anyone do in my life.

Inside the barn, the gate to their stall was open, a full tub of feed from the local granary inside as a welcome-home snack. It didn’t take much convincing to get them out of the trailer. All five pigs happily trotted into their new home, as I am certain it was more comfortable looking than a metal box before a thunder storm.Soon they were eating and snarfing and playing and exploring. Nothing like the first day with new stock.

I hugged David, apologizing for how I must have smelled after a morning of preparing for pigs in the humidity. He laughed and said “Me too!” and while nothing about his hug was sensorially unpleasant, it was a kind thing to say. And since I still have to set up the fencing as the first drops of rain started to fall, we parted ways shortly after.

I had five proud swine, the beginning of the 2024 sounder. My heart swelled three sizes bigger. And it’s moments like this when I can feel my story moving forward, promises to customers kept, and another year of providing quality, local, humanely-raised pork to the people I raise it for. I never felt this designing email coupons. I never felt it doing anything but farming. That feeling is why I’m still here. When you find it in this short life, you hold on with white knuckles and pray.

June is somewhat late for pigs but it was when I could afford them, and only because David was willing to work out a payment plan. He’s known me a decade now, his pigs have been here plenty over those years. It’s the kind of networking and relationships necessary to make things work out here if you don’t have 10k in savings lying around like some middle-class fantasy bank.

Earlier that week I earned enough money to cover the piglets, but I couldn't pay for them entirely while the electric company was threatening to shut off the lights, so I had to pay that first. That’s how is is out here, plug the holes as they burst from the hull of the boat in order of urgency. The electric company wasn't going to wait a week, but David could.

It takes the grace of an entire village to keep a small farm on the edge going. Flexibility in payment, flexibility in delivery, but it’s a start. They are here and will feed dozens of people this winter when my promise is fulfilled. Till then, I need to keep them healthy and happy.

And with pigs here again, things feel more hopeful, like the electricity before the storm. It feels like friendship, and community, and a reminder that it’s only June and there are months to figure out firewood and canning tomato sauce and digging potatoes and stocking flour, sugar, and coffee for winter.

I will do what I always do, which is take it one day at a time. Make sure I can manage a couple hundred in sales soon as possible to cover this and the pay the May mortgage before June ends so my home is safe one more month.

Someday, I will write my way into solvency, or that is the story I tell myself every morning in order to get up. The stakes are so high. I don’t remember what it feels like to write without fear, like I did back when I started homesteading. I can’t believe anyone is writing anything, knowing they will keep their address next month. Which by that I don’t mean I can’t imagine someone creating art in comfort, I mean I can’t remember what it feels like. Like how you forget loved ones voices when you stop hearing them regularly. You only remember how the tone made you feel, and pretend that’s the same as hearing.

There is fear in every letter I press down on my keyboard, tense shoulders, an easily-startled body. But I don’t think being afraid means I should give up. I would have given up over a decade ago if fear or anxiety was stronger than the love.

And I still can’t make myself believe anything good comes from sustained comfort. I just trains people to give up on anything worth living for that gets in the way of it.

I think of all the people on farms with two or more humans splitting the work, the bills, the responsibility. Some of them both have off-farm jobs and family close to come help when things get hard or hands are needed. It sounds so… easy. Like there must be so many options, so many ways to get pigs in a barn, so many reinforced connections that amount to the kind of social capital that lets you sleep all night or buy a Le Labo candles for the guest room.

I decided to take a break from dating. I’m well aware I’m not going to meet anyone hanging around my yard, but I don’t want to meet someone new while my life is this close to the edge. I don’t want to starting dating someone who will realize I don’t have the acceptable requirements they need to feel I deserve to be tagged on their Instagram. I would rather focus on real work than get distracted by false hope. Keeping the farm I can muscle through, force into being. But keeping a woman?! I may be a hopeless romantic, but I’m not an idiot.

There’s not going to be any romance this summer. But there will be community, and campfires, and friends. I can make a beautiful space for the couples I do know, that can walk my path and enjoy my land, and share their stories around the table or firelight. And for my own joy, there will be walks in the forest and trout in the stream. There will be horses and hawk training, and perfection of my pizza crust, and movie nights outside with torch light on the porch wrapped in blankets if the wind picks up. And I think there’s a gentle beauty in staying home and working on the most basic of human desires: safety while becoming something better.

Some of us are on the greatest adventures of our lives without ever leaving home or ever owning a passport. It doesn’t look like much when you drive by, swerving around geese in the road or staring at a horse mowing a front lawn, but inside there’s this core of energy with a desperate story that refuses to quit.

This farm has outlasted a lot. It can figure out another month, a few more pigs, and maybe even a cord of wood. It depends if readers feel I’m worth it, at least a little. Truthfully, it depends a lot more on me. How much more of this can I take before the things that make my heart grow three sizes larger are the same things that burst it.

Today I woke up and kept going. I wish the same for you. And if you can find that delicate pace of heartbeats that dances near the edge of anticipation without exploding; you’re doing it right. Or at least, doing something I respect.