This week on our farm, we had another first — something I have never experienced before and hope to never experience in the same way again. We had to castrate our male pigs who are now three months old and about 50 pounds each. Being new farmers means that sometimes other people take advantage of that newness and a lot of times, we don’t even realize we are being taken as “green farmers” until it is too late. This is what happened with our piglets and you know, the learning curve is steep for us newbie farmers.

Since mid-March of this year, Ojo Conejo has been buzzing with life and activity. First, the baby chicks arrived — all 80 of them. Then, my best friend from Texas came for a visit and helped us keep those baby chicks alive by wiping their asses every ten minutes to make sure their colons didn’t get clogged. After that, Heathar’s parents came for a 2-week visit followed by the arrival of our friend and co-farmer Jack, all the way from Australia. While Jack has been here, we had a 2-week visit from our dear friend Andrea from Mexico and one day after she left, my father and his girlfriend surprised us with a visit. In between that, we have welcomed 4 pigs to the property and have had many visits from family and friends that live nearby. It has been FULL y’all. I know I have said this before but I will say it again — life out here on the mountain is anything but isolated.

Our laying hens are three months old now and we have three more months to go until they start laying eggs. In the meantime, our neighbors supply us with dozens of eggs every week that we now give to our dog, our pigs and of course, scramble up for ourselves every morning. Our pigs have taken a deep liking to scrambled eggs with jalapeños mixed into them, topped with a copious amount of whole milk. The jalapeños are helpful for the pigs as they assist them in fighting off any kind of strange parasite they might pick up in their pig pen. Up in these mountains, we have learned that there is no shortage of eggs. We have so many dozens of eggs right now that we’ve had to place eggs on our counters and in paper bags around our kitchen. And this is all before our 28 hens even begin laying eggs for us.

Before we begin, let me just say that if you do not want to hear about the killing of animals on our farm, please do not read on. This is your invitation to read on if you’re curious about the threads of life and death and also, if you want to hear about how big a chicken’s stomach is and what you might find inside of it. This blog is a little longer than usual because the ritual of killing and processing my first round of meat chickens is having a significant impact on my life and when this happens, I want to write.

So far, no one thinks I am going to be able to butcher our pigs — I am not fighting them on that one, I know myself and they are probably right. I have no doubt that these four new friends of mine will remain on our farm until they are old, grey and very leathered — gracing us with their massive pig bellies that we will end up feeding just because we love them and not so we can fatten them up for bacon.

I have to tell you that we welcomed the arrival of four, 8-week old piglets this week on the farm before I promptly left for Santa Barbara to attend a graduation ceremony for my degree in Counseling Psychology. Heathar and Jack went to pick up the piglets and transported them back to our farm on a bed of ice so their little bodies would not get overheated in the desert sun. I was relieved when I picked them up that what was dripping from them was not pig urine, but only melted ice. And yes, they grunted and squealed like you would think little piglets sound when you pick them up.