Cold, wet, rainy and loose pigs

We all have those days when you know you should just go back to bed.  Lately I feel like I am having one of those days every day.  Yesterday, for the first time in a while I felt like I was getting something accomplished.  Paperwork was getting done, the house wasn’t in a total state of disrepair, all the animals had been fed and were dry if not warm, Little Man was just waking up from his afternoon snooze and I was just finishing up balancing my checkbook.  I thought it had been a pretty good day.

As I was downloading the bank statement from the bank and making faces at little man, a flash of black fur went past the front window.  I thought to myself, ‘WOW, Raven (my 13 year old black lab) actually got off the porch in the pouring rain.’  Then as I looked back at Little Man, I saw her sleeping on the ottoman in the kitchen.

<Insert expletive here>
I jumped up from my chair to confirm what I actually saw in the front yard was one of the piggles.  I couldn’t see the other one but knew that she had to be out there somewhere.  Shoes and jacket adorned, a couple of apples stuffed into the pockets out the door into the cold, driving rain I went.

“PPPPEEEEEEGGGGGLLLEES, Come here pig, pig, pig!”

Armed with the grey bucket little pig came running.  Every night they get their dinner in the grey bucket so whenever you are carrying it, you are their favorite person.  I made my way and turned off the electric fence and dropped the gate, little pig sauntered inside interested in only the contents of the bucket.  Big pig was nowhere to be found.

DH came outside with Little Man, bundled head to toe against the weather.  Big pig was down in front of the house, well into the corn field and increasing her distance from the pen every second.  After a few minutes of hollering, she finally made her way around behind the barn and back toward the pen.  Both pigs inside, we secured the gate.  It has been wet and rainy here since the big storm that left lower New England in tatters came through last weekend.  Our pig pen fence is powered by a solar-fence-charger.  Even when it is cloudy, it receives some power; but with several days of cloudy weather, the batteries were in a weakened state.  Our sneaky girls used this to their advantage to find a weak spot in the fence and decided that a cold, wet, miserable day was the perfect day to go for a walk. 

Forty-five minutes later the fence was repaired, I had removed the muddy wet hay from their house and put in fresh, DH had repaired the front wall, and Little Man was pretty unhappy being relegated to the car out of the rain to watch us while we worked.  He finally had enough and decided that watching us wasn’t nearly as much fun as helping.

Soaking wet and covered up to my knees in mud, I took the car back to the house dropped my jacket, and pants in the entry way, then picked up Little Man and headed inside for dry clothes.  DH fed them some extra grain in hopes that they would stay inside their pen at least for the evening.  Perhaps the freezer will be filled sooner this fall rather than earlier this winter.