the 'pulled pork' portion of this published public porcine practical post..

the day dawned cold and clear. but not too cold, no gloves needed for the work ahead, but cold enough to see your breath, you know the type of morning. anyway, variable skies, 40's, no wind. good stuff. today was the day of days for our porkers, and we were ready as we could hope to be. all the books, read, videos, watched, lessons absorbed(hopefully).. ready to see one of our livestock dreams through to it's inevitable conclusion: the harvesting of the investment that we'd poured so many mental and physical hours into, not to mention the capital needed to securely house and feed three pigs, that were now, by my estimates, over 400lbs each! 

pre-work jitters.

read on to hear and see how the weekend went, but be aware, there are some graphic photos in the post.. 

on pulling pork and pulled pork..

with our recent move from our place in thorndike to our new place in jefferson, our pigs needed a new home as well. there wouldn't be space for them at our new digs, and so thankfully, our friends ashlee and josiah offered to foster them their remaining time on this earth, which at the time of the move, would be just over a month, into mid to late november. their new home secured, all that was left was to move them, right? just load them into a trailer, take 'em for a drive, open the door, bang, their moved, right? easy.. right?

not so easy, turns out, to convince three stubborn, solid, strong animals to go into a dark trailer to points unknown. i'm not going to go into the details of the comedy of errors that was 'pig moving day', except that my brother wound up riding a pig backwards for 50 feet or so, one pig dragged three grown men, myself included, through the toilet-area of their pen in a half-baked attempt to wrestle the beast into submission, and sometimes escaped pigs just wanna' have mud.

pinky, spotty, and jessica reassessing the situation.

all's well that ends well, i s'pose, and sometimes you just gotta sit back and take stock of the lessons learned that day. so many lessons. no one, human or porcine, was injured in the process, and later that evening, jessica and i were even able to laugh about it. much later. after the pen was built. and the electric line checked and adjusted. and the trailer was hosed out. and the truck was cleaned out. and the trailer, returned. and the truck, returned. and we headed for home. then we could laugh about it.

big 'thank you's to stephen, ashlee, josiah, jason, kara, jessica, pinky, runt, spotty, percy..

next adventure: harvest weekend.