Let it Bee...

"When I find myself in times of trouble,

Mother Mary comes to me,

Speaking words of Wisdom,

Let it be"

- The Beatles

Back in my 20's, I was fatally controlling of my life and all the happenings in it. I experienced a lot of heartbreak over things not happening "right now" no matter how hard I worked at them. It took me many hard knocks to overcome my need to try and force things into the timeline I expected. Ironically, it was also in this time of my life that I came across a particular piece of literature that touched me in a way very few pieces have and it was even more ironic that the topic of said piece was centered around the concepts of letting go and living with questions rather than forcing their answers. I was a college student and in my junior year of a Writing degree at the University of Evansville. I was taking a Creative Nonfiction class, the text for which was a collection of excerpts and essays. The first piece we studied was an excerpt by a woman named Sue Hubbell, a nature writer, from her book "A Country Year: Living the Questions." The excerpt chosen spoke to something in my heart and soul that I couldn't describe and I must have reread it several times throughout that semester for no reason other than to read it again. Something about the tone of that excerpt sounded so familiar to me...as if my own voice could be speaking, a voice deep inside that found peace and comfort in the idea of not controlling anything, but rather finding joy in watching the pattern of something beautiful and completely outside human control take place. I finally ordered the entire book and read it all in one day. I have read that book repeatedly and have fallen into a habit of reading it at least once a year now. I have gifted so many copies to friends and family, I have lost count on how many copies I have purchased.

"A Country Year: Living the Questions" by Sue Hubbell is a collection of stories written over the course of a year and its seasons in the Ozarks. Sue Hubbell was a writer and a beekeeper. She wrote this book of nature pieces centered around her farm, her beekeeping, and her relationship with the nature of that environment following her divorce. Its beautiful in its simplicity and told with such a frank, honest, and relatable voice, you can almost forget you're not the one experiencing the happenings documented in that book.The title page of the book features a quote by Rilke

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to live the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” Reading this book and that quote did two things for me in particular. I discovered a new desire to keep bees at some point in my life and I learned that the truth this book expresses through everyday living amongst nature and its wild inhabitants is what my soul needed. At the age of 38, I can now say that the activity of beekeeping is now part of my life on my own little farm and that that activity and all those centered around Crow's Croft Farm have enabled me to live some of those questions and, by consequence, some of the answers. 

There are many things in nature that cannot be controlled by human will or action. A swarm of honeybees is an excellent example of that. I grew up with a father and a grandfather who were both (and still are) terrified of bees. I have only ever been stung by a yellow jacket or a wasp and so I do find myself behaving much the same way as my relatives when those two insects come around. There is usually much flailing and dancing about before running away. I have gotten better about this with yellow jackets and wasps as I've gotten older, but my fear of honeybees and bumblebees waned in childhood. Since stinging ends their life, it seemed ridiculously silly in my young mind to assume a honeybee or a bumblebee would sting unprovoked. This mindset and the confirmation of it by my mother who held even the same attitude about wasps and yellow jackets made me unafraid of honeybees altogether. I count this a very good thing considering the story I am about to tell in regards to starting my first beehive here at Crow's Croft Farm.

Two years ago for Christmas, my husband gave me a gift that made me so happy, I cried with joy. It was a beehive kit complete with a deep brood box already painted, 9 frames, an inner cover, a hive top, a bee smoker, and hive tool. He had known from our first date my desire to someday keep bees and knew what this gift meant to me. Alas, finances and demands currently on the farm did not allow for me to start the hive the following spring, so I waited until this spring (2018) to make my arrangements. I ordered a package of bees rather than a nucleus hive and decided on, after much research, Italian honeybees for their disposition and honey production. Phil and I picked a spot out in the young orchard we'd planted to setup the hive and built up a base of cinderblocks to keep it up off the ground. Phil then drove some T-posts and fenced it with a remnant piece of no climb horse fence to give it some protection from the dogs and other animals that may disturb it. I waited impatiently for April 26th to roll around and distracted myself with reading up and researching all I could on beekeeping. I had been studying the topic for years, but it seemed to be the only thing that curbed my anticipation of installing my bees in the hive.

I had ordered my package of bees from Urban Bee Co. in Burien, WA. A 3lb package of bees comes with about 10,000 bees and a queen. The packages are installed with a can of sugar water stoppered with a piece of cloth. This provides food for the bees. Installed next to the can is a small queen cage with the queen bee inside. The queen cage is screened on all sides and has an opening on one end stoppered with a cork. The bees in the package all hang together in one giant cluster on the feeding can and around the queen cage. She is not queen yet and they are not a collective hive. They are listless and dispassionate, though they cling to each other for warmth and safety. The package itself is made of screen and quarter inch thick wood. I watched over and over again videos of hive installations and read up on how and where to attach the queen in her cage leading up to the day I could pick up my bees and bring them home.

Me being a multi-tasker, I scheduled on the same day an appointment with a man in Arlington, WA, who raises ducks. Winter and early spring 2018 at Crow's Croft Farm carried sadness with it. Three of the five ducks passed away. Doris was carried off by a predator and Roslyn and Mrs. Hudson fell ill and were peacefully seen across the Rainbow Bridge. Beatrice and Benedict were the only two left and Benedict needed more than just one hen. This gentleman had a large selection and a fair price. We still weren't setup for ducklings, so adult ducks were the only answer and so I had arranged to bring home four new duck hens from that farm in Arlington. On the way home, I would stop in at Burien and collect my package of bees since it was on the way. Lo and behold, the truck got a screw in its tire which left me with only Phil's BMW coup to carry out these errands.

Finally, the day came and I took a few hour road trip to gather both ducks and bees. The bee package was covered in stray bees clinging to the outside and I watched as the young woman dispensing the packages brushed them gently away with a bee brush. She wore no protective gear, no gloves, and the bees settled in her hair and on her shoulders. She carried my package of bees to the car and placed it on the floorboors of the passenger side. "Nice ducks," she commented hearing the quacks from the two kennels in the back seat. "So," she said, "it's very common that a few stray bees may still be on the outside and I didn't get them all, so there may be one or two floating about the car." She handed me two small marshmallows, "these are for when you install the queen. Replace the cork with marshmallows." Then she was gone...off to attend the next customer. I still called "thank you," and settled back into the car. The hum and buzz from the package on the passenger floorboards punctuated by the occasional quack of one of the four duck hens in the backseat made me smile as I turned back onto the interstate and started the hour long drive back home.

Sure enough, about five or six bees buzzed around the car and I just opened the sun roof and allowed them to escape. I didn't think much of it and just focused on the road, running through the lists in my head of things that needed to be done after the hive was installed. A few more bees buzzed about the car and I felt a nagging wonder as to where they had come from....I had let out the ones that were on the outside of the package already....then movement caught my eye...movement in the passenger seat. A small tornado of honeybees were swirling up from the floorboards and filling the space in the passenger seat. That was more than a few bees! I opened a window at first..thinking that was the best idea...but the airflow made them agitated and they spread throughout the entire car. I estimated at least several hundred of the bees were loose in the car and felt a momentarily panic hit me. My old need to control rose up and reared its ugly head and I felt myself getting very anxious at the lack of control of this current situation. The ducks fell quiet and traffic slowed on the highway. I shut the vents on the dash to prevent the bees from crawling into the air vents and closed the sunroof and windows except for a small crack to allow some airflow, but not alot. Still trying to focus on the road, I ran all possibilities through my mind on how I could gain control of this situation. Out of the chaos swirling around my brain, a comment from Sue Hubbell's book floated up out of my memory. "I often find that the bees know more what they need than I do." I took a deep breath and willed myself to calm down.

Looking at the situation logically, I knew I had only one choice. I still had about a hour to go thanks to the traffic and there was no feasible way to put the bees back in the package. More bees were crawling out through a seam in the package that had widened just enough for them to escape, but the majority were still in the package. Pulling over and getting out of the car would do no good, not unless I wanted to remove the package and leave it on the side of the highway and, even then, I had no bee suit or tools with me and no way to get the loose bees out of the car. So, the only thing to do was to continue driving and deal with the situation at hand. I took several deep breaths and willed myself to remain calm. Bees settled onto my hands, my arms, in my hair, on the steering wheel and started clustering on the dashboard. I became very conscious of where my hands were and my movements became very slow and steady. A bee's vision is based on movement and sudden movements may cause alarm. Had they been a cohesive hive with a queen they loved and protected, it may have been entirely different, but the bees were still listless and sedate. Traffic was stopped and I took the opportunity to watch one bee crawling along the car window. Her antennae searched the area in front of her and she continued to wander calmly and slowly. There was a steady hum in the car, but it was mild and almost soothing. Nonetheless, I hoped I wouldn't get pulled over for any reason. This would be very hard to explain and a distracted driving ticket was a given for sure.

When I finally arrived back home, I very carefully removed my seat belt checking all the while for any bees that may be on the belt or anywhere near my hands and slid out of the car. A small cloud of bees erupted behind me. They seemed pleased to be out of the car, but hung close to all their sisters. Taking a deep breath, I opened all the doors of the car and pulled out the kennels. Bees were still settled in my hair, but they took flight quickly. I took the ducks to the back yard and turned them loose in the duckyard and then went inside to fetch Phil.

Phil stared at me with eyebrows raised as I told him the whole story. He helped me zip up my bee suit,  secured the veil, and a smile broke across his face at the telling of my tale. Shaking his head, he said, "Well, babe, you handled that well. Not sure I could have done that." We laughed and then I set to work getting the bees to their hive.

I worked clumsily with the bee gloves on my hands. I don't work well with gloves, but I wasn't quite brave enough to carry out this task with my bare hands exposed. The bees loose in the car had clustered on the dashboard or on the side of the package. Gently, I extracted the package from the car and set it down in the driveway. I brushed the cluster off the dash hoping a majority would join the rest clinging to the package and about half of them did.The rest settled back into a cluster on the dashboard of the BMW. I repeated the same action at least four times before deciding it was best to just install the hive. Bees were starting to leave the package and head back to the cluster in the car, so I closed the car door, leaving a window open, and picked up the buzzing bee package and walked slowly and carefully towards the hive setup in the orchard. Small clusters of bees settled on the arms of my bee jacket and on my leather gloved hands. I set it down gingerly on the ground next to the hive and took a moment to open the hive. I had set out a jug of sugar water earlier that morning and I quickly filled the bee feeder in the hive with it. The sugar water would entice the bees to stay and would give them something to eat and get established with once they were in the hive.

It was time to pull the queen cage out of the package and place it in the hive. I pried the metal can in the package up gently with my hive tool and lifted it out of the package. All the bees still inside erupted and set to buzzing, confused and flustered by the disturbance. I pulled the thin metal tab under the can upward and slit out the queen cage, taking a moment to marvel at the beautiful queen bee in her cage. I cursed the gloves on my hands as I clumsily popped out the cork that stoppered the end of her cage and held my gloved finger over it while I collected the small marshmallows they had given me and stuffed them into the opening. Phil had started videotaping me on his phone from several feet away so we could document the first hive being setup. I had thought a simple tack would work to secure her cage to one of the frames in the hive, but it wasn't' and I cursed at my clumsy fingers and at the tack I dropped. I then upset the box of tacks and felt my anger rising. Taking a deep breath, I told Phil I needed something else to secure the queen cage with and he set off to get his carpentry stapler for me. While I waited for him to return, I looked at the queen. Elegant and beautiful, she lounged in her cage, buzzing indignantly and her captivity. If she were exposed to the other bees at this moment, she would be killed instantly. The marshmallows were a temporary, easily consumed substance that the bees would eat through to try and get to her once they were all together in the hive, but by the time they would get to her, they would have accepted her as their own and would start grooming and tending her.

Phil returned with the stapler and I met him over by the garden to collect it since he wasn't in a bee suit. The bees were all swirling about the package, most of them still clinging in a giant cluster on the sugar water can. The queen, I imagine, hurled insults at me as I pinned her queen cage between two frames and stapled it to the top of one frame. Now came the part that seemed instinctively foolish on so many levels.I removed all the frames from the hive except the feeder and the frame with the queen attached and then picked up the package. I could hear Phil narrating the video he was shooting again and I warned him to stand a bit farther away for this step. I took a deep breath and then shook the package sharply downward causing all the clustered bees to fall suddenly in a big, buzzing heap on the bottom and then quickly turned it over, pouring them like beans into the hive. A cloud of bees erupted around me, but most of them just fell and collected on the bottom of the hive. I shook the package again and poured, then again, and again. The sun was shining and all I could hear was the rising hum of the bees upset by the unceremonious gesture of pouring them into the hive. They swarmed around me and the hive, their little gold bodies glinting in the sunlight. I was nervous, but excited at the same time. I carefully set the frames back in the hive, being careful to not crush any bees. They moved out of the way quickly and, before I set the inner cover and lid on the hive, I saw them clustering around the queen cage and starting to work on the marshmallow cap. Some bees still remained in the package and I set it on the lid of the hive on its side with its opening facing towards the entrance.

The cloud of bees not yet in the hive still swirled around me, but in a matter of minutes a cluster started to form on the front of the hive and I smiled as I watched the bees landing on the hive line up and start marching towards the doorway. I had put on the entrance reducer to encourage them to stay. They marched in dutifully as I gathered up the tacks I had spilled and the tools I had brought with me and secured the wire fence that surrounded the hive back in place. I then started walking slowly away. Bees were still clustering on parts of my suit and veil and Phil wandered a ways behind me directing me on where to swipe with the bee brush. A cluster had settled on my hat and I awkwardly brushed at them until they were gone. Phil dodged bees flying off my suit back towards the hive.

"Nice work, babe," he said as we met back by the BMW in the driveway. A good sized cluster covered the dash still, "Now what do we do about that?"

"Well, I said, I will have to make them leave." Since we only had the one suit, I told Phil to go ahead and go back inside. I set the can of sugar water and a bowl for it to drip into by the car in the driveway and opened all the doors again. For three hours, I swiped the cluster of bees off the dashboard every time they settled. In small groups, they gathered on the sugar water or they flew off in search of their lost hive. Several times, I walked the bowl with the sugar water out to the hive and knocked the bees off at the entrance of the hive. As evening came, the number of bees in the car diminished to just a handful and the rest either wandered off or were settled in the hive with their sisters. I was exhausted after hours of trying to remove the bees from the car, but had managed to check my controlling tendencies during the process. After all, bees were wild creatures and they didn't bend to anyone's will but their own. I left a window cracked for those still remaining in the car. in the morning, all the bees were gone save a few that had perished and were lying on the floorboards.

Four days later, I opened the hive to remove the queen cage and do a hive inspection. The cage was empty and the bees were already at work starting to faintly draw out comb on the frame foundations. I did not locate the queen, but saw a good laying pattern of brood in some already completed comb and was satisfied that my hive was on its way and settled. She seemed to be laying eggs after a successful maiden flight and I spotted a drone or two hanging out about the hive still.

I told friends and family about the hive and how excited I was. When I shared the story about transporting the package of bees, the unanimous response was that I was either very insane or incredibly brave. I believe I am just incredibly fortunate. Daily at least, sometimes several times a day, I would walk out to the hive and watch the bees flying in and out, covered in pollen from the spring flowers.

I did my hive inspections, though demands around the farm limited me on doing them as regular as is recommended. I did my best and resolved to let this be a learning experience. Nearly all beekeepers I talked to said they had lost their first hives when starting out and so I tried to adjust my expectations and not let my controlling tendencies take over. I had read that you should give them more room once they had filled four or five frames in their brood box. During an overdue hive inspection, I saw that they had filled six frames front and back with comb. I located the queen, her attendants dutifully grooming her, and carefully set the frame she was on back in the hive. Pulling another up, I muttered curses and chastised myself for not keeping up with a regular hive inspection schedule. A queen cell hung off the bottom of the frame. Different than the brood cells tightly and neatly kept in their perfect geometric comb on the frame, these cells extend and elongate looking like peanuts. A hive builds these for one of two reasons...to prepare for a new queen to be born or to practice for that occasion. From what I could see, all signs pointed to a healthy queen, so raising another could only mean one thing. They didn't think they had enough room to continue the hive grow. In short, this was a clear sign of potential swarming.  I quickly gathered what was needed to put a second brood box on the hive, hoping this would change their  inclinations to swarm and leave the hive in search of better accommodations.

One day, Phil and I set to work taking down the outdoor lights still hung up in the cedar trees around our firepit from our wedding. Phil was up in the trees, perched precariously on the ladder untying or cutting down the ropes that held the lights in place and handing them down to me when he suddenly stopped and, eyes fixed in the direction of the bee hive, said, "uh...Chris...something's going on with the hive." Following his gaze, my heart sank. a spinning tower of bees stretched from the hive entrance to about 20 feet above the hive. Afternoon sun glinting off their gold bodies, it would have been a beautiful site had it not meant they were possibly swarming having raised another queen. Bees marched up the front of the hive in a steady line, taking off to join the tower of their sisters.

"What do we do?" Phil asked.

"Nothing," I responded, "If they swarm, they swarm. There's nothing I can do to stop them at this point. Maybe if they pick an area to rest and swarm before they find another, I can catch them again, but that's about it."

Ten minutes later it was over and all was quiet. I hadn't seen them swarm off in a big buzzing ball as all the videos and research I had done indicated. I was hopeful. The next day, I opened the hive and was surprised to see that not only had they not even remotely started working on the second brood box I had given them, but that there seemed to be far less bees in the hive. I found the queen and she was still going about her duties with her attendants surrounding her. There was healthy brood in the comb and still some capped honey, but not as much as I had seen in the last inspection. The queen cell I had seen was empty. I concluded that the hive may have split on its own. I reinstalled the feeder and fed the hive. If they hadn't started drawing comb in the second brood box in the next two weeks, I would remove it and replace it with the super which was much smaller. Supers are usually placed for honey harvest while brood boxes are usually left in place as a source of food for the hive. With the summer waning and the nectar flow slowing, my concern was they would be left with a much bigger hive than they could feasibly keep warm during the winter months and not enough honey to feed themselves. Opening the hive in the cold months is cruel and almost certainly detrimental to the hive. As it turned out, I ended up replacing the second brood box with a super and I continue to feed them now that summer is on its way out and fall is coming.

Losing half of my first hive has left me slightly discouraged, but not too much. I still go out on my breaks from work with the dogs to watch the hive busily working and I am more diligent with my hive inspections, especially now that the cooler weather is coming and soon I will be unable to inspect. I have taken no honey from the bees this year, but am hoping they will be at a point where I can put a second super on next spring and harvest some honey by next summer. I love seeing my bees as I wander the property or work in my garden and Phil and I have shared many a smile over what we call "our bees". The native woodland bees do an excellent job of pollinating our flowers, berries, fruit trees, and vegetables, but we can easily tell the difference between their fuzzy bodies and the sleek, gold bodies of our Italian honeybees and we often point them out to each other with, "Look, its one of ours!" I have recently acquired a large, motorized honey extractor, several hive bodies and parts, and Phil and I have made plans for a small fenced off area between the horse paddocks we're building for a beeyard. I think it is safe to say, this hobby will be with me for a long time.

My obsession with controlling the situations presented me is still a part of my personality and I struggle with it often. In some aspects of my life, it has been a very strong asset. When it comes to the happenings around this beautiful farm my husband and I continue to build, however, allowing it to run amuck results in missing the entire point of this life I have always wanted and now have. Like the bees, this farm is full of elements not meant to be controlled by human intervention. I can assist and I can provide some necessities or elements that may contribute, but I have no control over the outcomes. The bees will do what they do as will the birds, the deer, the coyotes, eagles, and my own menagerie of domesticated animals to some degree. My role is not to control the situation or to know all the answers, it is to observe, enjoy, and be awed by the beauty and wonder that is this 8.6 acres that I get to call my own and bear witness to all the amazing things that happen here. I am grateful to live these questions everyday and I enjoy the daily quest towards the answers.

Wee, Wee, Wee All the Way Home....

I never in a million years expected I would be the kind of person to love pigs. I never disliked pigs, always thought they were cute, but never figured I would ever be in a situation where pigs would be part of my regular routine and yet, like so many other things that happen here on Crow's Croft Farm, I have been given the opportunity to surprise myself.

My husband, Phil, has always commented on wanting pigs. When we first bought this property, I remember him mentioning it jokingly and I not taking it that seriously. Whenever it came up, I would dismiss it, saying logically that we had no use for a pig and I had absolutely no interest in raising one for meat, so there was no need to entertain the conversation further.  But then I started volunteering for Pony Up Rescue for Equines in Olalla and met two particular pigs that made me consider things a little differently.

Precious and Perfect are their names. Juliana and Kune Kune mixes, they both weigh about 200 lbs each and are the sweetest girls imaginable. New to the operation at the time, I mentioned that my husband (fiance at the time) wanted pigs and Rosemary, the president of the organization and owner of the farm, began informing me about all the things pigs are capable of doing for you and your farm. They are great rototillers for one, are extremely smart, and a great solution for any leftover produce or garden scraps you may have lying about. She offered to adopt them to me and I considered it enough to ask Phil about it.

Precious and Perfect did come live with us for a short time, but we weren't quite setup for them and it became pretty clear early on that they might be better suited back in their large paddock at Pony Up rather than here on our farm with the highway noise and less room to run around. We cared for them and gave them plenty of love, but Rosemary missed them and they missed her. Pigs have memory and are very empathetic creatures. They returned to Pony Up after a few months of fostering with us and are still there happily trotting about their large pigyard with their new sister Maizy, a potbelly pig that was taken in by the rescue last year. I still see these sweet girls during my volunteer shifts and they still enjoy scratches and the bananas I bring them as treats.

So, where am I going with this? Well, Precious and Perfect weren't the only pigs to grace the soil of Crow's Croft Farm. In August of 2016, I went on a business trip to San Diego. Phil was home working and minding the major house project going on at the time. Our roof was being completely redone and restructured. He kept me informed the entire week with pictures of the progress. My favorite was the picture he sent me of the living room with no ceiling other than blue sky above. It was a huge undertaking, but completely necessary. As you can imagine, there were a lot of pictures sent my way during that week in San Diego, so I didn't think twice really when my phone alerted me to a text message from Phil while I was out having dinner with a mutual friend of ours mid-week. My thoughts were centered on "oh, another update on the roof." You can imagine my surprise when this picture was what I found.

Phil and Willard the piglet, August 2016

Our mutual friend laughed for a good five minutes while I stared at the photo after showing it to him and calmly answered the text with, "Um...who is that?"

Phil's response "Meet Willy Freeway Nelson Days!" As you can plainly tell, my husband has a knack for choosing names for our pets.

"He's cute. Where did he come from?" was my response.

Later that night during our evening call, Phil filled me in. A friend of mine was working in Port Orchard at a chiropractic office at the time and some one had stopped in with this little guy asking if anyone knew who he and his siblings belonged to since they were running along the highway. This small male piglet was caught, but the rest were not. My friend, having a farm, was handed the piglet and asked if she could take it to safety. She brought it to our farm. Phil said she pulled up with this piglet snuffling around the cab of her truck and running along the floorboards. She asked him if we could take him, if not, she would have to take him home and she wasn't sure that was a great idea. She knew nothing about pigs.

So, Phil took him, named him, and set him up in a large dog kennel in the basement. He then ran to the feed store and bought a nursing bottle and milk replacement formula. By the time I arrived home from San Diego, Phil and the little pig were best pals. Willy, who we renamed Willard since it seemed to fit his personality more to us, was quite the little character and he LOVED his milk. Pigs live for food in general, so he could be led anywhere with the promise of that bottle. Also typical for a pig, he was adamantly against messing in his kennel - no way was he going to leave a mess where he ate and slept! He would scream and snort and run around the kennel, knocking his little butt against the walls to alert us that he needed to be let outside. Then he would trot out the back door, do his business, and then run over to our feet to scratch his little body against the toes of our boots. Inquiries had been made and posts put up on lost pet sites...no answers.

Caelen bottle feeding Willard the piglet

Here was the trouble - most pigs at young ages are very difficult to identify as far as breed goes. For all we knew, he could be a full grown hog weighing in over 600 pounds when he grew up. I dove into researching pigs, Phil ordered a few books on pigs, and I called up our vet to have him checked out. It was summer, so Phil fenced off another portion of our rapidly dwindling dog yard (the ducks already occupied half of it) and I hung netting over the top to discourage birds of prey. Willard was growing quickly and he was very insistent in his kennel and making a lot of noise. At the time, Phil worked from home and I was in the process of doing so as well and it was distracting. So, we gave him an outdoor pen to play in during the day.

Our vet visited and checked him out. He said he was likely a mini breed of some variety, a pot belly mini was the most likely. He gave him his shots, an experience that introduced me to just how loud a pig can scream in protest, and then taught me some techniques on calming him down, distracting him, and some pointers on feed and habitat.

 We fell in love with his little cute snorts and his very insistent behavior. He had little white socks above his black hooves, and a pink heart on his nose...but the rest of him was black. His brown eyes were so expressive and he quickly demonstrated to both of us how smart pigs can be. He learned how to knock off his water bottle and the more challenging we made it for him, the better he got at it. I caught him several times trying to "unlatch" the clasp that kept his pen door chained so he could get to some fresh grass he wanted instead. He never mastered it, but he KNEW that clasp opened the gate.I bought him a rain jacket and a cute red plaid coat and a leash. I had every intent on training him to be a pet pig, but Willard taught me very quickly that he was not that interested. I have only two photos of him wearing these garments. In under two minutes and with just a turn of my back, I would find him "naked" with his clothes in the middle of his pen, muddy, and stomped on by his four little feet just for good measure. His piglet tantrums were adorable, as irritated as I was by them at times. He learned that I meant food and he would grunt and carry on the minute he heard me moving about the house in the morning. Phil meant playtime and scratches and to this day they have a ritual with this. Phil scratches Willard's back and side and he instantly lays down and rolls so Phil can scratch him more.

Willard in his backyard pen

He began to root and dig. His snout had elongated into quite the effective spade and we marveled at the giant hole he dug in the middle of his pen. We joked he was digging to China and laughed when we would catch him digging, say his name, and he would answer with an indignant "snort" before going back to his work of excavating his backyard pen.

He had his pen during the day, but we brought him in at night to keep him warm. I kept reading up on pigs and found that they liked to be with a companion. I find this to be true of most animals, honestly, so this didn't surprise me. He grew bigger rapidly and in 6 months time was easily three times the size he was when he came to live with us. One day, while I was working away at my job diligently in the living room. Phil was on travel and Ilta was uncommonly alert and whining at the door for no reason I could determine, until I saw a flash of movement. It was a little black, pig behind sauntering across the driveway and through the field...to the big girls pen. Precious and Perfect were, at the time, still fostering with us and a quick glance out the back window showed me he had dug out of his pen and pushed open the back gate. Our little man had decided to go a-courting and he was none too pleased with me chasing after him, picking him up and carrying him back to the house and the backyard. He screamed the entire way in protest and kicked at me until I had no choice but to put him down. He immediately quieted, shook himself, grunted at me, and began sauntering back towards his original destination, intent on wooing the ladies living in the pen across the property. I raced to the backyard to grab a scoop of grain and a bucket and then sprinted back up front and shook it furiously. It appears that the way to a pigs heart is through its stomach and he came running at the sound.

I locked him back in his pen, lined the gate and his pen with cement blocks we had stacked in the back yard, put a horse panel across the dog yard gate to reinforce it, went back inside and promptly scheduled his neutering appointment before returning to my work. Phil and I both hated that day. Our vet and his assistants were great, but the squeals and screams were deafening throughout the house and even Ilta, the lab, hid until it was over. Pain meds were administered, but the holding in place even with sedatives was what Willard protested about loudly. He recovered quickly though and without issue. After a month or two, his manner became slightly more mild, but he seemed curious about company. He touched noses with Ilta through the fence, snorted at the ducks and followed them along the fenceline, and he dug and rooted and played about his pen each day. We bought him an cozy doghouse and finalized his pen for outdoor living. He told me in true pig tantrum fashion that he didn't like that I had positioned his house with the doorway facing away from the house by flipping it over and settling into it and staring at the door, grunting when we came out to look as if to say "see, I fixed it."

He was getting too big for his dog kennel and he didn't like being in it unless it was late at night and it was time to sleep. We talked about getting him a friend, but didn't act on it. If there's anything we've learned since we decided to build this farm, it was that things had a way of coming to us and so, in March of 2017, something did.

Precious and Perfect returned to Pony Up not long after a little white pig was rescued by Rosemary. She was small and was taken out of one of the worse situations I have ever heard about. My research and interaction with Willard had taught me that pigs were not only very smart, but very empathetic and emotional creatures. This pig had been very abused. Rope burns circled her neck and hind legs, she was terrified to be touched, and the pictures Rosemary had seen on Craigslist advertising her for sale or trade were horrifying. Her eyes were sad and she shied away from any touch in fear. Rosemary had taken in a potbelly pig named Maizy at the rescue as well and she had hoped that this little girl would be a good companion for her, but Maizy was much bigger and two minutes in the stall with her resulted in the new resident getting assaulted pretty violently. Rosemary separated them, but didn't know what the next step would be. She set the new pig up in one of the dog yards with a cozy house for her to sleep in and she sent me photos of her. She was slightly bigger than Willard and appeared to be the same breed, or very similar. Rosemary had been told she was a mini potbelly and just barely over a year old. I drove over to meet her, brought her home,  and named her Petunia.

Petunia upon intake at Pony Up

Animals that are abused are not much different than people in their responses. Trust has to be won and even a pig who loves food will remain cautious until she knows you mean her no harm. We had one third of the dog yard still available and with Willard in his pen, we set Petunia loose in the remaining third to check things out. She refused to come out of the kennel at first until we were several steps away, but she finally did. She nibbled the banana I put out for her and then the apples. We talked to her softly and fed her treats. She remained aware of us and nervous, but she relaxed a little when she saw and heard Willard squealing at her from his pen. I minimized contact between them until the vet could see her, but her little tail wagged at the sight of a new friend and Willard paced the fence and called at her too. Petunia needed a bath badly and Phil and I had to resort to dousing her with warm water as she evaded us in the pen to get most of the grime off of her. She then protested loudly when I snuck up on her eating and rubbed her quickly with a towel to take away most of the water and keep her from chilling, but it was then that she gave me the first indication that this was a sweet, loving pig that had known affection at one time and craved it. She shivered with fear, but didn't fight me and the more I rubbed her the more she leaned into the touch. She followed me hesitantly but happily when I led her inside to the large dog kennel Phil had setup for her next to Willard's in my office in the basement. I had a small dish of grain, apples, and carrots and she munched them happily after climbing into her kennel and its fresh, warm blankets. She eventually allowed me to scratch her side and it broke my heart to see fresh tears on her sweet face. I had heard that pigs cried, but had never seen it. I told her tearfully she would never be hurt again and she grunted and snuggled up in her blankets to sleep. Willard was let in and he trotted directly to his kennel next to hers focused on his dinner. Unable to sleep that night, I crept quietly downstairs to check on the two pigs and saw them both sleeping peacefully noses pointed at each other in their kennels. I learned that night that Petunia had a sweet, soft, whistling snore.

Petunia smiling in her sleep

Petunia got more vocal and more trusting over the next few weeks. We had a slight setback when the vet came to take a look at her, vaccinate her, and take blood samples to check her overall health. She was about 11 months old, too late to spay safely, and in need of some good nutrition, but otherwise, healthy. Since Willard was neutered, there was no need to spay her. We introduced her and Willard to each other properly and they were fast friends. She adored him, snuggled with him, and doted on him. She vocalized a lot when in my office and napped frequently, smiling always. I fed her the same high quality grain Willard ate and lots of veggies. In a matter of months, she transformed in to a beautiful little girl pig. We called them our "Ying and Yang Piggies"- Willard all black with his white feet and pink beauty mark, and Petunia with her white fur, pink skin, and one solitary black patch over her eye. Then the day came, we stopped bringing them in at night. They snuggled together in the dog house which rapidly became too small for them. They worked together to "remodel" it by ripping the boards off one side. Petunia also became Willard's partner in crime. He would dig and she would wriggle under the fence. One day I came home to find her wandering my garden. I called to her and she came to me proudly wagging her tail as if to say "see what I did, Mom?" Willard was screaming, running along the fence of the pen, distraught that his lady friend was out and about without him. I reinforced the fence and Phil and I began to make plans for a more permanent solution for them.

Best Friends

And they called it piggy love...

Phil and I had begun groundwork and preparation for the building of our barn and we sketched into the plans a large, proper pig pen with a comfortable, insulated pig house that Phil had built originally for Precious and Perfect. Our excavator finished the pen rapidly, using large retaining cement blocks to build the back half of it to prevent Willard from digging out. We graveled it and fenced it with hog panel. When it was ready, I filled the little house with fresh pine shavings and filled a bucket with grain to lure them into their new home. Phil still loves to tell this story and describe me coming around the back of the house shaking a bucket of grain with two little pigs, one black and one white, trotting dutifully and intently alongside me. They went right into their new pen, ate their prize, and began exploring. They have been living in it ever since. The horse pasture has been built and Charlie and Dolly now live next to them. Dolly has finally accepted the pigs and now knows that though they may smell like it they are NOT bears and I have even on occasion caught her and Petunia touching noses through the fence. Charlie shares his timothy grass with them both during the summer months by pushing it through their mutual fence line so they can help him eat it.

Charlie the horse and the pigs saying hello

Willard and Petunia in their new pen

Willard is still digging to China in the new pen and Petunia still dotes on him. They trot around in their pen happily in the summer, enjoying the shade of their house or their shade sail when its hot, sometimes wallowing in the mud puddles I create with the hose to cool them off. Pigs aren't able to sweat except through their nose which is why they cool themselves down with mud or water. We have a small pool for them too that they like to play in from time to time. Willard likes to take a bath in the water trough, so there are now two troughs and he usually is respectful enough to just use one of them to wallow. They love their fresh veggies and fruits and they greet me every morning with exuberance and tell me they are starving. It's been cold this winter, but they snuggle up together in their little house and keep each other warm. Our vet has commented on how beautiful their coats are and how healthy they look. They have taught me a lot I didn't know about pigs and about myself.

I have learned that pigs are even more empathetic and emotional than I thought. They do cry, they do show their joy, they do smile, and they do have memory. They are incorrigible and they require a lot of activity and a lot of work if you want to train them. They will remember something someone did that hurt them and will react to that fear. They are clever and insistent in their need to just be pigs - they want to root, they want to explore, and they will keep their pen tidy and to their liking. Rearranging something will result in them putting it back the way they wanted it. Petunia has taught me that with enough time, old wounds can heal and trust can be gained. She has taught me forgiveness and that just being kind, loving, and patient can turn a bad past into a beautiful future. I have also learned that their favorite treat is watermelon and pumpkins and they never see to tire of either. 

We have faced more adversity in regards to our pigs than any of our other animals on the farm. I have stopped posting about them on Facebook because I cannot civilly take the bacon jokes that come with those posts. I have become protective and adamant about the fact that these pigs are NOT food. I understand and accept that a majority of people only see pigs as food and I know I will never change that fact about the world. I do, however, have the opportunity to show people what pigs are really like and I do so every chance I get. I look forward to Willard and Petunia greeting me every day when I visit their pen. When I am having a rough day, they can easily make me smile or laugh by just being themselves. They are part of this farm and they will call it home for the rest of their days. I have become a person who loves pigs.

Willard and Petunia - October 2017