Kevin, you were awesome!

Kevin when he arrived at Elk Cliff Farm 

If you're going to raise a pig for your freezer you'd be lucky to have a pig like Kevin.  I think everyone who met him liked him, that is, except for our other pigs.  Maybe we didn't give him enough time but he never fit in with the others so we brought him over to the yard, close to our house.  He got along wonderfully with the standard donkeys and Baxter.

He was an escape artist.  He knew which gates weren't hung properly and figured out how to lift them off the hinges.  He discovered the sliding door to the donkey barn also swung out when you pushed on it.  He took advantage of my forgetfulness when I didn't latch his gate.  Luckily he was so tame and people friendly he would just hang out in the yard until we'd find him loose and he'd follow us back to his fence when we called his name.  Every morning when I was across the road and had finished up milking the goats and cow Kevin would begin carrying on.  He could hear my car from a couple hundred yards away and wouldn't stop hollering till I got back.  He greeted every car that drove up our driveway.

As his appointment with the butcher approached I hated to see him and Baxter playing, running up and down the fence line having a grand old time.   It made me feel guilty and a little sad.

Today was Kevin's last day at the farm.  I cried a bit as we got ready to load him in the trailer.  A friend of ours built a crate and wanted to try it out using Kevin as the guinea pig.  We wondered how it would go coaxing him in, if we'd need a ramp, if he'd destroy the crate because he didn't like being closed in, etc.  Even in the end Kevin was agreeable.

He rode along the whole way looking very at ease and happy, like he was out for a joyride.  I didn't cry at the butcher because Kevin made it easy.  He looked happy right up to the very end.  As it should be.

Ok, I'm crying now.