Thursday, August 28, 2014

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.

6 comments:

  1. This post makes me want to be a vegetarian.

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  2. This Little Piggie went to market, this little piggie stayed home, this little piggie had roast beef, this little piggie had none...Sweet Kevin's Eulogy...����

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  3. Ditto, Mrs. G. When I consider the personality and life of Kevin, and wonder what I myself am, I wonder what gives me the right to end his life. Because I enjoy the taste of his flesh? I certainly could survive (and comfortably!) without killing Kevin...add to that another layer of factory farming--keeping animals in confined spaces where they don't get a chance to discover how to unlatch a gate, or play with the dogs, and it's really hard to justify taking the animal's life.

    But props to you, Karen, for being kind and compassionate to the animals. I am just musing here, not making a judgement on meat-eating, for I still consume meat rarely-to-occasionally. Like many moral grey areas, it's tricky to decide where to draw the line.

    I'm happy for Kevin's life!

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  4. Am I sad Kevin is no longer hollering for me? Sure. Am I sorry I raised a happy pig to feed me and my family? Not at all.

    Yes, be happy for Kevin's life.

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  5. Life. Of humans, animals, plants, bacteria, archaea, protists, fungae? How many lives end during the growing, harvesting, and transportation of "vegan" foods? A friend recently posted this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zfzT7QfLZc

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