Free Range Corn: Part 2: Looming Bacon Shortage

I not-so-humbly think my readers are smarter than the average bear and fairly self-reliant so I need to pitch this out there. If you’ve got great advice about gardening, particularly the proven solutions used by gardeners for centuries; don’t tell me. I’m an idiot. Put it in a book and sell it. I’m serious! We need that shit written down and stored for current and future generations. Don’t just tell some rando blogger, teach the world. Mentor a kid or make a YouTube video or sell seeds or whatever.

I’m not a gardener by choice. I’m too fuckin’ busy all summer to deal with damn plants. Unless I’m starving, at which point I’ll get deadly serious very fast, I prefer non-plant activities.

Also my summers are insanely busy. I barely keep the lawn mowed and sometimes fail at that. I can spare the time to keep animals alive, some of my vehicles working, hunt during the right season, stack as much wood as I can, and occasionally sleep in a tent. Beyond that I’m booked and overbooked. Every minute of summer has a dozen urgent issues and many competing fun things which all want to happen at once. That’s why I’ve been posting about dirt bikes. You know what I’m not posting about? Turnips; I’ve had zero turnip posts so far.

In fall I’ll fit hunting in to my life with glee. My take is not as impressive as a gardener. I wish I could go out there and stalk a big bag of carrots; maybe sneak up on a salad. I’d be ever so happy if I could take a crossbow into the forest and come back with ten pounds of potatoes. Sadly, that’s not how it works. Even for hunting I’ve got big game but after that things get sketchy. I hunt squirrels for fuck’s sake. Nobody hunts squirrel well enough to fill the freezer. I do it because I like the link to nature but if I could go out and maybe shoot some pancakes I’d be all over that action! Alas, beyond a few wild blueberries and whatnot, I’m stuck with meat.

Then winter comes and kicks me in the balls for 9 months. That’s the biggest driver of things; my main occupation in summer is doing all the living that winter makes hard or impossible. Winter really is the season of death.

Now I can start the story:

Shit went down this spring and my pig fence was even more trashed than usual. Which is OK because some other shit went down and I couldn’t source piglets.

Piglets were just plain unavailable. Sometimes the universe is like that. Recently the universe is A LOT like that. Lets face it, society abandoned even the pretense of intelligence in 2020 and there’s no two ways about it. The world has been crawling deeper up its own ass ever since. By now I’m not upset I couldn’t find piglets. I’m just happy the lights are still on and there aren’t tanks on the streets… yet.

So, the boat had sailed on my critter plans. What to do? By the way, if you’re reading someone’s survivalist/homesteader/back-to-the-land blog and shit never goes wrong, you’re reading fiction. I’m just sayin’.

Anyway the pig pen is a never ending problem. The fence is older than me, and like me, it is completely shot. It’s always shot because I have the bare minimum available labor time and a budget of pocket change. Is that not the eternal challenge? Each spring I struggle to patch the fence together with whatever components I can scrape together. Each spring I barely get it done a day or two before the piglets arrive.

Piglets are cute little escape artists. Not every spring but far too often, they outwit me. They escape and I wind up chasing them through the forest like an idiot. Once I had to track them after they were gone overnight. I was less a farmer than a damn bloodhound (but that’s another story).

I like piglets. They’re smart and inquisitive… like happy intelligent children. Piglets in a new environment will explore. They’ll find whatever part of my physical fence is has sagged too much. They’ll find whatever section of the electric fence has shorted out (sometimes within minutes of arrival!). They’re also fast. They’ll zip under the fence and tear ass for the county line in a flash! I wish I could distract them with a box of Legos or something.

After a few weeks things will have changed. I’ll have trained the little footballs to avoid the electric fence. Once they learn what a zap feels like they’ll avoid the wire even if it’s dead. They’ll also have trained me to find and repair all the shorts in the fence. Also, I’ll have gone a long way in teaching them that I’m a nice guy that brings food. Or you can say they’ve trained me to serve their every whim.

Within a few weeks, if things go according to plan, I’ll have trained them even more. The risky part of the season is over. Even if the pigs do escape I just call their name and lure them back into the pen with a treat and a pat on the head. I’ll stand at the forest edge calling to my wandering livestock. “I’ve got student loan forgiveness! I’ve got socialized medicine! It’s all free today!” I’ll have a bucket of treats… often sugary breakfast cereal. They love that shit! You think I’m joking but I really do call out social programs and government “gimmie” programs. It amuses me and the pigs don’t care so long as they get their Honeycomb.

Once I’ve got their attention, the pigs will race to me to say “hi”. I’ll pat them on the head and assure them they’re nice pigs. They’ll trot right behind me like I’m the pied piper. I lead them back into the pen and give them their Honeycomb / free student loans. If you think I’m exaggerating to score points in a political argument, I’m not. Pigs are just as smart and just as dumb as a lot of people.

As the pigs get a little older they quit trying to escape entirely. They’re older and lazier and gradually ignoring their brain’s computing power; like teenagers. They’re still fit and healthy but they’re settled into a new routine and they won’t rock the boat. I keep teaching them that I’m a nice guy (and I really do like the little beasts). They’re closer to pets than pigs by then.

Eventually they’re like college students; they wouldn’t escape even if they could; which they can’t because they won’t bother. They’re happily living in a large comfortable area and a nice guy brings them food and cares for their every need. They don’t seek bigger worlds because they’ve got Netflix and a couch. They’re friendly and nice but transition from clever speed demons into lard-ass dipshits; which is why they remind me of college students.

(Have you noticed that college students don’t exercise their will to leave the University? They cling to that nest like a baby bird who won’t fly. They could go anywhere, anytime, for any reason… but they don’t leave until they have to. They’re in a place with easy classes, recreation facilities, food plans, and dorms with awesome broadband. Why would they leave that for a shitty apartment and a job? Comfort sucks their initiative right out and fills the gap with complacency.)

Continuing the analogy, by mid summer, I’m just like the student loan bureaucrat at the registrar. I’ll hand over virtually anything the students… er I mean pigs. I don’t care how much it costs because I’m fattening them up. They’ll pay for all that fancy feed in the end. It doesn’t mean I hate pigs (or most college students).

It means I know the difference between a clever inquisitive free being and livestock.

I seem to have gotten off track. I’ll re-orient in my next post.