Back To "Nickle Plate Farm" or "My Garden of Eden"

Nickle Plate Farm

The large pig pen was beyond the barnyard, just up the old road a ways.  Because of the wafting smells the pig pen location was pretty far from the house, however, that's not to say that on a hot summer day when a sudden gust of air blew in just the right direction, you could get a strong whiff that reached clear to the house.  My grandma would cut tall coarse weeds which she called pigweeds and filled the wheelbarrow full.  Full --- meaning the tall weeds hung over the sides of the wheelbarrow. She pushed the wheelbarrow to the pig pen and dumped the weeds inside.  Later on, in the year when the pig nuts,(a species of hickory nuts), would fall to the ground she would gather the nuts in buckets to feed to the pigs. You could say we did organic farming. 

I followed my grandma everywhere. I followed her to the pig pen where I peeked through the fence to watch the large black and white spotted hogs eat as my grandma poured the wet sloppy mixture from buckets into the long narrow wooden trough.  The hogs had a keen sense of smell and so it wasn't long before a few more hogs came on the run to join in the evening meal.  They snorted, squealed, rooted, and slopped around in the wet mixture as well as bumped and pushed each other out of the way.  Isn't that just like a bunch of pigs?

Now a pig has a large snout which is made for specifically rooting. Pigs love to root in the dirt, in the mud, around old trees, tree roots, as well as under fences, which accounts for an occasional pig on the loose. The wooden boards along the bottom of the woven wire fence made the hog pen look more like a fort but then it takes a fortress to keep the large two-hundred pound, mud-caked pigs confined. I never had to chase a pig. I missed out on that opportunity. My brother says he had the pleasure of chasing pigs back into the pen. He claims it wasn't too difficult. I raised my eyebrows at that as we talked on the phone, reminiscing about Nickle Plate Farm and those happy pigs.

I know it's needless to say but I'll say it anyway, we had plenty of bacon on our table.