The Beane's have been out of town on a Babymoon (they're having a girl in a few months!) and needed a last minute pig and chicken sitter for a few nights (normally their neighbor does it, but they've been traveling a lot lately fitting in family visits while Heather can still travel), so we volunteered, knowing the kids would love it. Cora, especially, loves to help cart buckets of food and water around, go in to feed the chickens, slop the pig feed down into the troughs, and collect eggs. (Bonus for us is that we get to take the eggs home, and they have lots of layers, since our girls are a bunch of lazy freeloaders...) She has even changed her career aspirations from ballet dancer/ballet instructor to farmer. She doesn't want to work on a farm - she wants her OWN farm. But she won't LIVE there with the animals - she'll be living with us. Upon further questioning, she agreed that it might be a good idea to stay close to the animals at night in case something happens to one of them, so James has been recruited to help her out, and Jay and I are welcome to build a house on her property as well. Her FOUR kids will each have specific jobs (one to collect eggs, one to milk the cow, one to feed all the many cats and dogs, and one to water the garden - because we'll need to grow most of our food so that she doesn't have to go to the grocery store... she dislikes going to Kroger), as will James and Jay. Lucky for Jay, he'll even (finally) get his goat(s) there too - she says he can have all the goats he wants when he lives on her farm. Sounds like a pretty good deal for me! I then asked "What about me?! What will I do?" and she told me that I could just relax. I think my retirement is starting to look pretty good...
This particular evening was challenging to feed the mama and papa pig because it had rained heavily. The mud FLEW as they ran back and forth in excitement of feeding time. (See the upturned tail and smile on her face as she waits impatiently for Jay?) We had to keep distracting them while he bailed water out of their trough (before he could put fresh feed in). Have you ever tried distracting a pair of hungry 200-300 lbs hogs? They're smarter than they look...
The little piggies are fed through an innovative tube and funnel set up (Nathan has an engineering mind similar to Jay's, even though he's also an ecologist - of course, he did grow up on a farm, so he's likely known all these tricks his whole life). It was a little tricky to dump the rain water and fill the tub with food with 3 little noses in the way. There are two tubs though, so Jay and the kids just ran back and forth between them to get the job done while the piggies were partially distracted by bits of feed tossed into the mud.
The Beane Farm has a lot of chickens (not the 80 they used to have, but still, a LOT). They need fresh food every day. Cora would have spent the whole half hour in the coop if we'd let her, she's such a chicken lover. James happily helped, but kept his eye on the two roosters the entire time...
