Bringing Home the Bacon

Our family spent the first week of August making multiple trips to the Ohio State Fair. Along the way we picked up a number of ribbons and sweated out the armpits of a dozen shirts. Like last year , Morgan and I snuck away to see some of the sites of the fair that weren't within the four walls of the hog barn. I used a "cartoon" feature on my camera phone to take this photo. Artsy. As usual, Ryan was the star of the Michael family pig showing crew. He racked up quite a few ribbons over the week, including champion Landrace barrow (Landrace barrow = white castrated pig with floppy ears). Here he shows his Yorkshire gilt (white female with upright ears). There are probably readers of this blog who would pay good money to see how I used to get in the ring and show our hogs. Fortunately, I have pumped out enough junior showmen to retire and become chief photographer and water bottle holder, however, it's all hands on deck when we have three pigs in the same class

Somewhere along the line Husband acquired a sow in his pig herd named Holly. Insert joke about me here ____.  Since almost all daughters are named after their mothers, we now have a number of Hollys running around the place eating whatever she can find, making a mess and cranking out offspring. Also, the hogs named Holly are here too. At least the Holly pigs are of high quality. Here is one Holly who made the cut for the State Fair last year. See her official registration paper with the Yorkshire Club, officially naming her Holly 96-5. Earlier this week, we welcomed a few more Hollys to the farm. After viewing this video, Husband dared me to title this post: Holly's big tits, however, I don't need that kind of search engine traffic. Mother-to-mother, I applaud Holly the pig for her devotion to lactation and congratulate her on nine healthy babies. And don't worry about me being offended by my namesakes. I enacted revenge on Husband years ago by renaming some of