Good Old Days

We've had to cancel our annual pig auction. This is a financial blow and a loss of a 25-year+ family tradition.

Usually the whole family chips in to make this happen. My job is to handle the auction clerking, which includes logging the sales, collecting payments, and convincing someone else to notify Husband should there be an error in any of that.

My tools for that task included a Windows 95 laptop and a dot matrix printer--the kind that uses the attached paper with the pin holes on the side. If none of that last sentence made any sense to you, then see this pic and know that the technology we used before 1999 was index cards and stuff called carbon paper. We only stopped using this computer in 2019!

For the kids, every year meant a new coming of age milestone of being allowed to go help wash pigs, or old enough to stay for the whole auction, sometimes until nearly midnight.

Every year we load up the pigs at the farm and truck them to a local fairgrounds where we hold the auction. The pig loading itself is full of tradition, including supervisory Grandmas and lots of donuts.

Looking through this blog, I found these unpublished photos from about 5 years ago. Here are the trucks leaving for the fairgrounds.

Here is the barn crew that helped load the pigs. These kids are now old enough to drive the fairgrounds themselves!

There are so many memories from over the years. There's the times that internationally renowned pig groomer, Claude', visited the farm, the time a pig peed all over my jeans, the time some people took their pigs home in the back seat of their car, the time a family lost their new pig at McDonald's, and the time Husband yelled at us (oh, wait, that is every time!).

We know that health and safety are important, and we are glad the farmers and their feed suppliers are considered essential businesses. If you are in the market for a pig to show at the fair, then follow us on Facebook and let us know. We have several to sell.

I'm back to blogging. Check out my earlier 2020 posts:

- Time to do Unprecedented Things

- Young, Scrappy & Hungry