Comments on: Farm Stories: Hog Killing

By: Jim Curley

Jim Curley — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 15:39:32 +0000

Moving hogs (and chasing the escaped ones) always provides great fodder for story-telling. I am not sure all our friends appreciate the tales, but within the family we relive them over and over.

Slaughter day on the farm is another event which inspires true and tall tales.

We have goats, chickens, a couple dairy cows, and hogs-but none inspire the stories that hogs do!

Being new to the life, we are glad to have neighbors who have farmed for years-like our 90-year old friend who shouted “Hit ‘em again! Hit ‘im again” after my first shot with the .22 failed to topple the beast on my first slaughter day.

By: Russell Arben Fox

Russell Arben Fox — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 03:09:46 +0000

Caleb, as always, you have my admiration. My family’s one experience with hogs ended in disaster. Most of pigs died in a freeze over the winter; the one boar that survived we intended to send to the butcher in the spring, but he tore loose, and we chased all around the farm. My father ended up shooting it with a rifle. After that (and similarly catastrophic experiment with sheep), we stuck to cows.

By: Bob Cheeks

Bob Cheeks — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 22:28:56 +0000

Beautiful! This is why Lawyer Stegal is a terrific writer, and subtle thinker!
Which reminds me of my first hog killing. My neighbor, Jim-Bob asked if I might render some assistance in dispatching his hogs several year back. “Sure,” I innocently replied.
I shot ‘em, he cut their throats.
The first one I shot with a .22 and when the hog merely gave me a disinterested look, as if he were thinking, “What in heavens name are you doing?” Jim-Bob suggested I go and get the .38.
The .38 stunned the porker and Jim-Bob was on ‘em with a rather long and sharp knife, making short work of the air passage and main arteries. Bloody work indeed, providing me with a new appreciation of bacon, pork chops, ham, and all that brother pig provides.
You should have seen Jim-Bob and his son, Little Jim, butcher cattle with a homemade tripod on the ridge just as the sun was setting.

By: Deb Potter

Deb Potter — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 17:15:03 +0000

Just try loading more than one – they are keen observers so a trick like the bucket trick only works once. Each needs a new technique. We did, however, slow two down one year with a bottle of rum to assist in loading.

By: D.W. Sabin

D.W. Sabin — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 16:53:06 +0000

That there is a rather arid wallow Farmer Stegall esq.. Mebee the freeze aint off yet. It seems such an ignoble end for a defendant to be ushered off whilst wearing a bucket. On the other hand, I admit to a certain sadistic fondness for our porcine friends. After falling once in a pigpen and fearing for my life, I watched , terrified and wetting my Well-Ironed Bermuda Shorts, as the hogs had the good sense to maul the missus Prized Pekinese instead of tender me, making that dog into a one-eyed plug-ugly worse than he was before. You have seen ugly when you’ve seen a two-eyed Pekinese but when you seen a Hog-Chewed Pekinese Cyclops, why all other forms of ugly perish in an instant. Obviously, said dog had a longer life than the poor piggies and auntie seemed to exhibit more than the usual relish during the Pork roast that fall.

Water that wallow sir. Yer pigs look too pink and parched.