Diversify!

Just like a personal financial portfolio, sometimes farms that have 'all their eggs in one basket' so to speak, decide to include other endeavors in their farming operation - for the same reasons as a portfolio - for financial protection. Take, for instance, the current agriculture market: a farmer who's got cattle AND grain would be balanced out between the sky-high prices of corn and the falling prices of cattle.

When I was growing up, we had mostly cattle, some sheep, and some hogs. Our hog operation has been slowly declining over the years, to the point that last fall, we got rid of the last of them. Or, what we THOUGHT were the last of them. This past weekend, dad decided to go ahead and do some more dabbling in hog production. The ruddy little mud maggots (a term of endearment, I ASSURE you) arrive this weekend, so preparations commenced in anticipation of their arrival. We set about doing things like making sure the pen was still secure enough to keep them in, putting bedding down, and getting their food and water situation lined out.

Check, check, check, check. All is well, right up to the 'food' point. Drat. We didn't anticipate having any more hogs, so when the last of 'em left, we didn't do anything with the feeder (gotta love foreshadowing. Cue the dramatic music). Of course, when I went to clean it Monday morning so the corn in it could flow freely to the trough, at least four inches of gunk in the bottom of it was FROZEN SOLID. And I mean solid. Like concrete. Like bedrock. ... Did I mention that it was SOLID??

So I go's to hammerin' and chiselin' on the frozen gunk. And it doesn't give. At all. For an hour and a half. By this time, I'm cold, p!ssed off, and running out of good ideas. I had surmised that the only way to get all this crap out of the feeder would be to get ALL the corn out of it and go at it from the inside. Ugh. NOT at all the easiest scenario imaginable. But, the feeder's gotta be ready, and the weather ain't gonna warm up much between now and next weekend.

Fine. But how in Missouri's frozen wasteland am I gonna get this done? I decide to get the tractor, put the bucket on the front of it, put that next to the feeder and shovel the corn out of the feeder into the bucket. But, just running willy-nilly into an untried-and-untrue plan isn't really how things are done on Broken B. So, I ran the plan past management (aka Dad and Mom) and got executive approval to carry on.

Dad, on surveying the situation, quoth: Why, this sh!t's frozen down! and vacated to warmer environs indoors. He was the smart one. Mom, on seeing an opportunity to prove Dad wrong (heh heh), stayed and mined for corn with me.

We did finally triumph, albeit at the expense of our backs and hands. But, by gawd, them pigs haveta have sustenance to grow, and now they shall! So they can git in my belly! Mmmmm, pork chops. Hey, if you think about it, in a very distant way, it's like the commercial goes: "It's Shake-n-Bake! An' I helped!"