It’s that time of year again. It’s fair time. Yes the smell of the county fair is thick in the air, along with all the humidity. It smells awesome downwind from the funnel cake stand, but not, of course, from the pig barns.
That’s where I spent a good 75% of my county fair time when I was in my preteens and teens -- in the hog barn. Yep, I showed hogs at the county fair. I was just that cool.
You don’t find many girls out in the hog barns. A handful of girls show cattle, a handful show horses, and the majority of 4H farm girls show lambs. I, however, showed pigs. Why, you ask? Because my dad said so. And that was the end of that conversation.
But there were a few benefits to being one of the few girls who showed pigs. Slap on a pair of high-heeled boots, a belt with a shiny buckle, and do your hair and makeup, and you are a shoe-in for runner-up champion in showmanship. I think the men judging thought anyone who would slop through the mud in heels and perfectly pressed jeans while keeping eye-to-eye contact deserved at least that much.
I eventually discovered that being one of the only girls at the hog barns could be used to my advantage. Not, of course, with my brother. He knew I could handle myself and it was all an act. But what the other club members didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them. I would wash my own pigs, because I was particular about them looking clean. But I could bat my eyes at one or two of the guys in my group and they would fight over who got to trim the hair around the ears and tail of my show hogs for me. They also could be convinced to scoop the poop out of my pen for me, and take my turn raking the aisle. (In addition to being judged on how good our animals were and on showmanship in the ring, our club was judged on herdsmanship, which was how clean we kept our part of the stables. We had to keep the pens clean and keep the aisles raked, as well. Our club almost always won the top award for herdsmanship.)
However, the meager number of benefits of showing pigs never outweighed the grossness. Let’s start with the smell. Just in case you were wondering, pigs smell. Really bad. But the worst pig smell was at the pig farm a few miles away from our house. My dad would take my brother and me over to pick out our pigs for that season. We each generally got about three pigs. I always wondered why my dad would bother bringing us along, because he and the man we bought the pigs from did all the picking out for us. But the smell at that place, wow! It’s the kind of smell that stays on your clothes and body, and doesn’t wash off with just one shower. Mom could smell us coming. Seriously. Imagine that smell you smell while traveling past a feedlot, but then imagine standing knee-deep in the middle of it – enclosed in a building with no windows for fresh air. Gross.
Once we brought the little piggies home, then the chores began. We had to water and feed them twice a day. My brother made sure I always did my share of this. He was not going to do my chores for me. All pig pens don’t start out looking like pig pens. Our pen was a large, fenced area that contained several short pig “houses” that they could go into to get out of the sun. But what started out like any other piece of ground with dirt and grass would quickly be uprooted and covered with mud holes and pig goo in just a matter of days. We contributed to the mess, purposely leaving on the hose so the pigs could make their own mud holes. Pigs really do enjoy coating themselves with all that slop to keep cool.
Despite what you might think, pigs are not dumb. And they unfortunately seem to have their own sense of humor. More than once they would carry off the feeding or watering trays to the far corners of the pen, so we would have to plod across the muddy wastelands to retrieve it. During that trip, at least one of the pigs would manage to knock either my brother or I over into the biggest mud hole. It was as if they had worked out ahead of time which one of them was going to stand innocently behind us and which one was going to come charging by to make us trip over the other pig’s back. Pig snorts do sound incredibly like laughter.
But the splash in the mud hole was not the worst job. That came when it was time to load up the pigs and take them into town for the fair. I’m not sure how other people got their pigs to town, but we hauled them in the back of one of dad’s old grain trucks. Although we had worked with the pigs a few times so we could lead them around to show them with our little show whips, the pigs did not want to go up the shoot and into the back of that truck. Again, they were not stupid. They knew this was not going to end well. This was also a time my brother and I learned that dad knew a whole bunch of cuss words. This was completely new information.
Once the pigs were finally loaded, it was time for my brother and me to wash off a summer’s worth of mud and grossness to see what color the pigs really were for the show. If you are squeamish, you might want to jump ahead and skip the rest of this paragraph. I’m guessing most hog farms have a concrete containment area on which to do this washing. We had the old grain truck. My brother and I would roll up our jeans and shirts and jump in the back of the truck with all those pigs armed with only a scrub brush, a hose, and a bottle of dishwashing liquid. One of us would rinse with the hose while the other would pin a pig to the side, slather it with soap, and go to work scrubbing off the gook. Guess which job I generally got. Here’s a hint. I didn’t get the hose. It may not sound so bad, but I should probably mention that when pigs get nervous, they poop. They poop a lot. Imagine the back of a truck trailer with six pigs, all pooping a lot, into a soupy, soapy, muddy mess. And we were walking around in this mess generally barefoot with our jeans rolled up. Oh, good times, good times. Dad would open a small hatch at the back of the truck to let a little of this mess pour out. And as the mess got deeper, he would tilt the back of the truck for the mess to run out faster. There are no words to describe the amount of grossness.
And people wondered why, on the last day of the fair when we sold our pigs at the auction, that no one cried. Almost all the girls with sheep cried. All the 4H kids knew where the animals were headed. But those of us showing pigs were laughing all the way to the bank.
Looking back, the experience was probably good preparation for parenthood. You do have to feed and water kids, probably more than twice a day. They like to rub up against you when they are wet or yucky. Something always needs trimmed and washed. Loading them into a vehicle sometimes causes a few cuss words. And again, there can be no words to describe the amount of grossness that you experience.
My husband says it makes him laugh out loud to think of me showing pigs at the fair. Even today I still look forward to the county fair. We hit the rides and the food. And before we go, I always stop in the pig barns and remember back with pride. And then I kick a little hay in the aisle and tell the kid raking he missed a spot. It’s just the kind of girl I am.
love it.
ReplyDeletecan i just mention how glad i was to have missed out on that?