Green Acres.....

.... .is the place to be......

Farm living is the life for me...

(Song from the an old tv show, all you young'uns..)

We're 'country folk' as my mother used to say. We live out in the 'country'. And with all that peaceful living comes all kinds of unpeaceful problems and a an awful lot of uninvited quests.  There are opossums and families of raccoons that show up every night and make strange noises as they come across the back deck hoping for left over.... and still left outside...cat food. 

There are owls and coyotes hooting and howling. There are buzzards and hawks and little pairs of morning doves all doing their best to balance out the yin and the yang of country life. A life that 40 years ago gave us acres with only one other house in sight.... and they were our best friends.....now has many houses, many fences, many yards, and many animals of all kinds. 

We've had horses that broke through neighboring fences and came visiting. One climbed up on our back deck and all most gave us a heart attack when we glanced up and saw his big old snoot looking in at us through the window. That one loved us so much he refused to go home! He hung around for days, as did his predecessors throughout the years. Eventually some one misses them and they come looking but by then, they've eaten us out of house and home and made it tricky for the our dogs and cats to go outside.  Dogs want to bark and cats either want to run away, or the brave ones walk right under the horse hoofs and scare us!

We've had cows break through the same neighbor's fence, that ate all of the growing crops in our garden and trampled it so badly, the neighbor apologized by giving us a antique 'rake' ....the big old kind that you pull behind a tractor....that I had coveted for years.....rusty old thing that it was...I wanted it as' country yard art' and while it is covered with climbing ivy,now...I still love that falling apart old thing!

We've had entire families of deer that came day after day, and while they ate our garden, as well, we loved them enough to buy and put out a salt lick for them. We had  a pygmy goat that stayed for an entire week, even with our paper plate sign down by the road announced he was found.... but could something identify themselves, please,as having lost him?
  

We had a pedigreed apricot poodle who stayed for three solid days that I truly loved and wished we could have kept. His desperate owners finally saw that sign and told us he was his owners 'baby' and was named Beau, and boy, oh boy, were they happy to have him back.

We've had cats and dogs too numerous to mention that were dropped off as throwaways, or ones that simply live off the kindness of strangers and stopped by for meals. We took in three or four of them and fed the others as ferals and strays as long as they were around.

But this was a first. 
  A 200lb pig was on our deck last week, staring through the same living room window from the deck.
Now, he might now have been as big as the horse that stood in the same place on the back deck a couple of decades ago but still..he was a pig. 

And pigs are so darn strong and so determined that they can break through anything but an electric fence and so heavy that you don't dare try to shoo them off and if they charge..well, you're the one that needs to run. 

We'd heard that two of them from down the road escape periodically and ravage the neighborhood gardens. So, in spite of telling me to stay back, my hubby decided to chase this one away. He (the pig, not my husband) made a mad dash for the chicken coop and not wanting it trashed, the husband picked up one of the golf balls we keep out there as fake eggs to make the chickens want to lay more, and threw it at the pig to chase it away.  
 The pig ate the golf ball.

I said, " I wonder what that will do to him? He won't be able to 'pass' it will he?" 

Well, needless to say, after the chase and the throw and the lost of one of our golf balls, Mr. B didn't care what happened to the pig as long as he went home. So, he threw another one and hit the poor porker who finally decided this man meant business and headed next door, instead.

But guess what ?  Now, its our chickens. DH calls up to me in my sewing loft that our chickens are lined up again at the living room window, it's raining outside and they are not one bit happy. 

I run to get my camera to take their picture when what to my wondering eyes should appear.....two pigs are out in the back INSIDE the chicken coop. It's raining,the chickens are ready to in..but strangers have taken over the coop !

I yell.."There's two pigs in our chicken coop!" Now, the husband ( without looking) says "No, there's not."  Then he looks. Yep. Now, we have not ONE, but TWO pigs..... and they are inside the chicken coop... and they are eating our chicken feed! 
One of the pigs gets startled when the husband yells at him and he (the pig, not the husband)  reared up in too big of a hurry ) and  gets his head stuck inside the feeder's metal cylinder.  See him on the left inside his cylinder of a feeder? It was really, really stuck too! 

 

The husband is yelling, and clapping his hands thunderously,  as he charges the coop, screaming like a crazy man chasing wild pigs on the loose.  The once startled, but now scared... and running for his life pig...completely gets his pig head stuck in the 'iron mask' of the feeder and Leonardo Dicaprio, he is not.   This pig is completely beside himself with terror. 
 
 He can't decide which is worse, a stuck pig head or a maniacal human determined to do him him and have pork for dinner!

Somehow, two of them get chased off ....and one of them.....luckily the one in the plaid shirt......survives the exchange.

And it's no wonder our chickens would rather hang out with us than their own coop!

I'm getting my camera ready with a new sd card and fresh batteries.  I'm pretty sure THREE pigs will be back next time and all of them will now be wanting plaid shirts, instead!

 

   

When Pigs Fly

https://www.with-heart-and-hands.com/2019/05/when-pigs-fly.html?m=1

 

"The month of May started with a wild snort and a snuffle and an unexpected guest invading our home.

It was more of a May Day! May Day! than I'd ever imagined.


Little did I know that my house would turn into a bed and breakfast for some caged escapees and my house a pigsty....."     read the rest of that looonngg adventure @

Chickens and Pigtails

https://www.with-heart-and-hands.com/2015/03/chickens-and-pigtails.html?m=0 

Green Acres

https://www.with-heart-and-hands.com/2013/02/green-acres.html?m=1

Michele Bilyeu blogs With Heart and Hands as she shares a quilting journey through her life in Salem, Oregon and Douglas, Alaska and all of her AAQI Quilting. Sharing thousands of links to Free Quilt and Quilt Block Patterns and encouraging others to join in the Liberated Quilting Challenge and make or donate small art quilts to the Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative (AAQI) Help us change the world, one little quilt at a time!