Hogling Hoopla

So often within these newsletters I wax philosophical, connecting regenerative agriculture and its lessons to the greater whole. I adore describing the ties between micro and macro, as well as encouraging myself and others to find inspiration in the small stuff. The health of one pasture in the North Country truly does impact the health of a pasture in the Yucatan Peninsula. Bringing eggs to your neighbors can change the dynamics and security of an entire road.

But you know what? I’m tired. And I think a lot of you are, too. And it’s okay to rest within that exhaustion, to speak on the surface and not complicate matters. So this newsletter is just going to be an update on the farm. Stories, details, images. Something quiet, almost, in its domestic simplicity. With the brain fog I’ve right now… well, you try flexing your writing muscles while caretaking for six infants who need around-the clock attention.

I’ll back up. You know we were waiting for Abigail (pictured below) to birth her first litter of hoglings (this is apparently an old word for piglets, and I’m never going back.) We’d set her up in a straw-layered pen in the Snuggle Tunnel, with heat lamps, rags on hand, and a creep for the babies that I call the Pretty Princess Palace. It’s a small pen outside the mother’s area where hoglings can stay warm, and not be squashed. I hadn’t yet made Abi’s raspberry leaf or motherwort teas, but though I felt guilty, I thought everything would be okay. Abigail is Alice’s daughter, and Alice is a gem: at nine-and-a-half years old, she’s retired from breeding, but she’s the best grandmother/auntie/mentor, encouraging young pigs to nurse from and snuggle with her, and teaching them Important Pig Lessons like Rooting and Digging Under the Fence.

Anyway, the morning of April 12, I arrived at the farm to screaming. Running to the Snuggle Tunnel, I saw Abigail, all 250 pounds of her, attacking a solitary hogling. The baby was the one screaming, as one does when one’s mother has her jaws scraping one’s sides.

This is what we call ‘triage’. A crisis that requires you narrow your focus to just the problem at hand. Naming such moments was a good way for Isaiah and I to practice turning on our blinders, so we could attend to what was happening and not worry about that bird! that frog! that snake! we might have seen in the process.

From what I was witnessing, I knew rescuing the hogling would not save her life. She was already too injured, so I went for backup instead. Sprinting to the farmhouse, I burst in and got Brian, then ran back to Abi with a big stick. Then I jumped into the pen, used the stick to ward off momma, grabbed the piglet and slid her into the Palace.

Now it was time to focus on Abigail. Brian and I made motherwort tea (which eases childbirth) got fresh straw for the pen, and generally calmed this agitated sow. I sang to her, got her to lie down, set up rags for cleaning off the next babies, and filled a feed pan with beer. Though beer during childbirth might be questionable, it’s still the easiest, cheapest and quickest way to calm an upset pig. Someday, I’ll tell the cashiers at Stewarts what I’m really doing with those 30-packs of tasteless brown water (I’m not a beer lover myself).

In the end, Abi refused beer but happily drank tea. Her remaining hoglings were born with fewer crises. I stayed with her, taking each new baby away, cleaning them off and placing them in the Palace before she could jump up and attack. She had two stillborn, killed two, and the eight others were born healthy, strong and raring to go. She was clearly exhausted, though, and I believe her labor was more draining and painful that I’d anticipated. Was her birth canal small? Would teas the week prior have helped? Was she too young, not physiologically ready for all this? She was absolutely frightened, which I can completely understand!

Rounding piglet six or so, I leaned into my gut instinct: we needed to prepare for Abi being unequivocally uninvolved in her litter. I milked what colostrum I could from her, sent Brian and the volunteers for more straw and a jar of milk from up the road, and made a few more attempts to latch the hoglings onto momma. The milking helped hasten births, but Abigail quickly tired of my pinching fingers. And she in no way did she want her children.

Once all the babies were born, I launched into ‘knock Abi out, get the kids to nurse, and pray the resultant oxytocin release in momma’s brain will induce some sort of parental love and attachment’ mode. I called Cassie and Zoe, two mothers whom I knew might have some thoughts on post-partum depression, herbal treatments and the overall well-being of moms. We put together a tea of lemon balm, chamomile, motherwort, raspberry leaf, nettle and tulsi, as well another batch of beer. But despite her exhaustion, Abi never fell into a deep enough sleep – never got blackout drunk – to allow the hoglings to nurse.

So here I am, two weeks later, with six squirming children sleeping nightly in a portable play pen in my living room. Abigail never showed any interest in them, but she’s recovering, and receives sage in her feed to reduce her milk production. The kids are bottle fed on a mix of cow’s milk and egg yolks, and I’ve learned a lot in a brief period of time. For instance, hoglings are born without an immune system, and receive all their antibodies to start life with from the colostrum in mother’s milk. The limited colostrum I was able to give this litter was not enough, and by day five, they were septic with E coli. E coli, of course, exists naturally on our skin, inside our bodies, and in soil – but if you don’t have an immune system, you can’t fight off infection. I had no idea what to do. There are no swine vets in St Lawrence County – when pigs get sick, people call us. And so that was my next lesson: that almost nobody I knew, or knew of, was familiar with what was happening. I received one email from pig farmers downstate that was encouraging in its bluntness, but didn’t answer many of my questions. Finally, I got in touch with the vet my friend Emma uses. She diagnosed the babies over the phone, and said that if I could bring them to her the next day (a two-hour car drive), she’d give me injectable antibiotics. Although a diagnosis of sepsis is nothing to sneeze at, I’m very, very familiar with such infections, and now? Now I had answers. Now I had a plan.

I tossed a dozen bulbs of garlic and two pints of water into my food processor, and added the juice to the milk. Nowhere had I read that I could feed fresh, raw garlic to newborns, but I also know that garlic has been studied and found to have up to a 97% success rate against E coli, MRSA, Staph and more. The bacteria it doesn’t kill, it weakens, so that antibiotics are more effective. Two of the eight surviving hoglings were too far gone – digestive, herbal cures were not going to save them, though I tried. But the six who made it to the vet were already perkier and more energized. I received a syringe of antibiotics, learned how and where to inject the hoglings, paid the $100 bill and drove home.

The kids are doing great. Grandma Alice now shares a pen in the Tunnel with them, which has dramatically reduced everyone’s stress. I’ll admit that Alice rolled her eyes when I directed her into the pen (very much a “this is not what retirement was supposed to be” attitude coming from her), but things are objectively way better than most pig farmers would dare hope. With time, I’ll switch the hoglings from a bottle to a pan, and Alice will teach them to eat solid food. At week nine, they’ll head to their new homes.

And life moves along, in spite of - or perhaps because of - everything. The climate crisis has brought a really screwed-up version of Winter into our Spring transition - persistent cold, ice and rain - but today I noticed the columbine are bushing out. There are a few brave buds on the tulips. We’re preparing for the next round of hoglings, due May 17th, and there’s a clutch of chicks living in the office (thank you, Lyndsay and Anastasia). There are killdeer, snipes and spotted sandpipers pecking around the pond edges, and warblers and towhees in the shrubland. I pruned the currants and raspberries. Since temperatures are generally above freezing, I’ve returned to the practice of leaving eggs out for our raven friends. (About four years ago, the ravens found a chicken nest in an unused building and were flying in to snatch a snack. When we moved a pig into said building, I built a platform in the backyard so I can set out eggs, meaty bones and slabs of lard for them and the woodpeckers. Inter-species gifting, if you will. The ravens return the favor by perching on fences when there’s a problem I’ve not noticed, and they always call hello as they fly overhead.)

The next big project is continued fence improvements. We’ll soon be sending out an invitation to a Fencing Party, where we’ll pound posts, twist wires, test electricity, and enjoy the pizza my neighbors make. Every new fenceline means improved soil, bird, pasture and livestock health, and I look forward to getting most of the work done early on. I’m also looking forward to this weekend, when I’ll be heading to Sand River Community Farm (in part) for my birthday! I’ll leave Friday morning and return Saturday night.

So I close this newsletter with one very specific ask.

Once I leave, Brian will be the only human here to monitor and care for all six hoglings, the greenhouse, adult pigs, sheep, chickens and cows, and he’ll still need to find time to feed himself. It would mean the world to both of us if you could join him, help ease the task of running the farm alone, or drop off a dish of food.

The times when he’ll need the most assistance are:

• Friday, May 2: 7 am to 10 am (Morning Animal Care)

• Friday, May 2: 1 pm to 4 pm (Afternoon Animal Care)

• Saturday, May 3: 7 am to 10 am (Morning Animal Care)

• and Saturday, May 3: 1 pm to 4 pm (Afternoon Animal Care)

The hoglings are fed every two hours, so anyone available at other times will likely be doing that.

While you are welcome to simply show up, communication makes things run more smoothly. You can email me at milkweedtussocktubers@gmail.com or text me at (315) 777-7245. You can try calling, but I might not see it. Just let me know when you think you might be coming, and make sure you wear water-proof boots and prepare for mud.

I’m going to go enjoy the rare sunshine now.

Best,

Kia-Beth

Pronouns: zi/zir and they/them (Read more about personal pronouns and how to use them)