Moving Forward

Moving Forward

Just before my family and I left town for the holidays, I ran into John Hodgman at the general store, and he mentioned, matter-of-factly, that my pig blog was to be featured on his Judge John Hodgman podcast.  Until now what I’ve written over the last six months has been read by a very small collection of family and friends.  Since John’s podcast hit the airwaves on December 26th, more than a thousand people from thirty different countries have followed the link to my blog, and I’ve picked up a handful of email subscribers as well.  Thanks, John.

I’ve been thinking recently about why I started writing about this in the first place.  What was I hoping to gain?  Here’s the story line:  In the beginning I fall in love with my pigs.  I try and fail to find some justification for eating them.  I read a few books hoping to gain some insight.  I realize that saving twelve pigs is too tall an order.  I participate in the slaughtering of half of them.  By writing about this and putting it out there for anyone to read, I did have some small hope that the collective wisdom of the internet might provide a potential solution.  That there was some outside-the-box path I hadn’t explored.  That someone out there had been in my position and knew exactly what to do.   With a complete lack of social media presence, putting it out there is, at best, a shot in the dark.   If I really wanted to improve my odds of reaching people outside my small circle, I could have done more than write something and hit the publish button.

If there’s one thing I try to avoid, however, it is an exercise in futility.  I had done my homework.  I knew the options.  A search engine was not going to save my pigs.  As I’ve already written, my problem wasn’t so much that I had pigs that I did not want to slaughter.  It was that I had twelve of them.   With half as many, previously closed options are now on the table as possibilities.  Could I seek and receive the funding necessary to send my pigs to a farm animal sanctuary?  Would it be even more feasible if I were to narrow that number to three?  I have ten months to resolve these questions.  Ten months until I am forced to face another difficult decision.

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3 Replies to “Moving Forward”

  1. Hey, I follow this ranch that rescues all types of animals from slaughter. Maybe they can help? Good luck in your efforts. Even though you were not able to save them all- the fact that you are trying makes all the difference. I also appreciate that you are not in a “Food, Inc.” mentality. For the pigs you had to slaughter… send them light and love. Thank them for their service in nourishing others and maybe find peace in the fact that perhaps just one of those people will go on to do something good in the world.

    Best of luck.

    https://www.instagram.com/boochaces/?hl=en

  2. I used to raise pigs. I loved them deeply and it was hard when slaughter day came. All I could console myself with was that with me they had only one bad day. Whereas with most others they would have suffered every day of their lives. I wish I could help find a solution for. I wish I could adopt them. Have you checked out all the various Facebook pig owner groups? One wonders how those people squired their pet pigs. Maybe your six could find individual owners. Good luck.

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