Always something

I went away for the weekend, for a short enough time that I could just load everyone up with food and be back before the next feeding. Tucker flew up and we got a hotel in town (saves us the 4-hour round trip back to my place and removes my farm distractions).

We watched the new doctor strange movie, which was fun but ( had these deeply problematic and related-to-mothers-day spoilers )

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It was a great visit and I had a ton of thoughts about it to write about involving my relationship with Tucker, how I feel about the A&E thing, possibly buying a proper rear-tine tiller, etc. However.

When I got home the little piglet who had been struggling along - mom didn't have much milk, she was a singleton born a little prematurely, she started to eat pig feed with the big ones but kept getting injured from being stepped on - came out running like she's been doing lately, and I gave her a thing of yoghurt outside the fence like I have been at feeding time, to help her along. She was covered in mud, it was cold, she's still real tiny, and then Avallu started nipping at her. When I was done feeding and she was done eating she wanted to be close to me, so I brought her in.

The original plan was to wash her off, dry her off, warm her up, feed her a bunch more, and put her back outside. When I started washing her off, though, I noticed that in addition to a little degloving on her tail from a couple days ago she was missing an auxiliary toenail (pigs walk on two of their toenails, like goats, and have a couple extra remnant ones higher on their legs) and that area was swollen. I figured that a combination of not-great nutrition, the yard being a bit of a hazard for her because of Avallu (he needs to be introduced to her individually and watched a bit before I can trust him with her, though he can't go into the main pigpen), and two seperate wounds one of which looked like it was getting infected, meant it was time to break the no-piglets-in-the-house rule.

I stashed her in the bathtub, which was the wrong call - she kept trying to jump out and turned on the water while doing so. Repeatedly. Not ideal.

Eventually I got her to fall asleep in my lap wrapped in a towel. My fellow pig-owning friend says they like something warm to snuggle with, but she seems interested in being close to me especially and I'm scared of giving her a hot water bottle which she punctures and gets all over. Never underestimate the destructive power of a pig of any size!

Anyhow, I got her to sleep and calculated a miniscule dose of long-acting penicillin for her. It's unfortunate, I only had a 20 gauge needle, which is huge for her bit tiny for most of the animals I care for - I'd use it for a goose, generally. It's supposed to be an intramuscular dose but she had very little muscle and wasn't super still; I did get it into her leg and didn't hit any veins or arteries so that's what I could do. Anyhow, cue several rounds of eating yoghurt-mixed-with-pig-feed-and-formula-powder (thank goodness she can eat from a dish) and sleeping hard like babies do, twitching and dreaming and once with her tongue sticking out. I managed to put her down in the bathtub once she was hard asleep, get a crate cleaned up, and get her into it with some food so I could eat dinner, shower, and sleep.

This morning she woke up and was hungry (I'd left her with some feed and she'd eaten all of it) so I got her more food, snuggled with her, transferred her back to the kennel, and here we are. Not entirely sure what happens next. She's putting weight on all her feet fine, but there's still a big swelling (maybe even abcessed) on that one injured leg. I've cleaned off her body but not her head - I didn't want her inhaling water, because if she's cold and injured she's a pneumonia risk, and pigs are generally a pneumonia risk anyhow. I think I need to get the mud off her face and ears today. My bathroom already is smeared in mud, not much to lose there.

She can go out with the other piglets eventually. I do not want a house pig and I suspect even if she became a regular yard pig (rather than a pigpen pig) she'd learn the dog door pretty quick. I also suspect she'll stay small, even for an ossabaw, with this level of rough start. There's a mama pig about ready to pop, I've been considering trying to introduce her into that litter. She's big enough to fight the new ones off the teat, but if there are only a couple there might be enough milk for all.

Meantime I'm supposed to be working, I have a medical appointment today, the butcher is coming in a couple days and I'm not ready, and I'm supposed to be sorting some stuff out with A&E. On the plus side my tomatoes are hardening off nicely, I have the biggest garden I've had in my life, and that little piglet hops into my lap and falls asleep pretty quickly at this point.

Permaculture, politics, and pragmatism

One of the reasons I originally liked permaculture is that it's a deeply pragmatic approach. It says: look at what's going on, think about it, and then fit a system to it that seems like it has a high likelihood of working for your goals and for your environment. It offers some guidelines for how to do that.

I've been watching a permaculture channel on youtube called Parkrose Permaculture. The author of the channel was talking about saving the environment from a permaculture perspective. She said, think of it from a harm reduction and a good, better, best sort of system. She gave some examples along these lines: recycling is good, consuming less is better, advocating for right-to-repair and circular economies is best. Eating some organic is good, eating local is better, advocating for changing the food system is best. Her point was that doing something is better than doing nothing, that doing more is also great.

What she didn't explicitly say, but what I've been thinking about a lot, is that some of the left-leaning folks I'm involved with have a tendency to eat their young. It's easier to be upset at someone in the "good" category if you're in the "better" category; I think folks often tend to ignore the proactive part of the "best" category that she gave examples of, which is systemic change. I don't really want to be involved in these groups; I feel they've gone astray.

But anyhow, I feel like this approach to politics generally is a permaculturally sound one. Folks are more likely to step up when they're supported in what they're doing. As they learn more they can do more. And really we all should be advocating for systems that make it easy for everyone to do better things.

I'm pretty sure I had more to say about this when I started, but my mind is blanking and I have a meeting to get to. More later, I guess.