Waltzing Matilda

After we had been on the farm for a while, we had collected quite a menagerie, which we called our Barnyard Pets. We had two milk cows, Patches, the Holstein, and Bossy, a Holstein and Guernsey mix. Bossy, by the way, was a lot easier to milk than Patches. She had big, fat teats that were easy to get your hands around, and her milk came easily. There was lots of it, and it was very creamy because of the Guernsey in her. Also, she was a wonderful mother. She was, like Patches, a mild and gentle and peaceful cow.

Since we had so much milk, and we had decided to sell cream to the Scotsburn Dairy, we needed some help in using up the skim milk. We couldn’t drink it all, even though the boys drank milk like water! How healthy that fresh, raw milk was for them, and how well their young bones must have developed! But as I said, we could not drink it all, so we decided to get some pigs!

We had heard of a farmer who raised very healthy and fine pigs, and so we went to see him. His name was Tony ______. I think he was British; he certainly was not a native Nova Scotian. He did have a large number of pigs, and he did let them run loose on his farm! This was great for his pigs, and I guess it provided great manure for the land, but it was certainly not good for the growing things. His farm was a mess. Pigs had uprooted everything with their snouts. He had pretty much ruined that farm, and was getting ready to move to Vermont and start over doing the same thing there. So he was selling some of his pigs.

His pigs were black with a white band around their middles. Appropriately enough, they were called Saddleback pigs. They were very healthy, and were supposed to be excellent pigs. We bought a bred sow, which Dave named Matilda, after the waltzing Matilda song in the movie, “On the Beach”. She was a very nice animal. She was more than that; she was a sweetie! Of course, she was big, and she was fat. But she was so sweet. If we had had the time, she would have made a lovely companion for us. She was intelligent (as are all pigs) and she was very clean. She always made sure she had her poops in one corner of her pen. this made it easy to keep her pen clean. She had straw for a bed. Which reminds me, that straw makes a very comfortable bedding for animals, and it makes lovely food for the land when mixed with manure.

Matilda didn’t always stay in her pen in the barn; sometimes we let her out to graze for short periods while we watched her. Later on, maybe a year or so later, I had planted some comfrey, and the pigs loved to eat it. It was very nourishing food for all the large animals. The pigs, the cows and the goats all loved it. We were very glad that we had bought Matilda. She was a nice animal, and we could hardly wait for her to have her babies.

When she did have them we were disappointed that there were only four. We had hoped there would be about 10! They were the cutest things you ever saw! We just loved to watch them. We had decided to eat one of them ourselves and we sold the other three. Or maybe we kept two to eat and sold the other two. I can’t remember for sure. I do remember that we sold one to Anna and Egon. Egon was a butcher and he helped us when we butchered our first pig. I still remember Anna holding a big basin to catch the blood when his neck was slit. She would use it later to make blood pudding or bloodwort or some such thing.

Anna was a remarkable woman! She was a good person, and very generous. She and Egon both worked like work horses on their farm and doing their butchering. Anna was strong and sensible and worked herself to death, probably. Egon was I think an alcoholic, or at least he was a problem drinker. And he definitely was not sensible. He was full of ego, and Anna was always careful not to bruise his ego, which was pretty much a full-time job.

Anna and Egon were very hospitable. I think they were lonely for friends. They only had one daughter on whom they doted constantly. Because they were German, they were not well accepted by the locals. ( why this was I never found out. Surely, it had nothing to do with the second world war!) Even though people around them were glad to use Egon’s butchering skills, I think Egon and Anna were pretty much ostracized. So they were lonely.

By nature, I think they loved to invite folks over to prepare a German feast for them. Egon made his own beer. I don’t remember whether it was good or not. But I do remember the food! We all loved it. We loved to go over and be fed! We liked Anna a lot, and Egon tried to make himself agreeable. I remember though, Anna was often saying “Oh Egon!” and scolding him a lot. She was always trying to make up for some crude or disagreeable remark he made.

However, Egon was also very generous, and loved to see us enjoying his sausages or some other German dish. They made all kinds of sausages, including bloodwort. (?) They also made headcheese from the head of a pig. I can’t remember if I got help or advice from Anna or not, but once I made headcheese myself! I remember it was a lot of work. I think I had to boil the whole head of the pig until the skin and the flesh fell away from the bones. But then there were the brains – mercifully, I can’t remember much of the details.

But the fact that I made it once shows me that I was a true pioneer at heart. I was willing to learn to use all of the animal! I guess I got that from my Mom who used to really love pickled pigs’ feet. Actually, I remember from my childhood that once you got over thinking about what the delicacy reallly was, they did taste pretty good! I never tried this, however. The headcheese was all I could do to use the whole animal. I remember also that my mother used to cook the tongue of a cow. She used to flavor it with some spice – cloves, maybe. I was bullied into trying it, but I never liked it. In fact, I thought it was awful.

Tongue is something else I never tried to cook on the farm. I never tried cooking heart, either, or brains, both of which my Mom loved. I think that is why my Mom was such a strong person, physically, aside from the fact that she naturally had a strong constitution. When she was young, and when I was a little girl, she ate good, old-fashioned “whole foods”. I, on the other hand, was a “problem eater”. I didn’t like much other than peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. This makes what I did on the farm all the more remarkable for me. Yes, I actually made headcheese! Did I actually eat it? I don’t remember that part!

Anna inspired me in a lot of ways. She was a hard-working German, but she was also a good person. She was a good friend. I can still hear her saying, as we pulled away in the car, after stuffing ourselves at her table: “Get home safe!” Sometimes I still say that to people as they are driving away from a visit with me. I say it in memory of Anna.

I am sorry to say that I was not a very good friend to Anna. After we had known them quite a few years, Anna had to have a hysterectomy. I think her bladder was being adversely affected by her uterus. Egon never elaborated much. I am ashamed to remember that I did not go over and help her out when she got home from the hospital . I did nothing for her. This is one of my big weaknesses, that I do not like to put myself out for others. If it is hard or inconvenient for me, I usually forget it. Dave pointed out this failing to me once. I remember being hurt but most of all, I remember that I knew he was right. Okay, so this is one of my bigger faults. I am glad to know it, but it hurts me to remember that I didn’t help Anna when she really needed a friend. I only hope that now I am aware of this tendency in me, I can learn to overcome it. I am sure God (or the Universe) will give me opportunities to learn. Whether or not I use these opportunities is up to me.

Back to Matilda. She was really a beautiful specimen of a pig. Is it true that pigs have curly tails when they are healthy and happy? I think so. I think our pigs had curly tails.

I don’t think we took away all of Matilda’s babies at once. I think we took them one at a time when they were about four or six months old. I am not sure exactly when.

We were so successful with our first batch of piglets that we decided to get a male pig to breed Matilda so she could have more babies. That was a mistake.

Much of our farming struggles occured because we did not have proper housing for the animals we chose to be our barnyard pets. I have already mentioned the trouble we had with the banties, even though in hard times, we were glad to have their eggs. Later I will tell how this lack of proper housing turned disastrous with the sheep. Actually, with both the pigs and the sheep the problems arose because we bought male animals for breeding and then did not have a proper place to keep them apart when it was not a fortuitous time for them to breed. Randy points out that our farm was completely haphazard, with no real plan. We just sort of stumbled from one thing to another. I think for the most part he is right.

I think Dave feels really bad about taking his family away to an isolated farm in a strange land. How do I know this? Well, years later, when we were either living in Fredericton or Ottawa, Dave refused to see a very popular movie about a man who took his family to an isolated island and the adventure was disastrous. The man in the movie was kind of deranged, I think, and his family suffered quite a bit. I cannot remember the name of the movie, or much about it. But I do remember that Dave would not go to see it with us. That tells me a lot about how he felt about our farm experience.

Well, we did buy a male pig. Dave and the boys went off somewhere to pick him up. I can’t remember where we got him. He was a really nice animal, and very smart. He was not a Saddleback, but an ordinary pink kind of pig. The kids named him Snoopy. (Probably it was TJ who named him.)

Poor guy, since we didn’t have a proper place to keep him apart from Matilda, we asked some Americans who lived on a farm near Rick and Cherry to keep him for us for the winter, with the advantage to them that they could use him for breeding their own sows before they returned him to us. Big mistake.

When we got Snoopy back, he was sick with Erisypalis (sp?) This is a serious, mostly fatal illness of pigs. In spite of calling the vet and giving him lots of penicillan injections, Snoopy didn’t get better. Because of all the antibiotics in his system we couldn’t even use him for food. At one point, Dave decided to shoot him. I guess it was to put him out of his misery; I don’t really know. This too was a disastrous decision. I think Dave tried shooting him himself. I don’t think Jody tried. I hope not, because the result was awful. Snoopy refused to die. Instead he squealed horribly and ran around, making it even more difficult to get a good shot. Dave tried again and again before blessed silence fell all around us. We were all devastaated. The guys took Snoopy away to bury him – where? I don’t remember, but it was probably in the woods just behind the gravel pit.

We were all very much sadder but wiser after that. It seems that the American couple had not fed Snoopy well all through the winter. And we had never gone over to check him out. When we got him, not only was he very sick, but he was so thin as to be almost emaciated. We blamed the people for being so cruel, and we cursed them energetically. But really, we ourselves had to take a lot of the blame. We should not have tried to have Snoopy without a proper place to keep him; and having made that mistake, we should have gone over to see him to make sure that he was properly taken care of.

While I am remembering our pigs, I remember another near disaster. Somehow, I can’t remember how it happened, but somehow we were the owners of several – three maybe – just-grown pigs. It was in the winter; I do remember that for sure! We had them in a pen in the barn and in a corral we had made next to the barn. This corral must have been where the barn garden was, or maybe it was just the other side of the barn garden.

Well, it was past Fall, and so past time for butchering. This time we were not going to try to do the butchering ourselves. We had found some local family who would do it for us for pay. I can’t remember their names.

Dave was away. Jody and I were responsible for rounding up the pigs and getting them in the back of the pickup truck. It seems there must have been only two, but maybe there were three. Well, Jody and I chased those pigs around that corral for a long, long time. It was hopeless. We absolutely could not get them into the back of the truck. We were exhausted and our nerves were frayed to an uncomfortable degree. I probably felt a lot like crying, and probably, so did Jody. We just gave up and waited for the men to come with their truck. I seem to remember that they were coming to show us the way to their farm, because we were to put our pigs into our truck.

When they arrived we explained to them that we could not get them into the truck.There were two of them, and they proceeded to get the pigs loaded with what seemed to us like supernatural ease. I don’t think they actually gloated, but as I remember it, they were pretty smug. Then they jumped into their truck and took off down the hill to the road below us without a backward glance at us. We didn’t have time to think. All I knew was that I had to follow them. Foolishly, I started down the hill at the same breakneck speed they had gone down. The road was almost pure ice, or as I used to say in my youth, it was “glare ice”! We fishtailed down that road, and it was only by the grace of God that we didn’t end up in the ditch with our necks broken. The back of the truck swung from one side to the other. On the last part of the hill, we went down sideways. This is the truth. It is not an exaggeration. Ask Jody. I am sure he was as terrified as I was.

When we got to the bottom of the hill, we turned onto the paved road and we saw their truck way, way ahead of us. Like a dope, I tore after them. I managed to stay close enough to them to keep them in sight, and we finally arrived at their farm. We stopped then, and let them get the pigs out of our truck by themselves. Of course, they had been playing a joke on us. They had done it on purpose. If I had had my wits about me I would have just taken the hill at a slow enough speed to get down safely and then just let them wait for us, or come back for us, or just said, the hell with them. But now I am thinking, well, if we had gone down that icy hill with 3 pigs in the back of our pickup at a normal speed, we probably WOULD have gone into the ditch!

As it was, it all ended safely. However, I was very angry at these people. What they had thought was a joke could have been a fatal accident for us. So, except for the dearness of Matilda and Snoopy, my memories of our pigs is not a happy one. And I have never been able to laugh about our slide down the hill. I was just too terrified, and too exhausted. And too, I never forgot the terrible death Snoopy endured. He died hard, and it was all for nothing -
except of course, that we learned another farm lesson that had not been in any of our books.

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