Tough Goodbyes

 I am afraid that today there are no smiles to share with you.  Instead I must share sad news.  We said goodbye to our pig, Ginger, and our sheep, Faith, yesterday.  Why both on one single day?

Sadly, it's something that has been a process over the past few weeks.  We had noticed that our sheep, Faith, had become lame over the past couple of months... arthritis in her legs.  She hobbled around and would some days make it out into the pasture to graze, other days, not.  Then, last week, our pig, Ginger, suffered a bad leg injury when trying to push her way into the dry lot.  Red ran into her and knocked her over, injuring the ligaments in her front leg.  By Friday, she could no longer bear any weight on the leg and had become agitated.  We decided to give it a little time, but she did not improve and stopped coming out of her house at all.  She would become agitated when we visited with her, but would calm down for me and let me rub her belly.

Sensing that she was in a lot of pain, we decided to do the hard thing and let her go.  Doing so presented us with a sad situation for our sheep Faith (who lost her sister in the past couple of years).   Never wanting our animals to live solitary, lonely lives, we decided that the best (though hard) course of action was to help them both out of their pain at the same time.  Faith had also stopped going into the front pasture - in fact, she had stopped grazing altogether.

And though letting them go was extremely difficult, we cannot stand to see any of our animals in pain or living less than quality lives.  And so, yesterday afternoon, we gave each of them some treats laced with a sedative.  They fell asleep, were given a stronger sedative, and gently departed from this earthly plane.

As I sat in the pig house with Ginger (as she slept from the sedative), Moll cat joined us and curled up beside Ginger.  Moll has always had a fondness for the pigs and would often curl up on top of them in the front pasture when they flopped down for belly rubs. 

(last year)

 Yesterday, after Ginger had passed, Moll curled up on top of her un-moving belly and kneaded her piggy skin one last time.  She stayed only a couple of minutes and then hopped off.  I suspect she understood that her pig was gone.  Animals seem to sense that.

It's not the first time we have had to face a new normal here on the farm, and it's not the last time.  This is the cloud that lies behind the silver lining.  Luckily, farm life gives us so many days lined with silver.  We are sad when the clouds come, but understand that we cannot have a life free from clouds.  There is no dying without living - and no living without dying.

I am so very grateful that I had 13 years of love and friendship from our very special piggy girls.  In my heart I see them together again, running through a beautiful field of grass and snacking to their hearts' content.  I imagine Faith reuniting with her sister Hope and her Mama Grace somewhere on a farm beyond  the veil.

PS:  I have been unable to send our blog via email to the subscribers who had signed up for this service - because I am having some technical issues.  There are engineers handling the problem at this point, and I am hoping they can fix the situation.  My apologies to anyone who has had to search for us.