Some Final Things

With the baby winding up his senior year, there have been a lot of final moments this year.

Final football game.
Final basketball game.
Final homecoming dance.
Final prom ... coming up.

Final track meet ... just a few weeks away.


Here's Junior passing the baton to his pal Enrique in the 4 X 100 relay.


It's the last Suwannee River Livestock Show for us too ... which means, we have raised our last show pig!!

WHOOP! WHOOP!

You know ... there was a time in my life where if someone had said, " I predict someday, you will spend a perfectly good Friday evening shaving a pig." ... I would have responded, " Waitress, GIVE ME WHATEVER HE'S DRINKING!"

That was before I had kids.

Listen ... if you haven't had them yet, think about it!! They will change you and force you to do things you never thought you would do.

(Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated!")

If you already have kids ... well, there's always adoption.

I'm just kidding.
Chill.


Okay, I know I look insane, I had just set the self-timer for the 5th time and jumped over the fence for a "shaving the pig shot".
The other photos were even worse.

You don't really shave the pig of course. The idea is to trim her fur down to show off her buffness. The swine judge at the fair will be looking for solid muscle tone, muscle size, good joints as shown by her gait, and bone structure.

The hair cut accents all of that.

It's just like when human body builders shave their chests.

The swine show is Monday and the sale is Wednesday so I'll have a few fair posts this week to keep you updated.

So, I have loaded my final fair pig on to a trailer. It's been a long ride with daughter Katie starting the whole thing years ago as the first FFA DNAling of mine.

Each pig has had it's challenges, most had at least one episode of sickness that required either antibiotic injections or spending all night nursing it with baby electrolyte solution ... or both.

This pig was the healthiest of all ... almost too healthy. She weighed 260 pounds two weeks ago and we were afraid she would be over the weight limit (290) for the fair.

She had been on reduced rations for the last week or so and it paid off. She checked into the fair at a very buff 280 pounds today.

Sweet!

Pigs are fascinating animals, but I'm glad to be done with the fair experience now.

Well, almost done ... just a few more days.


The most amazing news today is that my baby girl, Emma is 21 years old today ... a fact that makes me a bit misty, until I think about what a funny, bright, beautiful woman she has become and then the mist clears a bit.

Just a bit.

Stupid mist.

Okay, I gotta switch subjects, when my contacts get this moist, the screen blurs.


It's a gorgeous day out there and I have an ex-pig pen to convert into a garden so let me go busy myself with the next chapter.