08/14/2023
Some of the folks close to me and fellow farmers already know, but here's the official announcement:
After 15 years, I am no longer a pig farmer.
Why??? I fell for the old "we need a lot more pigs" again. (I've fallen for this over and over.) At my customer's constant requests, the farm went from a comfortable 80 head up to a marathon level of 120 head in 2022. When the pigs were ready in September, the customer wasn't ready. Though the farm to table butcher shop's sales had doubled, their purchases from this small farmer stayed at 2021 levels (Cisco and Cheshire pork had a good year). For 7 months, I honored the sole source agreement we had and held on. In March, they did start buying an extra hog here and there and finally permitted me to sell some hogs direct to consumers. I moved 18 hogs over a couple weeks, but it wasn't enough to get the farm back down to a sustainable level.
In May (our dry season), life added in a broken down truck and a very hurtful family moment (no-one can break you like your own children). Fun fact: Farming is not an industry that allows you to be depressed. You've got to be 100% all of the time; I was at a solid 40% barely able to tend to the most basic feeding and watering tasks. I couldn't do the off grid water hauling over capacity pig farm anymore and needed out.
Initially, I offered the farm, the land, the animals, and all the liabilities to an employee of the butcher shop. But, he couldn't fix the problem promptly enough. Besides, it's essentially cruel to expect someone to walk into my over my head s**t show. I like that guy too much to throw him under this bus.
So, I started hauling loads of pigs to the processor. (If you can't care for animals, the responsible thing is to not have animals.). Well, the butcher shop owner panicked and bought the 50 remaining pigs and breeders for half their value. Since I was kinda mad at the guy for talking me into jumping off the deep end and watching me drown, it seemed a fitting punishment to sell him a herd of crazy pigs.
I tried to be helpful despite: offered all of my cross fencing for free if they removed whole paddocks, let them use my property for two weeks to set up a new site, mentored, and did the hauling. But, the transaction has ultimately been a nightmare. What was agreed upon to take 2 weeks took months, cost me thousands of dollars in being displaced from my property, and involved lawyer nasty grams in order for me to get my property back. Now everyone is angry, and I live with locked gates.
Ugggh. It took months to quit this job, but it's finally over. My stubbornness no longer exceeds the gullible-gambler nature that it takes to be a farmer. No more piggies for me.
What am I gonna do now? Whatever I want. And, my feet will be clean while I'm doing it!
