Autumn Beckons, Hogs Going Wild
09.01.2024 – The air is markedly cooler on this Sunday morning, the first day of September in a year that has flown by – as all years do at this season of my life. I wake up one morning and it is spring, roll over and it is summer, get up to fall knocking at the door, back in bed and it is winter.
At least, that is how it feels.
By cooler, I mean the temperature this morning was about 70 degrees as I headed out the door, a half dozen degrees below the lows recorded each morning during the dog days. The highs are still drifting into the 90s by mid-afternoon. Still, summer has been put on notice that its days are numbered.
As if to confirm my thoughts about summer’s imminent demise and autumn arriving any day now, a dozen Canada geese fly over in precise formation, carrying on an extended conversation whose content I can only surmise. They are headed north this morning, noisily honking as they fly over. The honking reminds me to buy a sack of cracked corn at the feed store to spread around the edges of Pancho’s Pond. That corn is waterfowl candy and entices them to hang out. It warms our hearts to look down on that small pond and see geese or ducks floating in the brown water or pecking along its edges.
Speaking of Pancho, that old boy is right at 25 years old by my calculations. He has gotten a bit grayer the past few years but is still spry. When he sees one of us coming with a feed bucket, he prances around like an impatient puppy, eager for his snacks. On this Sunday morning, as I walk the dead-end subdivision road across from Three Geese Farm – easily a mile away from Pancho – I can hear him braying in the distance. My Beautiful Mystery Companion must be heading down with his breakfast – sliced carrots, apples, grapes, and shredded wheat. Like all of our critters, Pancho won the lottery when he joined us here.
Even the field mice living in the shop, making nests in old cigar boxes of hardware, get fed a meal, thanks to my BMC. The other day, I went down to get the tractor out. One of the mice stood near our mini gym, with its rowing machine and other torture implements. He was up on his hind legs, staring at me with no apparent fear. Fact is, he looked irritated. My BMC was under the weather and had not been down to the shop to provide sustenance for the rodents in a few days. I dug a few kernels of donkey feed from the sealed trash can and put them on the floor. When I came back from bu
shhogging, the feed was gone, the mouse no doubt settling in for a post-breakfast nap.
We are far less tolerant of the feral hogs, who have been roaming about our 57 acres, tearing up the land in search of grubs and such. One morning, my BMC got up and spied a pack of hogs inside Pancho’s pasture, being blithely ignored by our alleged guard donkey. Pancho only has one job out here, and that is to scare off hogs and coyotes, especially when they are inside a fence with him. We might have to cut back on Pancho’s shredded wheat. He is getting too complacent.
I don’t get too bent out of shape about the hogs until they start tearing up the front pasture, which contains about three acres of verdant Bahia. Several mornings, I have awakened to find dark slashes in the grass, especially in the bar ditch along the driveway. The hogs have paid us a late-night journey. I pull out the tractor and use the bushhog set low to smooth it back out. Then, for the next few nights, I awake around midnight to 1 a.m. and creep out the front door wearing ear plugs, carrying a green-LED flashlight, and toting a .357 magnum. I have no chance of actually hitting a hog from 50 yards away with a handgun but am hopeful the noise will scare them off for a while. I don’t really want to kill one, since that entails disposing of the carcass.
It is as if those porcine plunderers know I am coming. I peer into the darkness, holding the light in one hand, the revolver in the other, earplugs firmly inserted. Nothing. I try again the next night with the same result. Finally, my vigilance weakens. I don’t bother to get up in the dark. The hogs return as I sleep.
After more than three years here on this farm, I sense the cyclical nature of life here, more than I did in the city. I don’t exactly understand it, but I am more aware of its passing. The seasons are more meaningful in the country. Autumn approaching means mowing will end. I can concentrate on cleaning up fallen trees and branches, fixing fences, maybe even doing some woodworking without the tyranny of constantly growing grass hanging over me.
The one certainty is that this coming season will pass too quickly as well.
This I know.
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