Day 20

Lifting heavy coolers at 530 in the morning, is not part of my repertoire.  We had to pack the truck up for farmers market, and I was barely awake.  After we put everything into the truck, Kent told me I would be driving half of the way because he wanted to make sure it was OK for me to drive home.  Kent and Will went to a dinner party tonight, and are still currently there, but Kent never came back to the farm after the market, so I had to drive the monster of a truck back.  Classic case of Will probably just wanting to rest, because I obviously know how to drive...actually ( after the JD incident )...classic.  So I drove all the way to the gas station  ( all of like 15 minutes ) and then Kent took over from there, and drove the rest of the way.  As soon as Kent turned on the car, the beeping noise, indicating that a seat belt was unbuckled or a door ajar, went off; which was normal.  But after we double checked that everything was clicked and shut, the noise still didn't go off; which was abnormal.  For the remainder of the drive, all of 1 hour and twenty minutes, that beeping noise rang in my head, and didn't leave until halfway through the farmers market.  We arrived, and Kent sent me off to get him a black coffee with half and half, and basically whatever else I wanted to do with the 20 dollars.  I got myself a ham and cheese sandwich, and a few donuts.  I walked back and we were ahead of schedule with about 20 minutes to kill.  Classic case of waking up at 530 for nothing.  Anyways, I decided to draw on the whiteboards they had, and ended up drawing a small thumbs up on the main whiteboard right by the Whitmore Farms label.  Then sales started.  It was supposed to rain today, but it never really did, however the weather was still pretty overcast.  i think that might have hindered the sales a little, because there was a lot of downtime today.  At the farmers market there is an uncanny number of people who are amateur chefs.  They will cook anything, and everything.  Especially using the meat that we sell, so when they come up to the table they are looking for a very in depth conversation on how and what to cook.  So I am pretty terrible with descriptive or detailed questions, because I don't know all the answers.  I try to listen to what Kent says to the customers, and then try to feed that to some of the ones that ask me questions.  I was educated on one sausage in particular.  The seasoning, the taste, and what you can prepare it with, so whenever I got the chance I would spew out that information.  I would get a little rush every time someone happened to ask for my recommendation, or about the specific sausage itself.  The food truck that came was a fusion of korean bbq and mexican food.  classic case of nowhere near as good as Kogi, but it got the job done.  After a slow day, it was finally time to take the ol truck back home.  Kent set up the GPS, and after only one recovery U turn along the way, I got home safe and sound.  I was making some serious time on the highway back.  In spite of me being in maryland, I thought it necessary to pay some tribute to my cousin Paul, who frequently makes "good time".    So i got bcd to the farm to find Dan hard at work with the piglets.  He told me that the piglets had been giving him a hard time all day, and that he spent three hours feeding them, and transitively he was behind schedule.  I unloaded the truck, and went inside the house to make myself comfortable.  It's set in stone that when someone works the farmers market, they are excused from the rest of the days work. so bomb.com.  I went inside the house, and after Dan showed me quickly how to feed the piglets, I took a real nice nap.  A good hour and a half usually does the trick.  When I woke up Dan was finally getting ready to leave.  That guy either dilly dallies the whole day, or cares so much about each animal he spends 30 minutes with each one.  So before he left he told me I had to go feed the piglets twice tonight.  So I started to make my dinner, but then Kent texted me right in the midst of me preparing my food, and told me to go fed the piglets.  I dropped what I was doing and walked out to the barn, and after finding the right size of bucket to stir the milk feed in I whisked away.  I poured 8 cups of this goat milk type powder into hot water.  There I was at 8 at night stirring away the milk for the baby piglets like a big cauldron of magical concoctions.  When I went to feed the piglets, there was a small runt who was shaking all over and could barely walk.  Dan had warned me about this one.  He said he wasn't sure how long she would last.  I piked her quivering body up and tried to get her to drink the milk i prepared.  She could barely gain her balance, so she kept falling into the milk, so I held her snout up to the bowl, but then she kept choking on the milk.  It was a terrible situation, and she could barely stand.  I felt terrible.  This was the first time in my life I had ever dealt with a dying animal.  I didn't know what to do.  There was nothing I could do.  I decided to lay her down, and try and comfort her.  I started petting the piglet and telling her that everything was going to be alright.  Truth was I had no idea.  I left her, but I knew that when I left she wouldn't be alive when I came back.  I felt terrible, and I didn't know what to do so I texted Kent, but he just texted me back saying don't worry about it there is nothing you could do.  I wonder how many times they have had to deal with those situations.  I watched some terrible Lil' Bow Wow flick while I ate some pizza.  After the movie I had to go back out and change the milk.  I staled the inevitable when I got to the barn.  I worked on the milk vigorously because I knew what was awaiting me in the pen.  I walked in to find the runts body laying on the ground, a few feet from where I left it.  It was cold, and hard, and so empty.  I could barely look at it.  I filled the milk and picked up the piglet by her hind leg.  As I was picking her up, her brothers ran up to me to see where I was taking her sister.  It was an awfully sad picture.  I took the piglet, and thought it necessary that I bury her that night because I felt somewhat responsible for her passing.  A very sad ending to my day, as I sit here typing all by my lonesome in the house.  Nighty.