“The cows are out!” Four dreaded words a farmer loathes to hear. During the course of our years of dairying we did hear (or holler) those words a time or two.
We have about 40 acres of woods that was portioned off with fencing during a time when pasturing our heifers there. My husband would have to check fence when he got the chance, which was normally squeezed in between planting in the spring and harvesting early summer. There weren’t many breaks in the work. We had planting season, harvest season and fencing season.
This fencing project took a while. Sometimes he’d have to harvest cedar logs from our cedar swamp, hauling the posts to the 40 and replace the ones that were bad. This involved not only hauling but digging the holes, too. Hard work. Along the way, he’d check the barbed wire. Either deer or heifers — or both — could do damage.
One time the heifers got out. This chunk of property is very close to Highway 29. At that time, the highway was just two lanes. We got a call there were animals on the road. Horrid, awful, gut-wrenching news.
We ended up not finding them that night. Traipsing through woods in the dead of night trying to locate wayward heifers was darn near impossible. After a sleepless night, we went out at the crack of dawn, discovering to our dismay they had crossed the highway.
Calling the Shawano County Sheriff’s Department, they came to assist and literally parked their squad cars, blocking both lanes of traffic to allow our heifers to cross safely. Bless their hearts, we were beyond grateful.
In 1997, we built a three-bay, lean-to heifer barn on our farm-site. This thankfully eliminated pasturing heifers in the woods and no longer needing to maintain a fence.
These days, while we seldom have cows that get out, we just had a fiasco with our batch of pigs. This year, we are raising four. They are spirited and strong-willed and not to mention, a very adventurous lot.
One day, we were in the house and glancing outside, saw four rotund pigs happily enjoying themselves, munching on apples under our apple tree — in front of the house.
“The pigs are out!”
The buggers. The little unappreciative-of-all-that-we-do-for-them buggers. Never mind they get fresh water, grain twice daily, treats galore from the garden and even a few sweets like leftover donuts. (Leftover donuts? An abnormality, granted.)
Springing into action, I grabbed the outside broom and approaching them slowly as to not startle, I went around behind them, my husband standing back to prevent them from going across the road.
They grunted to each other “here they come” and took off, heading deep into our eight-acre cornfield adjacent to our lawn. This cornfield is also next to my walking trail where not too long ago a bear left me a pile of scat to confirm in no uncertain terms we shared this hunk of territory.
As I was pushing through stalks of corn, getting smacked in the face, arms and legs with corn husks — which are like thin sandpaper — I never gave it a thought that I might have a run-in with a bear.
I called my husband, who was on the far end of the field, me on the other, “They’re heading toward the cemetery.”
When I stopped moving, I heard them grunting. I couldn’t see them but I could hear them. I’m pretty sure they were conspiring.
Presently, my husband and I met on the yard.
“We’ll have to give up. Maybe they’ll come back on their own,” said my husband pensively.
I started silently praying: “Father, You know where they are. Scoot them home.”
We hadn’t hardly moved when out of the cornfield here they came, panting and snorting — and sheepish.
My husband led them, chanting over his shoulder: “here-pig-here-pig-here-pig” and lo and behold, they followed him right to their pen with me bringing up the rear.
Plopping down in their digs with all four feet splayed out from under, they were literally exhausted. I filled up their water trough twice and finally let some run out over the top to make a little mud puddle where they could roll around in and cool off. What do they want running into a cornfield when they have perfect accommodations right where they’re at?
Exceptionally powerful, they had nosed under the double-fenced-in area and forced the gate up, made their way through and out to explore. My husband fixed the dilemma by putting up an electric fence along that side. It was an extreme solution, but we could not allow them to nose out again.
Later that day as I picked raspberries about 100 yards away from their enclosure, I caught them discovering the electric fence, noticing a squeal I hadn’t before, which gave my heart a poke. Poor things had learned their lesson in a very hard way.
Hopefully we won’t have to holler those four dreaded words again anytime soon.
(“Be sure you know the condition of your flocks, give careful attention to your herds.” Proverbs 27:23)
Kay Reminger was born and raised on a dairy farm, and she married her high school sweetheart, who happened to farm for a living in Leopolis. Writing for quite a few years, she remains focused on the blessings of living the ups and downs of rural life from a farm wife’s perspective.