Birthing Pictures Of Our Piglets (graphic)

When we bought Sally and Nellie back in October, 2006, the plan was that they would one day bring forth piglets for us to raise at Pure Water Hollow. With the help of our boar, Rufus, the plan has come to fruition. Our first piglets were born on July 13th and 14th!

We had the opportunity to be eyewitnesses of the birthing process with Sally! I posted about it the other day with several photos, but I saved the more graphic pictures for this post. The children were amazed at the miracle of birth, but they thought some of the pictures may not be very appealing to some people, so if you are of a weak disposition, you may just want to look at that first post, and skip this one.

After waiting in the barn with Sally for about 3 hours, the first piglet finally came at 11:24pm on Friday night. It was out before Erica got the camera up, but here is the first picture of the first piglet born on our homestead:



About 6 minutes later came number 2:





Number 3 came out tail first 10 minutes later, but It seemed to be fine:



Here he is all cleaned up but with the umbilical cord still connected:



Erica was able to snap quickly with number 4. She got a picture of it "crowning", another shot of it most of the way out, and then a picture of it all the way out, all within about a 20 second time frame:







We cut each umbilical cord off and dipped it in iodine, just as a precaution. Matthew looks like he might be grossed out a bit in this picture, but he really was not. Keep in mind we are in a dark barn using lantern light and flashlights and it was close to midnight at this point.



The fifth piglet also came out feet first and Erica got two quick amazing pictures of him entering the world of air:





Here come number six just 4 minutes later:



Sally seemed to work a bit harder for the last two. She had gotten 6 babies out during the last 36 minutes of July 13th, and then took a break for about 24 minutes. Here is the seventh piglet born, now on the 14th:





And here are several pictures of the last one which came just a few minutes later:









And here is the happy family all together, with the little ones enjoying a nice meal and the mama enjoying a bit of rest:




2 comments
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Kitty on August 13, 2007 at 1:12 pm
That is so amazing to watch. I wish I could have been there. Thanks for sharing that with us.

Kitty
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Morning Sunshine on August 13, 2007 at 3:07 pm

Thank you for posting these. Life is miraculous!

A Morning Adventure On The East Ridge

We had a wonderful spontaneous moment this morning at Pure Water Hollow that found us up at our overlook watching the fog dissipate over the river valley below while we enjoyed a light breakfast on the overlook rock.

Matthew and I were up there yesterday morning cutting some trees and we told everyone how incredible the scene was with everything covered in fog.

This morning, one by one, each of the children asked if Matthew could take them up to the overlook on his 4-wheeler so they could see the morning fog. Before we knew it, cereal, bananas, and drinks were packed and we were all on the truck or 4-wheeler heading up to the overlook.

At first all we could see was white, which was amazing by itself, since we knew there was a vast river valley below us. Soon, the tips of the mountains could be seen on the other side of the river, looking like islands in a sea:



And then more and more trees became visible and we could see some of the farm houses, the fields, and the river below:





It was as if God was rolling back the blanket that had kept His world covered up and tucked in overnight. Now it was morning and time for His creation to greet the new day that He was unveiling.



We were enjoying the blessings of this morning, taking in the view, eating our breakfasts together on the rock:





Here is a shot looking from the other direction:



We perhaps should have packed up and gotten back down to the reality of the chores awaiting us, but instead we decided to do a bit of exploring before descending down to the house.

If we go on the hollow side of the ridge there are many cool cliffs and ledges to climb on. We encountered a friendly brown snake at one of the first places where we could climb down a bit:





After we maneuvered around this small obstacle, there was a great cave-like rock formation that featured built in benches to rest on.

Some of the children had been here before, but this was the first time Lisa and I had seen it. We are now calling it the East Ridge Cave. It was very peaceful there even though the morning hours were beginning to wane.



In this next picture you can see the many holes in the wall of the cliff where water had to once be flowing. This is facinating considering we are up on top of the mountain with the river many hundreds of feet below. There is evidence all around us that the entire earth was once flooded by water, just like the Bible says.



I tried to show in this shot how big the rock is, but I couldn't get it all in the camera. And the flat ledge where Christina is sitting is a cliff that drops about 10 more feet, so this rock is really huge!



And here we have another neat ledge that the children enjoyed crawling through:



While we were exploring this part of the mountain, Lisa was pleased to find some Wintergreen. She has looked all over our property for Wintergreen in the past but has never found it before. Now we know where it grows so we can transplant some to a more convenient location.



On the way back to the house the children saw a pretty little skunk that ran and hid under a fallen tree. They thought about poking it with a stick so it would come out and let them see it better, but thankfully, they decided to leave it alone until Lisa and I caught up to them. We left the skunk alone…

We had much we wished to accomplish this day, so we finally decided it was time to bid the lofty mountain grandeur a fond farewell.

God had blessed us with such a wondrous morning, that the rest of the day is sure to be a great one!

1 comment
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~Melissa on August 14, 2007 at 9:14 pm
I love it and the pictures… you truly live in a very wonderful place. Very beautiful.

Warmly,

Melissa

Baby Pigs Born At Pure Water Hollow!

I decided to have a guest writer for this post! It is none other than my lovely wife, Lisa. She does not type on the computer very often, but she did write an email to a friend and talked about our adventure with our sows giving birth in part of the email. I decided to swipe the email and use it for this post. The type that is normal font is from her email to the friend and my comments are all in italics.

So, without further adieu, here is the excerpt from the email she typed earlier today with pictures added:

On the 6th we went to the Creation Museum with Eric’s brother and his family. It is really awesome! That was NOT the best day to go though. We didn’t think anything about it being a "holiday weekend" (the 4th was on Wednesday). There were over 3,000 people there that day. It was way, way, way too crowded! We plan on going back again some day soon.

The following week we just worked on stuff. Both of our sows were pregnant, and due soon. One of them started just laying in the stall all day, not even getting up to eat, on Wednesday. Thursday evening she started panting heavily. We thought she was in labor, so, not wanting to miss the birth of our first piglets, we settled in with her.

Here we are waiting:

By 12:15AM, I made the call she wasn’t having them that night.

Friday morning since she was still panting, I called the vet. He said she had probably fallen and hurt herself, but not in labor. Well, it was Eric’s 40th birthday. So, assured by the vet, off to Pizza Hut lunch buffet we went.

We got home. I baked Eric’s cake. It was coming out of the oven when Matthew came flying down on his 4-wheeler saying that Sally(the hurt sow) was having discharge. Off we went for another vigil in the barn stall.


This time was not in vain. At 11:24 the first piglet was born! There were a total of eight born, six of them came before midnight(Eric’s birthday present).

We took many pictures and I thought I would share some here. We also got pictures of the piglets actually coming out of the sow, but I decided to save those for a separate post. The children thought they might be too graphic for some people.

It was really an incredible miracle to observe the whole thing, and the children loved the experience. Keep in mind this all was happening after 11:00 pm in a dark barn. You can’t tell much about the lighting conditions, but we had kerosene lanterns and a coleman lantern going along with flashlights. The entire scene was rather surreal and it will long be remembered at our homestead.

Here was the very first piglet born at Pure Water Hollow:




And here is number 2:






And six minutes later came the third one. He’s the one in the middle:


And 6 minutes after that came number 4!




Here is number 5:

And then there were 6:

Number 7 came 24 minutes after midnight:





Number 8 followed closely behind at 12:27. Here they all are nursing:

The after-birth was not completed until close to 2 am I think.

They are all doing really well. I finally got to bed around 4 AM after everyone got finished with their showers(they had rolled in the barn stall for several hours plus hugged around on newborn piggies).

We were back at the barn by 11 the next morning. We knew Nellie(the other sow) was not far behind Sally. We decided we needed to get her isolated away from the two males. Eric went to get straw from town. He got back and had just enough time to make it to the business part of the Lawrence County conference, which we are a part of now and especially with him being an ordained minister.

He was getting back about 3PM. The children had just gone up to check on the piggies and Matthew was going to fix the stall for Nellie. Eric had just walked in the living room when Christina came yelling that Nellie had piglets. So we went flying up there.

Sure enough, she had 7 piglets in with Rufus and Porky. She was ferociously protecting them. We worked fast and furious to get her and the piglets to the other stall.

Here are Nellie’s 7 piglets in their comfortable new stall. The muddy one on the left was not with the rest of the litter when we found them. He was in the outside lot in the mud and I don’t know if he would have survived had we not gotten up there when we did:

Nellie has one that is a runt and you can tell his size better in this picture. He is the third one from the right. Isn’t he small compared to the two next to him?

We got back to the house, took showers, and went to our Saturday night church service, and got home at about 10PM. Church the next day, Pastor Appreciation Day!! Whew! It was good. We have never been so appreciated. We came home, checked on the animals and crashed.

Monday we finally got to have Eric’s birthday cake!! We also started working on an outdoor lot for the mamma sows. And we finished it last night!! At least for one of them. Today we started on the other one. I also have beans to pick, green peppers to transplant, fall greens and peas to plant…….

And here is a picture of me with my birthday cake, three days after my birthday. Lisa decorated it with a black and white sow like Sally with little piggies nursing on her. I loved it!

And there you have it! We are so excited that the Lord allowed real farm animals to be born on our homestead! Now it is really starting to feel like a farm! We have had many chickens hatch off here, but these were the first mammals. I am so thankful that the entire family was able to be there to be a part of it.

I will try to keep you updated on our progress with the new pig lots and stys as we go along.

Thank you Lisa for your email used in this post!

1 comment

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Morning Sunshine on August 9, 2007 at 10:55 am

Wow! What a great experience!

The First Piglets Born At Pure Water Hollow

What a busy weekend! Friday night we stayed up to watch and help Sally give birth to the first piglets born on our homestead! We helped her deliver 8 beautiful little piglets! Then on Saturday, Nellie took her turn and delivered 7 beautiful little piggies all by herself!

I will post more about them when we get more time later. Soon we have to start on building something better for the mamas to live and raise the little ones. Our barn is just not big or strong enough for so many pigs!

God has been so good to us!

2 Habits Of Mine and 6 Facts About Me

I don’t think I have ever been "tagged" before with any of those "games" people play in blogland, but I have been specifically named by rellamom and mc2rwe for this one. It turned out to be a great reflective exercise for me!

"Each player lists 8 facts/habits about themselves. The rules of the game are posted at the beginning before those facts/habits are listed. At the end of the post, the player then tags 8 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know that they have been tagged and asking them to read your blog. "

The primary purpose of this blog is to act as a collection of memoirs of me and my family living at Pure Water Hollow during the early 21st century. My idea is that in 20 plus years or so, our grown-up children and even future generations may find some things of our existence interesting or informative. Since that is the goal, I have tried to think of some things that may not be common knowledge for those folks of the future. They will most likely already know that I was saved in 1987, that Lisa and I married in 1988, and that I began to preach the Gospel in 1992. They will probably know that we moved to Pure Water Hollow in 1993 with our 1 1/2 year old daughter and that our first son was born later that year. They will also know about our daughter born in 1997 and son in 2000. They may not know about a 5th child that would have been born in 1995 had it not been for a molar pregnancy miscarriage, depending on how far in the future folks are looking back at this.

So here are some habits/facts of mine that are not so important in the main scheme of things, which will probably be lost in the wind after I have moved on into eternity. I could only think of 2 habits of mine so I used 6 facts to fill up the 8.

1) It has been my habit for some time now to go out to the chicken coop at the crack of dawn to let the chickens out into their lot. We close them up in the coop each night for their protection, but I feel sorry for them if they have to stay in the coop for too long after they are awake. Through the summer I have been out there usually around 6:00am but in the winter it is more like 7:30ish. I automatically wake up at dawn without an alarm, usually, even if we had a very late night the night before. I guess that is what a habit is!

2) Another habit I thought I would share is our Sunday evening walks. After we are home from church I have a habit of reading or napping until dinner and then our usual custom is to take a nice walk in the woods as a family. These have been some very special times for us over the years. It is a habit we hope to continue.

3) It is a fact that I greatly prefer the King James Version of the Holy Bible and I have been outspoken against the regular use of many of the newer contemporary versions. When I was saved, I only had a copy of the NIV, so I know the Lord can use other translations. I hate the confusion that all the different versions are creating among churches and how they are undermining the authority of God’s Word to so many people. Not to mention the many additions and omissions in the new versions that seem to have no other purpose than to create doubt. If we have such better means of translating the scriptures today, why is there a new translation at every drop of a hat and why does each version disagree somewhat with every other translation? This has all gotten out of hand during the latter part of the 20th century and it continues to spiral out of control today. Sticking with the King James is the safest route.

4) My favorite music is the old time hymns of the church. I enjoy southern gospel also, and some of the contemporary Christian songs, but I love those great hymns.

5) My favorite secular book is The Frontiersman by Allan Eckert. I love reading about the frontier days of Kentucky and The Frontiersman is one book I have found myself reading and re-reading.

6) My favorite secular singer has always been Neil Diamond. (No, it was never cool to be a Neil Diamond fan as a teenager in the 80s, but I didn’t even care too much about fitting in back then.) As a teen I had many of his albums and I still enjoy hearing some of those songs.

7) My favorite style of movies are the old musicals like "Sound of Music", "Singing In the Rain", and "The Music Man". Chances are, if the main characters are liable to break out into song at the most crucial parts of the plot, it’s a movie I would enjoy. My all time favorite non-musical movie is "Sgt. York" with Garry Cooper.

8) I despise most of the modern media in TV, movies, music, and video games because they are being used so effectively to tear down traditional, Godly values and homes. We did not have any TV connection from 1993 until 1999 and we were very happy. Then we picked up Sky Angel, which is a satellite that only carries "Christian" (so called) and family TV and radio channels. (We got Sky Angel primarily for the Christian radio stations, and it has been a great blessing to us.) When they leave their sattelite service and move to IPTV we will most likely be without TV again.

So, there you have my 8 habits/facts that were on my mind today. Now I am supposed to tag 8 others, but I am going to be a spoil-sport and not play along. This was much fun for me, however, and I am thankful for the prompting.

2 comments
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LittleHouse on July 13, 2007 at 11:20 am
One of the things that you neglected to post on this "8 things about me" yesterday is that tomorrow would be your Birthday! Today is July 13th, so Happy Birthday Eric! How do I know this? Because I have known Eric my whole life.

I won't tell your age Eric, but I have been proud to have you as a Big Brother for all of my 38 years now!

May God bless you today. Relax and Enjoy the Day!

- "Pa" from LittleHouse
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mc2rwe on July 13, 2007 at 3:53 pm
I so appreciate your answers. We lost our youngest daughter in 1993. I am sorry for your loss…

Blessings

Kat

Picking Blackberries

I just wanted to share a few pictures of our blackberry harvest this year. There is a spot at Pure Water Hollow that is usually packed full of blackberries and this year was no exception!




We only picked berries one evening as an entire family this year, but we could have gotten many, many more if we had made the time to go back. Matthew, Christina, and Simon did go back on their own the other night while we were waiting for Sally to give birth to her piglets, but over-all, we did not spend much time picking berries this year. At least we got enough for Lisa to make about 20 pints of blackberry jam that was/is delicious!


Of couse we ate many berries before they got to the kitchen, and they were so sweet and juicy!


I hope to thin everything out before next summer and get rid of all those tree saplings that are getting in the way, so next year we may have an even greater abundance of blackberries.

We have enjoyed inviting friends over in the past to pick with us, but this year the patch was in such a mess that we just picked on it ourselves.

We still enjoyed ourselves and thanked God for providing this wonderful, natural, food on our property.