Lots going on at the farm today. We have an update on the baby piggies and a new product in the store that is already a hit.
This week we received in a new product that SWMBO has been chasing for a while. SWMBO is a lot like our customers. She has a gaggle of kids that she wants to:
- Have fun
- Learn something
- Eat healthy.
Not necessarily in that order and not always all three at the same time, but as often as possible. So she understands what mom’s want when they come to the farm with their kids. That’s why when she said she’d like to bring Locopops into the store I didn’t really even question it. We did take a quick run over to Pullen Park to try a few different flavors (no, my job isn’t bad) and declared they were perfect.
This week we received our first order and the picture you see above is the first kids who came into the store after their arrival. Every single kid walked out with one and the smiles are obvious. I’d call this a success.
Locopops aren’t like the sugary mess that we call popsicles here in the US. These are Mexican style, which means real fruit juice and not nearly as sweet or sticky. My comment after I tried the first one?
“Meh, it tastes like what mine do when I make them at home.”
At the time I thought that was kinda of a bad comment. But then I realized that when I make popsicles I make them out of 100% real ingredients without added sugar. Find that combination in the grocery store.
Now onto the piggies. First the cuteness.
We have two stories on the piggies we are hand raising. One is Stripe, pictured above. Basically it’s about how it looks. Totally pampered, getting away with murder, having breakfast cooked (yes cooked) for her. Play time in the yard. Getting fatter and bigger but still a runt. It’s about as good as it gets. Big smiles on this one.
Then we have Eeyore. Eeyore is the piglet that was stepped on by mom. She wasn’t able to walk, or really get around at all. She had maybe a broken pelvis and surely one broken leg, maybe two. We’ve been nursing Eeyore for weeks, hand feeding her every few hours, medicating her, and holding her up and letting her walk with basically no weight on her legs. She had even gotten her up to the point of short hobbles on three legs on occasion.
Then things took a turn for the worse. She started throwing up and had diarrhea. This went on for several days. We were able to get fluids into her but she was slowly fading. Last night I had to pull the plug on her because at this point all she would do is suffer. Could we have gone to the vet, spent $2000, and she lived? Maybe. IV drips, constant monitoring, maybe a surgery or two?
At some point you have to realize that she was a farm animal and this is a business. She’s not our pet poodle. Frankly, it sucks but it’s part of being a farmer.
Eeyore received a farm animals funeral in our compost pile. That means that she will return to the earth, and become part of a future project on the farm. We did the best we could by her, more than she’d ever have received at any commercial farm. We’ll have to take solace in that.