#-thank shoveling shit for a living; *especially* on a pig farm-

[kariachi]

I’m still of a mood to rave about one of my oldest OCs and her career so guess who’s getting ranted at about how Marian got into the pig farming business in the first place?

First up, she’s an incredibly lucky woman in that she owns not-unsubstantial amount of acreage, and that it’s been in the family for generations and so is paid the fuck off. Not too very much, few dozen acres of forest, pasture, and a small creek (which may seem like a lot but the average small family farm in the US is over 200 acres, so, she’s making a lot of use out of not so much space, comparatively). Case of people getting 'scammed’ on supposedly useless land, and then making something of it. Buy out neighbors who gave up on the farm deal, or marry into them- her grandmother did that. There’s been a bit of everything on that land- started off with a few cattle that didn’t last and some trees and berry shrubs, moved into chickens and goats, plants fell by the wayside and a good chunk of the land grew back over after a point, were keeping the least amount of critters in over a generation when Mari was a small, and now she’s maining pigs on it. Who knows what her children will do, if she ever manages to get herself some. If she dies without them right now the farm’s set to go to Jadie and he would do so much poultry on it.

So, that gives us a bit of history of the farm, but not of the Marian.

She was a 4-H kid, which isn’t surprising given she grew up in a rural area on a farm. Her family went to the 4-H Fair each year, she knew it existed and exactly when she would be able to join.

(Please picture: you are a volunteer in the local 4-H club, the fair in in full swing, you turn away from discussing the confirmation of a calf with one of the kids to see a small girl, surely no older than six, waiting, practically vibrating with curiosity, for you to not be busy. She proceeds to essentially grill you, wanting every piece of information there in on why all the animals get brought to the fair every year, why is it mostly kids taking care of them, what’s 4-H, how can she get a piece of this action- As you’re explaining that she can’t join until she’s nine (and you can see her consider lying about her age) her father- whose brother you went to school with- approaches, apologizes because he didn’t know sending her over to ask herself was going to end in her picking your brain apart. You aren’t surprised anymore, because from what you remember his brother was the same damn way. As her grandmother calls her away to look at the sheep, the two of you chat about kids and life and livestock and you learn he works at the firehouse with your cousin (because it’s a rural area, he had to have known one of your relatives). You know you won’t be able to work with her for another few years, but that Christmas you hand your cousin a package to give to her father to give to her, a handful of books- some for kids and some just general information- about farming and farm animals. When she does join, you make sure to keep an eye on her, help her out where she needs it. Decades later she comes in to talk to the 4-H kids doing goats and swine a couple times a year, is one of the people you recommend they get their animals from, and she still gifts you your Christmas ham and will until the day you die.)

To the surprise of no one Marian was a heavy focus on the agriculture program, specifically the critter side. At first she focused on poultry- ducks, geese were new and interesting critters she’d never worked with before, and learning more varieties of chickens than her family kept was a big deal. But they didn’t scratch the itch for her. She preferred bigger, smarter animals. She tried out sheep the first year of middle school, wasn’t impressed, backed out of that track and dove into the goats. After all, she already knew them and could not only join in with the kids farther along in the track, but could be a source of more advanced information due to her experience. But even then, much as she likes a good goat- they’re smart, hardy, menaces- she already knew them. They’d been part of her life since she’d been old enough to toddle out to the pasture with her gran. She loved them, but they didn’t hold any real interest. Besides, bringing goats to the fair felt like presenting somebody else’s work, she knew these things through her grandmother and forever she would associate them with her first. She wanted something different, something new, something hers.

So, going into high school, she looked into her options. Could go into horses, but she already knew that wherever life took her (because at that point she was thinking ‘farmer’ or ‘field biologist’), it’d bring her back to the family farm eventually, and the property wasn’t good for horses. Could do cattle, but again it was already known that they didn’t work long term on her eventual land. So, to start off this new chapter in life she took some of the money from selling that year’s goats and invested in a few swine books and a piglet.

Y’all it was like she stepped into sunshine for the first time. That yorkshire (Jack) drove her sideways. Constant escapes, constant mess, constant destruction, constant noise, and she’d have sworn up and down that little bastard thought he was smarter than her. Wouldn’t have promised he was wrong either. For some this would’ve been too much, they’d have said ‘fuck it’ and moved on to something else, maybe felt a new appreciation for the goats, but for the first time in this whole journey Mari was thriving. She’d never been challenged by an animal like this before, every day she was learning something new, and every day it seemed that he was learning something new. The intelligence, the personality, the hardiness, that little porker stole the key to her heart and gave it to his entire damn species. And it didn’t hurt that, once her father had ‘purchased’ him off her and the slaughtering was done, he was damn tasty too.

Marian threw herself into pigs after that. Getting more at a time so they wouldn’t be lonely, heading off escapes before they could happen, learning the best care methods, how to handle medical issues, how to breed them, how to raise them, process them. She developed Opinions and Preferences and recipes. Threw herself in with the meticulous and stubborn forethought with which she does everything and succeeded. Won $700 in scholarship money with a duroc gilt (Goldy).

When she went to college it was with the understanding that she wanted to raise pigs- not quite her favorite animal (partial to an iguana) but damn close and she’d developed a serious love of pork. A couple different scholarships under her belt- pork industry damn near paid for her first year, though even with scholarships and college savings she came out with like $20k in debt she’s still paying down- she went out and got herself a bachelor’s in agricultural management. When she came back the first order of business was getting herself a job at a dairy farm on the other side of the county so she could pay her bills, then the second order of business was investing in her first three berkshires (one boar, two sows (Conn, Alba, Bridget)). She split her time between work and her farm for the first few years, investing her time and money into expanding the holdings. Getting fences up, getting a new shed for the goats so the pigs could have the full barn, adding more sows, moving the pigs to pasture and silvopasture. Her second year she added the Tamworths- a coworker’s uncle had them and she fell for the rare, heritage breed when she went out to see them for herself- and the third Triath followed her home, she quit her job, and pig farming became her full time gig. Through this all the whole family was still at home, so her gran’s retirement and her dad’s salary paid most of the household bills until she reached a point she could pay her fair share and eventually all of it.

As of her ‘present’ she’s been out of school about eleven years, in love with hogs and hog farming for nineteen, and doing so full time for eight. For a while there, while her gran was alive and her dad still at home, she focused her profits on expansion. Getting more of the property set up for the pigs, getting more pigs, getting a building up where she could process and store meat for sale in the amounts she works in, all sort’s of shit. She intends to expand some more, add a few more sows now that she’s got help, but the infrastructure is all there and so now most of the profits go to Jadie’s salary, with the rest getting tossed into savings. Jadie, meanwhile, has been working at the farm for about a year, and doesn’t intend to leave anytime soon.