This barn door makes a nice frame for Denise and Rick’s animal friend at their Fernwood Nursery and Garden in Maine. 🙂
When I was a very little girl, I went to a Vermont fair with my grandparents and great uncle. Coming home, we passed a sign – pigs for sale. My great uncle asked my grandfather to stop, and he bought me a pig which came in a burlap sack. I held that squealing pig all the way home.
Mysteriously when I returned to the farm the next summer, the little pig was gone. I was way too little to understand the relationship between my friend, piggy, and the bacon with my egg and the ham in the beans. 🙂
NewEnglandGardenAndThread 
I had a similar childhood memory, but I was able to make the connection. I never forgave my grandfather!
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There I was spending my summers on the farm, and the first time my grandfather tried to tell me the milk on my cereal came from those cows in our barn I couldn’t believe it. 🙂
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The makers of Farmville didn’t believe it either. 🙂 The cows one can buy for one’s farm in the game have no udders.
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I had one of those relationships with a calf. I’ve never felt the same about meat.
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I know ignorance is not really bliss but …
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What an amazing farm with frames for their animals! 🙂 And you can’t possible eat an animal whose door says “Animal friend.” But pork is so tasty.
janet
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I do love my bacon. 🙂
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So does our family and I do love a good pork chop as well.
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It’s a tough thing for a child.
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That pig is well framed by the open door. That’s s cute story. Those connections are hard to accept.
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Aw, I wanted to name a piglet and was told no matter what I called him, he’d be Sunday Dinner. I was four.
My surprise came with the cricket house 5 years later.
Great frame 🙂
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Ha! That was a funny post. I was a suburbanite, I thought milk magically appearing in a box by your front door. 😄
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I just like the people who treat their pigs – and other farm animals, like this – free range and humanely treated. You took a great picture!
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I love that story, I think I was the same about our pet turkey called ”Tom”..
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Thank you for both story and picture; I love both. So does the photo frame the story or does the story frame the photo? And how do I stop the smell of bacon which wafts from these comments?
Because my grandpa was a Borden’s milkman, I always knew that milk came from Elsie the Borden cow, so I would have been ahead of my suburban playmates had suburbs been invented at the time.
But I’ve never held a squealing pig. Your grandparents gave you some great adventures, didn’t they?
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A Borden’s milkman brings visions of the delivery truck and all those glass bottles rattling as he made deliveries. In the 1950’s, there was a large Freihofer facility in our city, and they still delivered with horse and wagon. They only did it within a small city area, but people would stop on the street to see the horses because it was so out of place. No Amazon or Walmart to deliver milk and bread back then. 🙂 My grandparents gave me a basic, hard working, self-supporting, soil loving summer adventure every year of my young life. Secluded farm life in the summer and school vacations and inner city life during the school year – it was definitely an interesting mix. 🙂
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Oh, yes, the rattling of those glass bottles! And you saw actual horses and milk wagons! Wow.
Your grandparents gave you a whopping lot.
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Hey, Judy! I recognize that door! It’s still there….without surprise, however, you have to open a different door to find that pig ( freezer door). Part of the cycle of farm life…..
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A farm truly is the circle of life. 🙂
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Great photo and story Judy. I grew up in “town” but do remember one year when I was pretty little my father raised some hogs “out in the country” (probably not more than a mile or two away, but not sure now). We’d go with him sometimes to slop the hogs. My parents didn’t allow us kids to watch the butchering but were very matter of fact about there the food had come from.
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Awwwww, piggy is so adorable. What a great photo. When I was young, I was given 3 baby ducks for Easter. It soon became clear we couldn’t keep them, so they went to live with my Great Aunt and Uncle. I named them Huey, Dewey and Louie. Loved them! Couldn’t wait to visit them. They would follow me around the yard like trained puppies.
And then they were gone. No explanation given. For months I would spend my visit looking for them and calling them. And crying. Lots of crying.
Perhaps the same way “one man’s junk is another man’s treasure”, we could say that one man’s pet may be another man’s dinner!
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You and I could really have some interesting conversations. 🙂 I had a duck on the farm too which disappeared and I’m guessing was a Sunday dinner after I went back to school. And, yes, I think you have it in a nutshell: one man’s pet may be another man’s dinner. It’s kind of funny how you can eat meat several times a week and not think about a lot of relevant issues. I guess that is a good thing or there’d be a lot more vegetarians. But, it is hard to grow enough vegetables to last an entire year with all the pests and water issues. Maybe there should be a ‘dessertatarian’ classification. I think I could handle the baking and the eating of desserts without wondering where the flour and sugar came from. 🙂
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Lol!! Never would have put dessertarian and sanity in the same mouthful. Woulda just called it a “sweet tooth”!!! ‘Course maybe you would have to be “round the bend” to only eat desserts!!
It seems many of us only have a problem with eating meat/fish/fowl if we’ve named it, fed it, protected it and loved it. Otherwise it’s fine.
Wonder if cannibals draw the line at family and friends! 😱
Anyway, we’re having grilled cheese tonight!
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Grilled cheese sounds good to me. 🙂
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My grandparents kept a pig in the sty at their farm when I was little. Every day I would go and scratch her back. She was such a friendly pig. So exciting when the piglets were born. Like you, I never knew what happened next. Which is probably just as well. But that pig had the best life ever living with my family.
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I smiled just thinking about how much that pig must have loved those scratches. 🙂 In the old days, family farms provided meat for their community and that was a really good thing. Today is a totally different story. We have been going to a local market that is owned by a farm that grass feeds its animals on their property in MA. That’s about as close as we can get to the farmer and we pay a little more for better quality and that is fine. If the cost becomes an issue, we choose to eat less meat but better quality from the local area.
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We raised 2 pigs every year when I was a kid. In the fall, we’d come home from school, the pigs would be gone and the ground was red. It was all treated as normal, so while I missed scratching the piggy’s backs, I accepted it. Bacon, ham and pork chops helped feed our large family.
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The reality of farm life and the realization that everything and everybody has a purpose. 🙂
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It is Wilbur from Charlotte’s Web 🙂 Always loved that movie!
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That was a great movie. 🙂 I like Babe the pig too. 🙂
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Great story shared, Judy. We only had chicken and ducks when we were little – no ham or bacon for us! lol
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Good thing I am not having bacon with my eggs this morning, LOL!
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We owe those pigs so much.
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That’s right. What would happen to the BLT without them? 🙂
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That seems like a rather young pig to turn into bacon, one year later! This surprises me, Judy, are you sure the pig didn’t become a 4H project and bought by another farmer? To get really big and fat?
Not trying to be argumentative, just surprised since I am a “city” girl transplanted into a small town girl, I like to ask questions! My kids raised bunnies and did arts and crafts, woodworking projects and cooking to earn ribbons but they had friends who raised pigs and sheep. I didn’t now that pigs who were made into bacon we reply year old piggies. 😦
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As an adult, I’ve never raised pigs for meat so I don’t have answers. I’ve owned or been around large horses, small horses, cows, chickens, ducks, goats, rabbits, dogs, cats but no pigs except to photograph. 🙂
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Oops, last sentence should read, “were only year old piggies.” ~hugs, Robin
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The picture is wonderful! Jenna really wants a pig but Justin says no. They have a friend who recently got a pot belly and it is cute and adorable and louder than everything!
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A pig in the yard means lots of good eating. A pig in the house seems like a real challenge but if anyone is up to it that would be Jenna. 🙂
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Really great post and an excellent picture (:
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