During the four months I was raising Peaches, we had many adventures together. We would go for walks around the farm and go swimming in the pond behind the barn. My favorite adventure however, was when we would go in the pond and she would follow me while I kayaked around. Throughout all the fun adventures we had, we did have a few not so fun adventures.

One time when Scott and I were riding our bikes down to the barn to clean and take care of the pigs, our neighbors stopped us. They wanted to come with us to meet the pigs, so we all hopped onto our bikes and peddled to the barn. When we got to the barn, Scott and I snuck into the pen–the pigs were very quick to get out–to start cleaning them. After the pig pen was scrapped and immaculate, Scott took the wheelbarrow back to the manure pile while I got the pigs food. When I left the feed room with the pigs supper, I was shocked to see the pen door open, and our neighbors nowhere to be found. When I peeked into the pen there was only one little piglet left in there out of the ten that were originally in there.

I darted out of the barn and started looking around. The piglets were everywhere, there was one stuck under the truck, one had gotten into the garage, a couple had gotten in with the cows and the horses but, the other five were nowhere to be seen and my neighbors had left us to clean up their mess. As I chased after the one that was stuck under the truck trying to catch it, it kept slipping from my fingers, they were just under 100 pounds and felt as greasy as butter. Once I finally got the piglet from under the truck, I wheelbarrow walked the greasy pig back to the pen, two down eight to go. When my brother came back from dumping the wheelbarrow, he was frantic asking why there were pigs in the pond and in the pen with the cows. I explained to him that our lovely neighbors had left the pig pen open and then took off, leaving an eight and nine year old to catch ten pigs on their own. After close to an hour of chasing the pigs around we had six of them back in the pen, however Peaches and Pork Chop (my brothers pig) were still out swimming in the pond while the other two pigs were terrorizing the cows. After another twenty minutes of chasing the pigs it was only Peaches and one other pig left wandering, at this point my dad had called us twice to see what was taking us so long. We didn’t want to tell him that the pigs had gotten out because we would have gotten in trouble for taking our neighbors up to the barn when no one was home. Scott and I split up and we each took off after one of the pigs, I finally got ahold of Peaches and returned her to her home. Then I took off into the cow pasture to help Scott get the last pig. After ten minutes of chasing him through the mud and slop we got him cornered and back into his pen. That was the last time we took anyone to the barn without someone being home.