Part One – The Incredible Pig

 

"You signed up for what?" Peter Belden was certain he'd heard wrong.

"The swine breeding project," Bobby repeated carefully.  "it's a longer project, so I won't have to do another project next year."

"Swine?  As in Porky Pig?"

"Yes, sir.  Or maybe like Miss Piggy since I'm doing breeder pigs."

"Maybe more like Piglet.  Since you're going to breed pigs there will be plenty of those running around," Helen Belden offered, a twinkle in her blue eyes.  She didn't often get to see her husband completely flummoxed and she was enjoying the moment.  It wasn't the time to admit that she'd also been completely taken aback when Bobby informed her he had signed up to breed swine, but since the Lynch twins were doing pigs as well, it made sense.  They could work together.  Besides, she'd rationalized internally as she accepted the idea, if it keeps them away from mysteries like their older siblings, it will be more than worth it.

"Why did I think you were doing chickens?" he asked slowly.  "Didn't we talk about chickens this past weekend?"

"Yes, sir.  I originally planned to do chickens, but we have so many kids in our club this year and unless all of us had agreed to do the same program, they had to impose limits.  The poultry program was full when it was my turn to sign up." 

Peter's dark eyes narrowed.  "Were you late?"

"They assigned us random numbers to sign up, like a lottery.  I had number forty-two."  There was no sense in admitting he had been late to his club meeting because that wasn't the reason he'd chosen pigs.

"Wasn't there anything else available?"

"Yes, sir, but you'd been adamant that I was not to sign up for the cattle program."  Bobby responded innocently, but at the same time failing to mention that both sheep and rabbits were available as well.   He knew his father would instruct him to see if he could still get in the rabbit program.

"Very well, then," Peter sighed.  "I guess we'll be pig farmers after all.  What are we going to have to do around here to raise a litter of pigs?"

Grinning, Bobby waved the Breeding Swine reference book that he'd been given by the representative from Cornell.  It was a great tool and clearly described each step in the project.   "Everyone has to submit a budget and a project plan at next month's meeting," he explained.  "Our parents have to sign off on it.  It includes the costs of all the modifications to the barn that we'll need to make."  Noticing his father's frown at the mention of money, he was quick to head off the objections.  "We've saved our money for the supplies," he added.  "I mean, Larry, Terry and I -- we've got some money saved.  I might need to borrow some from you when it comes time to buy my pigs, but there's enough for the renovations to the barn."

"The money is not a problem," Peter assured his son.  "We fronted the money to Mart for his chickens and we don't have any problem giving you the money to fund your 4-H project.  I understand that you'll be making the money back when the pigs are sold, correct?"

Letting out a blow of air in relief, Bobby nodded.  "Yes, if we do our project plans correctly and account for all the costs of materials, food, vets, etc. we should make money.  We're going to work on our project plans next weekend.  Trixie said it was okay for us to use the Bob-White's clubhouse while they're all at school, so we can put up some posters and things the guy from Cornell gave us."

Peter nodded.  "An excellent plan.  Make sure Regan and Tom know you're using the clubhouse.  We don't want Mr. Wheeler thinking someone is trespassing."

"We will," Bobby assured him.   "I'll call Larry now."

Watching as his youngest son left the room, Peter turned and looked at Helen.  "He doesn't get that desire to work with livestock from me.  He must get it from Andrew."

 

Completing the required swine program plan wasn't easy, but working together meant it only took a little effort for the three friends to figure out what they needed to do. 

"Wait a minute, this can't be right," Larry protested as he looked at the total on the calculator they were sharing.  "If this is right, then I'm going to lose money when I sell my hog.  Why does it cost so much to feed a stupid pig?"

"Let me see," Terry said pulling his twin's sheet toward him.  "Dummy, you left the decimal off the pounds of food per day.  It starts with two point five, not 25 pounds of food."

"Oh!"  Larry grinned.  "That's better."

"Any big decisions, Bobby?" Terry asked. 

Terry was a math wizard, and the only one of the three who knew exactly what he was going to study in college, where he wanted to go, and what job he wanted when he graduated.  Terry was bound for M.I.T. and a degree in electrical engineering and computer science.  While he couldn't spell basic words in the English language correctly, he could solve math equations that had stumped his advanced calculus teacher.  He had computed the math for his budget in his head, leaving Bobby and Larry to share the hand-held calculator.

"Yep, I'm not going to buy a purebred pig," Bobby remarked as he pulled Terry's budget over to compare to his own.  He looked up at his friend.  "If this is right, I'm going to make twice as much money as you by breeding pigs instead of raising feeder hogs."

"No, you're not," Terry clarified.  "Percentage wise, it's much closer.  Remember, you're going to spend more money than we are because you'll have more pigs."

"Oh!"  Bobby knew better than to argue anything math with Terry.  He handed the sheet to his friend.  "Check it for me."

Terry glanced down and nodded.  "It's good."

"I take it your Dad was okay with you raising pigs," Larry asked, erasing one of the figures on his budget and replacing it with the correct number.

"He was surprised," Bobby admitted.  "But he agreed.  He also agreed to loan me the money.  It helped when I told him you guys were raising hogs as well.  What about your Dad, did he say anything?"

"He thought it was funny," Larry answered rolling his eyes.  "Honestly, we've heard more pig jokes this past week."

"Pig jokes?  Like what?"

"He told us to be sure and get a pig that knows karate," Terry answered. 

"Karate?"  Bobby echoed, bewildered about why a pig would need to know karate.

"Yeah, cause then we'd be sure and have plenty of pork chops."

Bobby groaned.  "You're kidding, right?  Is that the best one?"

"That, my friend, is the best one," Larry assured him.  "Are we done?  Cause if we're done, I'm ready to go shoot some hoops."

“Basketball?” Bobby queried, just a touch of innocence in his voice. “I thought we were going to the movies?”

“The movies?” Terry looked up.  “What’s playing that you want to see?”

“Aren’t they showing Hamlet?”

The twins groaned as Bobby grinned.  “Gotcha!”

 

“What do you think, Dad?”  Bobby beamed as proudly as any new father at the rather unattractive boar that was currently exploring the pen at Crabapple Farm.

“I’m not sure,” Peter replied as he watched the pig sniff around and check the feeding trough several times, for some reason thinking of Mart.  “To be honest, I wasn't expecting it to be so big.”

“Don’t worry, he’s almost fully grown.  He still needs a little bit of fattening before I can breed him.” Bobby spoke with confidence.  For the last two months, he and the Lynch twins had studied, read, and started project books, visited swine production farms and observed the operations at meat processing plants.  He could recite the difference between a boar, sow, barrow, and gilt as easily as he could enumerate the various body parts of a pig and the cuts of meat it would yield.   All he lacked was the actual experience – raising swine for breeding.  The boar currently rooting around in the pen was his start.

“Fully grown ….” Peter echoed.  “How long will it be before you … never mind.”  There were some things about raising pigs that Peter Belden simply did not want to know.  “When will you get the other pig?”

“Soon,” Bobby said.  “Bryan is older, the boars usually are.  But my gilt will be much younger.  I won't actually need her for at least another month, but it’s recommended that they get to know each other. 

"What does Brian have to do with this?"  Peter was lost and confused at the mention of his oldest son.

"Bryan is the name of my hog," Bobby informed him.  He waved his arm in the general direction of the animal. 

"You named your 4-H hog Brian?"  Peter Belden couldn't hide his surprise.  "Is there a particular reason you named him Brian?

"Yeah," Bobby answered.  Noting the look on his father's face, he quickly corrected his language.  "Yes, Sir.  I chose Bryan because Terry already used Oscar."

"Oscar?" his father repeated, puzzled by the idea of naming of hogs that were being raised to sell to a meat processing plant in the next county.  In his day, they didn't name animals that they planned to eventually eat.  There was just enough suggestion of the cannibalism element to prevent him from dining on a pork dinner that had been named.  Not to mention the thought of consuming bacon named after his oldest son was more than a little unsettling.  In fact, it sounded like something a future serial killer might do in his youth.  Taking a deep breath, he attempted to explain this fact to his youngest son, hoping to save Bobby from a future in Sing Sing.

"Dad, you don't understand," Bobby interrupted.  "Oscar is named after our favorite brand of bologna.  Oscar Mayer.  But we also like bacon, so I named my boar Bryan, after our favorite brand of bacon."

"Oh."  Peter wondered how many times Bobby was going to have to explain the logic of having a hog named Bryan over the next few months.  Maybe giving permission for him to participate in the 4-H Swine Project hadn't been such a good idea.  His focus snapped back to the here and now as he realized Bobby had said something he needed to hear.

"What was that again, son?"

"Terry and Larry are doing the feeder pig project," Bobby explained.  "So it was okay for them to use Oscar and Mayer for their swine.  They'll finish by the time of the fair, but I'm doing the breeder project and it lasts over a year.  That's why we worked so hard to get the barn set up with pens and fencing added.  We have to have both a heating and cooling method, good ventilation, separate pens for boars, sows and gilts, not to mention a farrowing pen."

He couldn't help it, Peter's jaw dropped.  "A year," he said weakly.  "I don't recall you mentioning this project would last over a year."

"Sure I did, Dad," Bobby reminded him.  "I told you and Moms that it was a bigger project and would count towards next year's as well.  It was on the project plan you signed."

The project plan!  Didn't he know better than to scrutinize anything and everything he signed?  But having done this before, he'd checked the math and looked at the total cost before signing Bobby's project plan.  He hadn't paid any attention to the dates. 

"Yes, that's right ..." he stammered, unwilling to tell Bobby he had signed something without fully understanding it.  The full weight of the commitment settled on him as he realized exactly what it meant:  Crabapple Farm was going to be a pig farm for the next year.  He wasn't at all sure that Helen was aware that this was a year-long project either, and he didn't want to be the one to tell her.  Certainly his younger brother Andrew knew about raising sheep, and living in Iowa had probably given him a pretty good idea of what was involved in running a breeding project for 4-H.  Did Bobby get the idea to breed swine from his Uncle Andrew?  He had to ask.

"What made you decide on this project?"  He cleared his throat and waved his hand to encompass the outdoor pen that Bobby had constructed next to the barn.  "Why not just do the, uh, feeder project?" 

Peter had not selected banking on a whim.  While he enjoyed living at Crabapple Farm, he wasn't particularly enamored of farming life.  A large farming operation was his younger brother’s dream.  Fortunately for him, Crabapple Farm just wasn't large enough for the kind of farming Andrew had envisioned.  His older brother, Harold, never had any interest in farming or staying in Sleepyside and had chosen instead to ramble around the country figuring out what he wanted to do with his life and see the world before finally settling in Idaho.  He'd thought for years that Mart would end up a farmer like Andrew, but he was beginning to think that it was a trait associated with the youngest Belden in each generation.  After all, Brian, Mart, Trixie and Bobby aligned almost exactly with his own sibling order of Harold, Peter, Alicia and Andrew.  Although Mart and Trixie were the almost twins, Alicia and Andrew actually were twins, and the two least alike of the bunch.

"Dad," Bobby answered.  "I chose the swine breeder project because it's a two-year program.  I won't have to sign-up for another program next year."

Peter sighed.  His thoughts could wander when he thought back to those days growing up at Crabapple Farm.  But that was enough reminiscing about his childhood.  His biggest concern at the moment was how to find out if Helen realized were officially pig farmers through the next year.