SHAVING HOGS????

Well, perhaps I should've been more specific about the "I plan to be useful" statement. I didn't mean so soon.
We have been on a Ferris wheel that is being driven by a maniac carny, with a sadist's sense of time.
I worry that I might secretly be the carny. Which would mean the whole thing is masochistic...but I don't have the time to figure it out.
I spent three days last weekend (okay, just that statement gives you how our "time" is working) at Middlest's Pony Club Show Jumping and Dressage Rallies in northern Ohio. That is worth chapters of blogging, oodles of blogging , and many wonderful pictures...but the darn Ferris wheel won't stop and let me off, so we are onto Fair now. We are so onto Fair, that at this moment, Youngest, with the help of our Hog Experienced neighbor, is shaving his pigs.
(This is one of the moments when the Ferris wheel stops at the top and lets you swing back a forth a whole minute.)


SHAVING HOGS??????????????

Yep. I hadn't really thought of hogs as hairy. But, they have longish hair on their bodies, and for show you shave them down to about a 1/2 inch of hair. The "processor" likes to have some hair, because, it apparently allows them to get a better grip on the hide. And yes, Wilbur and Willis are going to the "processor". Bacon and Ribs. I'm not really vegetarian by choice, but in this instance....

Even their little piggy tails get shaved.

One of the things that I was curious about was; how does one get a hog to stand still and be shaved? The answer, apparently is; food.

And, one for the road- for soon, not only do the hogs hit the road, so does little February. Our first market lamb.