Farm Progress

Home Front: Why is it that livestock often (always?) get out when the farmer is away?

John and Kendra Smiley

October 3, 2017

3 Min Read
father and son standing in field

Kendra
I sat across the table from some lovely ladies I’d met only hours before. They were all on the planning committee for the Minn-Ia-Kota Bible League International retreat. I was scheduled to speak for that group the next day, and now we were eating together at a restaurant in downtown Sioux Center, Iowa. John and the men in the group were at the other end of the long table.

John
I’d joined Kendra on the nine-plus-hour road trip as her chauffer and encourager so she’d be ready to speak early the next morning. As we worked our way to the northwest corner of Iowa, the landscape and crop maturity didn’t change too much from ours. The biggest difference was the number of large hog operations.

Kendra
Before dinner was served, I learned that most of the dinner guests had grown up on a farm or lived on one now. That was when I decided to quiz them about their experiences. Almost every woman had a story or two to share. One of the women talked about being raised on a hog farm where “the hogs got out every time Dad was gone!” That statement rang a bell; I’d heard something similar from John.

John
Yes, that was my story, too. When I was growing up, we raised 1,200 hogs farrow-to-finish each year. Our pigs may not have gotten out every time Dad was gone, but it was more than once. Kendra had never experienced that phenomenon, but once again, hearing the tale of escaping pigs brought back a memory she had of a different animal on the loose — a memory she shared with her new friends.

Kendra
It was years ago. We were living in our old farmhouse where the kitchen window faced the garden, which was providing us with a bountiful vegetable crop. John’s dad had a cow-calf operation and had recently brought the bull to our farm. He was fenced in just south of the garden; at least, he was supposed to be fenced in. As I stood at my kitchen window that morning, I saw the great big critter nosing through my garden, eating my vegetables, and trampling them too! I was one angry woman as I raced toward the kitchen door.

My plan was to get that bull out of the garden, pronto! In order to carry out my mission, I grabbed my “enforcer” — a flyswatter — and ran outside yelling and wildly waving my arms.

John
Kendra had obviously not received the instruction I heard in my childhood, and one which our boys heard too: “Never trust a bull. You don’t know what he is going to do.” Thankfully the bull did not charge forward. Instead, he hightailed it to the pen, yielding to the persuasive power of an outraged woman.

Kendra decided escaping one “untrustworthy” bull was enough. Perhaps hearing the overdue words of warning immediately after the incident — and not from my father, nor from me, but from our 4-year-old son — made an impact.

I wonder what those women thought as they heard Kendra’s account of the memorable flyswatter rampage so long ago. My guess is they hoped Kendra was a better speaker than “bull whisperer.”

John and Kendra Smiley farm near East Lynn, Ill. Email [email protected], or visit kendrasmiley.com.

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