"A Fortune In Pigs"

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 106, 7 May 1938, Page 3 (Supplement)

"A Fortune In Pigs"

And Some Quarrels

By MES.

WHAT are the most fertile seeds of friction between neighbours? The cynical would reply that, if they be women, they quarrel most frequently over their children; if they have none, over their pet dogs, their proficiency at bridge, the number of votes each has polled for a vacancy on some charitable committee. Failing all these, there is still the colour of their washing or their failures and successes in the garden. Men, of course, don't quarrel—according to the unprejudiced accounts of their own sex. It may be true that quarrels arise less easily, simply because their work is more interesting and diversified, and therefore their interests aro wider; yet quarrel they do, and at tiitie-s over the most unreasonable subjects—their business, their golf scores, their political opinions, the brand of tobacco or cigarettes they prefer. But if they live in the country all these serious differences become as nothing compered to the burning questions of that boundary fence or the rival merits of each farmer's team of dogs. If it is A's turn to mend the fence he is certainly not going to do it while B's bull is at liberty to break it down whenever he feels the wanderlust upon him; it is all nonsense for A to pretend that his black hujtaway ie the best dog in the district when it ie perfectly well known that B's purebred English sheepdog is far ahead of anything ever seen in these parts and would have won the dog trial without difficulty but for an incipient attack of distemper—caught, incidentally, from one of A's mongrel team. But even dogs, even boundary fences may be lived down in peace and amity; the true apple of discord ie provided when one member •f the community decides, without ree•on or excuse for so dastardly a deed, to keep a pig. The Unguarded Pig Please understand that I am not writing of legitimate and seemly pigs, of comely porkere securely yarded, of sleek baconere living in plenty in a epotless sty, of heavily maternal sows with an amazing miinber of piglets swarming about them, yet never wandering beyond their almost Plunketified nursery. In short, I am not writing of the dairy farmer's pigs. These are a Business, and like any other business thus dignified with capitals are run on sound lines end duly controlled — not merely by the Government, but by the owner. Pigs, I was lately told by a serious-minded dairy farmer, are a stable asset and should yield, if properly conducted, another two pounds a cow. Not being wise in dairy farming statistics, I am not very eure what he meant, but it all sounded very impressive and entirely unlike our way of keeping pigs. For the pig, as owned by the small sheep farmer in the backblocks, is seldom properly conducted and Usually not stabled at all. It is of these pigs I write, for quarrels caused by them are ever with us. The trouble ie that we regard pigs not as * legitimate source of income, but as a spectacular and exciting sideline. Moreover, pigs have what the sex novelist would call a definite lure. For although we are not dairy farmers in the high country, we have necessarily to milk some cows for our house consumption, and so it happens each autumn, when the cows have not yet begun to dry off and the calves are already weaned, that a certain amount of milk goes to waste. Seeing it, the heart of the sheep farmer stirs within him, and he says: "Lo, I will go and buy unto myself a pig." Or perhaps one of those mischiefmakers from the city comes to stay with us and exclaim loudly: "Why, man. you ought to keep a pig. Look at all that milk going to waste—and the rotten apples under the trees. You ought to turn that into money. There's a fortune in pigs."

That Sideline In spite of ourselves we are impressed. The thought of "good money going to waste," and that at a moment when our banker seems to attach a most unnecessary importance to cash, frets us. We must exploit the sidelines, we tell the wife and—unheeding her retort: "'But you know, dear, that it is our neighbour's pastures that you will end by exploiting"—we go off and buy a pig. With its advent, peace retires weeping from the rural scene. To hear the β-tory later would give you small impression of the true state of affairs: "A nice piece of pork? Yes, and I can assure you it didn't cost me a penny. Just picked up a living round about—the acorne and so on." We do not, of course, mention that it also picked up our neighbour's winter supply of carrot*, and the pumpkins we had stored so carefully-—but not carefully enough, for. short of a wall safe with a combination lock, what can avail to separate pigs and pumpkin*? Xor do we make it easy for our neighbour to protest, for that tactful gift of a delicious brawn when •the pig is killed, followed by the gener-

ous bestowal of eix excellent pork chops, must silence him unless he wished to be labelled an ingrate. So he says nothing, only resolving to be first in the field next time and buy a pig in the autumn before any of his. neighbours have had time to think of it. So the magic circle turns, and next year it is we who lose our winter's store of potatoes and gain a fragment of pork. For it is ft curious fact that the moment we buy a pig the milk supply begins to dwindle and our neighbour's vegetable garden to become dreadfully attractive. Not that the havoc wrought by our pig is confined to vegetable gardens; if it were, the men of the families would probably not be involved in the feud, for beyond expecting a good supply of fruit and vegetables to be placed daily on the table the average farmer does not usually concern himself with such email matters as their production. "I leave details of that sort to- the women," he tells you. But the pig soon cleans up the vegetable gardens, lifts her eyes to your best pastures and with a snort of triumph makes

for tlie great open epacee. The result is amazing, for the pig is a fast worker. Hβ rises early, moreover, and is not trammelled, like the cowboy whose charge he is supposed to be, by the necessity for observing the 40-hour week. Ho turns a furrow more rapidly, if less mathematically, than a singlehorse plough, so that the farmer, taking a Sunday stroll to see how the rye paddock is responding to that new fertiliser, ie met with a scene of havoc that suggests some demon-driven plough madly at work. The Blood Feud Then the quarrel begins. A rushes to ■the telephone and is met by indignant denial; of course, it isn't B's pig; he ringed it yesterday himself. But not even a film star caste aside a ring more light-heartedly than a pig, and there is nothing for it but to ring it again. Thereupon the whole B family, assisted by A's dogs and the pet lambs belonging to both houses, give chase to an hysterical pig amidst a clamour suggestive of the fiends of Hades let loose. Another ring is fastened —and next day it all begins again. The worst quarrel in our district was over a pig brought by a novice who was still in the enthusiastic state about farming. "Just bought her to top off and give us a nice ham for Christmas." But instead of a nice ham, she gave

them 10 little piglets for Christmae, and the eight of that mass production went to G"s head. "All pure profit, my boy," said Mr. C. "Such a delightful surprise," cooed little Mrs. C. Immediately they decided to rear them all and to go in for pig farming. "Mathematically, it's obvious," C told us. "Why, look at the percentage—and you eay yourself that I can't expect more than 100 per cent of lambs." Eleven questing snouts convulsed the paddocks of the neighbours, and a quarrel on a Gargantuan scale rent their peaceful lives. But here the local lawyer saved the situation, for, being consulted by both parties, he invited them to a conference in his rooms, whither he had previously caused to be conveyed an outsize barrel of beer. In a dry district such an arg-.ment was unanswerable, and, when peace was eventually sealed at a communal dinner party at which the piece de resistance was a mammoth joint of roast pork, it was generally agreed, almost with tears, that nothing in that pig's eventful life had become her so well as the leaving of it.