Jack pig

One look into our side yard, and it's pretty obvious that Jack's time with us is coming to an end. He's uprooted the first few feet of soil across the whole rectangle, eaten through some roots the size of a forearm, and now he seems to be aiming to dig straight down to China. Well, straight down to Russia, from where we are, I guess. There are big craters that we will probably have to back-fill when he leaves, but there is one spot in the middle that he uses as a nest that has escaped the clearing. We might keep it that way when it becomes a garden, and maybe put a work table or a few chairs there :)



Although our plan is to bring Jack back to the farm soon, it depends on whether we are successful in getting him back on the trailer. He doesn't really enjoy being in the tight blue trailer, and has been cheating the system by getting his front two feet into the trailer, stretching out like a giant earthworm, and nabbing the food bowl with his mouth and dragging it to the door of the trailer. We're not sure how to get his whole body into the trailer, and might try picking up a box of mangoes (his favourite food) and luring him in that way.

Initially, we though Jack would be working on someone else's garden after ours, but it sounds like he will be going back to his home farm, and that means it's possible he might be rooting in the big garden in the sky soon. As our payment to the farmers for borrowing Jack, we volunteered to help them with any big jobs they have, so we might have first-hand information about Jack's final days. That's all just a bit too sad to think about now, though, especially since Jackie grunts in a really loud and squeaky way now when he sees us coming.

Colin's off at the Hunter Education and Ethics Development course tonight, the first step in obtaining a hunting license and possessing a firearm and ammunition. Apparently it will be filled with teens, the time of life when people usually go about getting this license here :) He has to have this certification, plus live here for a year before he can start hunting, so there is still time to learn some recipes for moose meat.

Just to be fair, when the days were getting longer and longer here, and we posted the info about our incredibly early sunrises and late sunsets; here are some new, sadder numbers about our October days:

Date: October 18, 2011
Sunrise: 8:49am (Whitehorse), 7:35am (Toronto)
Sunset: 6:41pm (Whitehorse), 6:30pm (Toronto)
Length of day: 9h, 52min (Whitehorse), 10h, 54 min (Toronto)

Good thing there are lots of perks to this time of year!

Love Lauren