March Comes in Like a ... Pig?

There are those who might think living in the middle of nowhere - as I've been accused of doing many, many times - would be a boring thing. It's very quiet, except when the great horned owl decides to spend the night in the tree outside our bedroom window or the frogs in the neighbor's pond are singing in the spring.

We don't just run and get coffee with a friend at the drop of a hat, because that would mean a 20-minute drive just to get to the coffee shop. This also means that some planning has to go into the buying of gas for the car or making sure we don't need milk or bread before we leave town, where the grocery and gas stations are.

I look out my window and because it's flat as a pancake and nothing but farmland as far as I can see, I can watch things going on in the next state. When Ft. Wayne (IN) has their fireworks on the 4th of July, we can sit on our front porch and watch them from 30 miles away. But I can't see Alaska from here.

We don't have any mountains, not even a hill. I'm so used to the flatness that my ears pop just riding an elevator to the second floor. Because it's so flat, the wind comes sweepin' down the plain, and wind farms are popping up all around us.

Our entire county lies in what used to be The Great Black Swamp, and that made this the last part of Ohio to be settled. Those who had that highly undesirable job lost many family members due to malaria from so many mosquitoes and if the hard work of clearing and draining the land wasn't bad enough, many of those doing it died, too.

For this reason, as well as it being good farmland, it's remained sparsely populated and if you're not related to every third person who lives here, you likely have heard of them or went to school with their parents. This might sound like a bad thing, but just let some adversity come your way and so will your friends and neighbors, to give you a helping hand or fix your supper.

If all this still makes you think that it really is a boring place to live, here's what came calling at our front door this afternoon:

"Look honey, it's a pig!"

We'll just add it to the list.

1. Donkey
2. Goat
3. Turkeys
4. Peahen
5. Pig

Isn't it kind of ironic that this pork chop showed up on National Pig Day??? And it kind of gives new meaning to The Edible Front Yard, doesn't it, Ivette? Never a dull moment, let me tell ya.

EDIT: We found out that "Barney" belongs to the neighbors across the road. My sincere apologies for any subtle reference to bacon in the above post.