Sad, Sad, Sad...

Today I am Sad, Sad, Sad. It has been a real rough month for our hog business which we call, Mor-Pork. Due to extreme financial difficulties a couple of days before I left for my Annual Training for guards Marty and his Dad made the decision to liquidate the hogs. This means we are selling all our hogs and we are no longer going to be owning our hogs. During the two weeks I was gone 1700 sows were halled to market in semi-trucks. These are our Momma pigs that are not suppose to go to the meat market until they have given us several good pregnancies and litters of baby piggies.

This means Mor-Pork as it has been for the last 20 years will no longer be.

This makes me SAD, SAD, SAD.

A little over 2 weeks after this decision was made the farrowing barn is completely empty. Before the pigs started to move out I had Marty take the kids and I over to the farrowing unit for one last look. This is the first time Zach has seen piggies. When I looked to the future I always pictured the kids someday going with Daddy on maybe a Saturday and helping with chores and feeding the pigs, just as I had done when I was a kid with my Dad. Now we don't know what the future will hold. Circumstances over the last year have what lead us to this decision. First is was high grain prices - corn which is the primary ingredient in pig feed. Then it was the falling hog market. Then we get a disease TGE that effects our newborn piggies. Then the Swine Flu hit which again made hog prices drop even farther. Then we get another disease. We kept hoping that if we just hang in there for a couple more months, or till spring, or till the end of summer... things would turn around and we would be just fine. But it is like a bleeding wound that just doesn't seem to stop. We keep bleeding and Marty and his Dad decided to make it stop so we could start to recover.

Right now we still have nursery pigs and finisher pigs. The finisher hogs will grow out and be sent to market and the nursery pigs will be sold in a month or so as roaster or feeder pigs. Marty says by the beginning of September the barns will be completely empty. At the beginning of May we owned around 20,000 hogs. This liquidation will also contribute to the unemployment world as we had 11 employees who are gradually being layed-off as our hog population decreases.

For the future we hope that some investor such as a larger hog business or a feed company will want to put hogs in our barns and then Marty can take care of them. Maybe a few years down the road we will own hogs again... but it is hard to say.

As for all of us we are doing OK. Somedays the reality of what is happening hits us hard and brings out the SAD's but then we have to just remember that we put forth our best effort to make this work - especially Marty and his Dad and hopefully something better is waiting for us. I keep praying and telling myself and Marty that hopefully this is the terrible end leading to the beginning of a much better situation. God must have something waiting for us which hopefully a year from now we will understand. Please keep the Malecek's in your prayers.