Eastbourne - Final Day

This morning I asked Margaret when she would be free to take me to the train station and she said we would leave shortly after 10:00 a.m. A little while later I got a call from Henry asking if I wanted one final farm experience. My trip to the train was postponed until mid-afternoon and I pulled on my mucky clothes for a trip to the livestock market.

Each farmer uses his own colour coding - this was the most colourful group I had seen! No idea what was being tracked by each colour, but it looked like a bunch of five year olds were let loose on the sheep with giant markers.

Not impressed to be going to auction.

There were a wide variety of breeds and ages up for sale.

Henry usually just drops off his sheep and returns to the farm, but since I was there with my curiousity and my camera, we stuck around and he visited with other farmers, showed me around the place, answered my random questions, and explained all sorts of things about the auction and what the buyers are looking for. Never having been exposed to the details of farming as I was growing up, I never really even considered the existence of livestock auctions or how farmers determine when an animal is ready for slaughter or the issues that concern farmers. I actually found it all quite fascinating - it's really a different world.

While I was standing near the pens where sheep were being dropped off to be organized and auctioned off later in the morning, a truck pulled up with very non-sheep sounds emitting from the back. The biggest, ugliest pig I've ever seen was soon offloaded.

Thanks to Hollywood, I figure all pigs look like Babe and Wilbur. This one looked like it had a nasty run-in with a few skin diseases and the back end of a Mack truck.

I know that city centres or beaches are usually the most fun for people-watching, but try visiting a livestock market sometime! It's a whole new world of characters! Many of them look like they're related to Farmer Hoggett from Babe. (Today I learned why "Hoggett" is a funny name for the farmer - click here).

It was interesting to watch the men work to check over the sheep and get them organized. It was also amusing to catch them watching me - I don't think they get an audience very often. Apparently some of them thought I was a reporter; you'd think the mucky jeans and t.shirt with "Canada" written across it would have made them realize I wasn't looking for a scoop.

The bell used to call everyone when the auction was about to begin.

Quick clip of sheep being auctioned.

I watched later as a huge, black pig was moved into a pen, but it didn't want to go all the way in. Henry explained that if a pig doesn't want to move, it will simply plant its feet into the ground and refuse to budge. You can usually get it to move by shielding its eyes by holding a board to shield one eye so it moves in the opposite direction, then shielding the other eye and eventually the pig should get to where you want it to go. The pig in the clip below stopped moving just outside its final destination and four men ended up gathered around it, pushing and smacking its shoulders to no avail. After much hoof-planting and squealing, the pig finally moved all the way into the pen. Quite a comical sight!

That is one huge pile of pork chops!
The adorable piglets that Robyn and Madelein are falling in love with would grow to be this big if they didn't go to slaughter after just a few months.