Odysseus was a mighty creature. He was strong, intelligent and a little unpredictable.
He was also sophomore Sam Hartman’s 280-pound pig.
“I started with Odysseus, and I kept looking for interesting names,” said Hartman. “In the Greek myth of the Odyssey, [Odysseus] gets stranded with his crewmates on an island, and a witch named Circe turns all of his crewmates into pigs. I thought it was funny that [Odysseus] didn’t get turned into a pig.”
Hartman participates in the Glenview Clovers 4-H club at Historic Wagner Farm where she buys and raises a pig in preparation for a culminating auction each summer. At the auction, pigs are judged on their weight, muscle and tone. Hartman trains, feeds and walks her pig in a farm pasture to prepare for the auction.
Raising pigs can be unpredictable because the animals are strong and may refuse to cooperate.
“Working on the farm is pretty dangerous,” said Hartman. “Especially when working with pigs and cows, they’re large animals that you can’t always control.”
According to farmmanagerBlake Lanphier, successfully working with animals is a skill that requires understanding animals in a lot of different ways.
“[Hartman] definitely has that skill,” said Lanphier. “She has an affinity for knowing what the animals are thinking, how they’re feeling.”
“There’s a lot of repetition with the pigs just to get them to want to work with [the 4-H members],” Lanphier said.
The 4-H members learn to keep their pigs under control by guiding them with a whip, a thin stick used to tap the sides of the pigs’ shoulders.
“You don’t want the [pig] to run anywhere it shouldn’t,” said Hartman. “They can easily run past you, or you could get hurt.”
Hartman spends at least an hour every day in the summer working at the farm with her pig, completing chores and making sure all the animals are healthy.
“It can be very frustrating to work with animals that do not listen to you,”said Hartman. “Pigs are very dirty and messy, and there are many times during the summer when I do not think I will be ready [for the auction].”
Hartman plans on being a pig leader this summer, meaning she plans on helping train new members.
At the end of the summer, the pigs are taken to Grayslake and are sold for consumption at the Lake County Fair.
“We show sheep, hogs and dairy cattle there,” said Lanphier. “Then there’s a sale at the very end of the fair.”
At the fair, 4-H members walk their pigs around an auction ring for judges to evaluate.
Loading the pigs onto the trailer for the last time after the auction is a bittersweet experience, Hartman said.
“It’s really tough,” said Hartman. “We all support each other because we all know the purpose of our animals, but the day it happens and we load them up, it’s tough, we cry and all support each other.”