Mommy, why is that pig being led off to slaughter?

I am currently on a kick about decorating the nursery to look like a farm. I have lots of ideas for the crib set Grandma Karen has been coerced into making and for the mural on the walls. I know, I waffle back and forth on themes, and whether we should wait until after Baby S. is born. But the farm theme might strike some of you as a little funny.

As a bit of history for the uninitiated, I was forced to move to Upstate, NY as a small child. Here, my parents decided to pretend that they were farmers. We had a huge garden, 2 horses, 2 pigs, 6 chickens, and a rooster. We also made our own bread, ate the eggs from our chickens, pasteurized our own milk from the real farm down the road, canned our own peaches, tomato sauce, applesauce, jam and pickles. We also "put up" all sorts of vegetables in the freezer for the winter. We heated our house with wood that we chopped ourselves. Sounds very "Norman Rockwell-esque" so far, doesn't it?

Well, besides the fact that the place was run like a child labor camp it was lovely. It was not until I moved back to Long Island that I found out that other children did not play "cleaning games" and chop wood for fun. They all had cable TV (we only had CBS) and saw a lot more movies than I saw those five years (I saw one. It was ET). They didn't snip the tips off beans for hours, trudge out to feed their animals in a blizzard, or de-seed and peel bushels of tomatoes. Nor, did they have to kill their pets with their bare hands. (What? Did she really say that?)

Yes folks, the music you hear playing in the background is really horror music. We innocently skipped out to the yard one day for another round of "Farm Olympics." This day seemed a little different though, because there was a shotgun, a hatchet and a cauldron of boiling water! Today was chicken killing day! Hooray! Another time, I got to watch my two pet pigs have feed sacks put over their heads and be led onto the back of the pickup truck. Where they playing a bovine version of Hide and Seek? Were they going for a joyride? Nope, they were going to the slaughter house! The next time I saw Charlotte and Joyce, they were in neatly labled white packages in our freezer. Except for some reason, their names had be changed. They were now called Bacon, Pork Chops, Ham Steak...

This mural should be very interesting...