I've got to slop the hog. The big red-bristled hog is safe from the butcher's knife until this fall, allows Heard, pouring the slop into a wooden trough by the fence. His meat house close by is hanging full of salt-cured pork middlings, some as old as two years but still sound, he says. Another building, the canning house, holds various jars of preserved vegetables, pickles and quarts of sausage patties sealed until ready for use. An on-going shortage of water is the nemesis of his hilltop existence.
Plastic drums dot the yard, some buried and some above ground.
They each hold 55 gallons of water, without which the Heards would be left high and dry. They are his reservoir in reserve. I've been depending on 'em for many years. His well, sheltered by a washhouse, is 65 to 70 feet deep, he guesses. I don't care how much it rains, that's all it's got.