By the time the auctioneer was ready to sell the machinery, the departing crowd had returned. He began auctioning off a horse-drawn front wheel with a tiny engine that could turn the rotating shaft of any tractor-based tool, such as a hay baler or a rotary grass stand. The price shot up like excited birds to $5,000. Who knows why these ordinary people have so much money? There were no particularly big offers on the day, everything was in good condition, and the Amish, who knew the value of these items, came with a lot of cash. We fought hard and got a two-horse cultivator, but the price of the foot plough and grain grater that Mark had longed for shot up well beyond our budget. We consoled ourselves with the thought that these people had made their money by working with horses in the fields, and that if they thought a tool was worth a lot of money, it must be very profitable. Then a man noticed we were bidding and recommended a grain baler he had repaired. We made a deal and agreed to have him deliver it, along with the cultivator we bought because we couldn't fit it in the car. Even though I was wearing a heavy coat, I was frozen stiff before the machine sold out. I sat down on a bench by the barn fire. The girls' coffee business was booming. I enjoyed an hour there, talking to a group of hunchbacked old men about working horses. Then the auction ended, and the Amish flooded in.

They all wore the same style of glasses -- slightly larger, plain metal frames, the kind kids wear in middle school auto classes. They wear inky lenses outdoors in the sun, so when they fully embrace the heating area, it's like a ZZ Top tribute band convention, with long beards, dark suits and sunglasses. Then the auctioneer entered, without a microphone or a monitor, and walked over to the doughnut table. He picked up a bag of doughnuts and held it high above his head. "We have a bag of sweet homemade doughnuts here," he said. "How many do you have? Did someone yell five dollars? Five dollars a pop?" He resumed his familiar tone. The girls sell all their baked goods, and a group of Amish teens, who ingested too much sugar, hitchhike home to Pennsylvania. That morning, Mark was busy with an electrical panel problem in the west barn, so I drove alone to pick up the piglets. When I arrived, I peered into the stable, where the piglets were asleep, and then I looked back. In my imagination, the piglet was as big as a Chihuahua, but it was twice as big. The boxes I brought them home were too small, we didn't have a truck, and the hostess didn't have time to transport them. I shrugged, put an old sheet in the back door of my Honda, pushed the screaming pig in, and used a crowbar to prop a pad up against the back seat. The pig neatly got rid of the sheet, which soon became wrinkled and huddled in corners, useless, but the pads held up until I pulled into the farm driveway, at which point they all climbed into the back seat like invaders over a city wall. The stench on the back seat cushions, not noticeable at first, grows stronger as the weather warms up and lingers. One by one, we fished the piglets out and took them to Delia's corral, where Mark had cut off a space with discarded wood. We call the pig with the problem a "collar".

By the time the auctioneer was ready to sell the machinery, the departing crowd had returned. He began auctioning off a horse-drawn front wheel with a tiny engine that could turn the rotating shaft of any tractor-based tool, such as a hay baler or a rotary grass stand. The price shot up like excited birds to $5,000. Who knows why these ordinary people have so much money? There were no particularly big offers on the day, everything was in good condition, and the Amish, who knew the value of these items, came with a lot of cash. We fought hard and got a two-horse cultivator, but the price of the foot plough and grain grater that Mark had longed for shot up well beyond our budget. We consoled ourselves with the thought that these people had made their money by working with horses in the fields, and that if they thought a tool was worth a lot of money, it must be very profitable. Then a man noticed we were bidding and recommended a grain baler he had repaired. We made a deal and agreed to have him deliver it, along with the cultivator we bought because we couldn't fit it in the car. Even though I was wearing a heavy coat, I was frozen stiff before the machine sold out. I sat down on a bench by the barn fire. The girls' coffee business was booming. I enjoyed an hour there, talking to a group of hunchbacked old men about working horses. Then the auction ended, and the Amish flooded in.

They all wore the same style of glasses -- slightly larger, plain metal frames, the kind kids wear in middle school auto classes. They wear inky lenses outdoors in the sun, so when they fully embrace the heating area, it's like a ZZ Top tribute band convention, with long beards, dark suits and sunglasses. Then the auctioneer entered, without a microphone or a monitor, and walked over to the doughnut table. He picked up a bag of doughnuts and held it high above his head. "We have a bag of sweet homemade doughnuts here," he said. "How many do you have? Did someone yell five dollars? Five dollars a pop?" He resumed his familiar tone. The girls sell all their baked goods, and a group of Amish teens, who ingested too much sugar, hitchhike home to Pennsylvania. That morning, Mark was busy with an electrical panel problem in the west barn, so I drove alone to pick up the piglets. When I arrived, I peered into the stable, where the piglets were asleep, and then I looked back. In my imagination, the piglet was as big as a Chihuahua, but it was twice as big. The boxes I brought them home were too small, we didn't have a truck, and the hostess didn't have time to transport them. I shrugged, put an old sheet in the back door of my Honda, pushed the screaming pig in, and used a crowbar to prop a pad up against the back seat. The pig neatly got rid of the sheet, which soon became wrinkled and huddled in corners, useless, but the pads held up until I pulled into the farm driveway, at which point they all climbed into the back seat like invaders over a city wall. The stench on the back seat cushions, not noticeable at first, grows stronger as the weather warms up and lingers. One by one, we fished the piglets out and took them to Delia's corral, where Mark had cut off a space with discarded wood. We call the pig with the problem a "collar".