The Three Little Pigs, Reimagined. In Prince Edward County.

The three little pigs were all searching for waterfront property in Prince Edward County. They were somewhat disenchanted with the housing market. The listings were slim and none of the pigs were interested in a generic split level or ranch-style home. Some listings were too close to the Loyalist (traffic), while others were total gut jobs.

Photo cred: PJ Moore

Others were topping the million dollar mark and the three little pigs didn’t want to be house poor. They wanted balance, simplicity and a home that would be a sanctuary, not a money pit. They all decided to design and build their own homes after spending endless bleary-eyed nights scrolling through resale homes on realtor.ca.

The first little pig had recently spent some time solo, kayaking the northern rivers of the Yukon. She lived on a commune for a while in Oregon and fancied herself a garden where she could grow her own medicinal teas, garlic, heirloom tomatoes and candy cane beets. She wanted to build sustainably, and after staying at the Owl’s Nest Bed and Breakfast in Prince Edward County, she became obsessed with hay bale construction.

The straw and plaster would provide serious insulation for Canadian winters. She’d ditch energy bills for good and would be making a sound, renewable choice in straw. Finally, she’d be able to live off the grid with a passive solar design, just like the one she talked about with that South African Airstream owner at the Burning Man Festival five years ago. Life would become affordable again, and instead of sticking it out at a lackluster ad copy job in the city, she could focus on her creative writing (for a wildly popular vegan magazine) and do some glass blowing on the side.

She met a man with a load of straw in Hillier and bought the last of his stock despite his naysayer attitude. He scoffed at her hay bale design. Though he said she was being pig-headed (which was true in many senses) she bought the straw and set about building the house in Bloomfield with a few members of her hockey team who were willing to work for beer.

Weeks later there was a knock at her door. She had advertised her hay bale home on Airbnb for $108 a night (including a refried black bean breakfast burrito with heirloom tomato salsa). Perhaps someone was in the area and needed a last-minute booking? She was just steeping some Sleepytime tea, burning her signature patchouli incense and reading a self-help book by Brene Brown about vulnerability.

Photo Cred: PJ Moore

“Little Pig, little pig, let me come in.”

She knew it was the wolf. He had been all over the Yahoo News headlines as of late.

She replied with a chuckle, “Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin.” Piggy just had electrolysis at the local spa and no longer had to worry about that pesky hair on her chin. She’d read a lot about this wolf guy in her social media circles. He was the tour de force behind “Pigging Out: Bringing Home the Bacon,” a blog about everything bacon that had 1.6 million followers.  The local pig community was not thrilled. She was a little envious of the wolf’s writing prowess and online success without banner ads.

The wolf at the door was as persistent as an ex-girlfriend though. He huffed and puffed, took a swig of Red Bull and blew the house in. And he gobbled up the little pig with freelancing, glassblowing dreams. He even polished off her bag of stale sweet potato chips that he found beside her paperback and still-steeping tea.

The second little pig met a man with a load of barn board just outside of Carrying Place. This pig knew how barn board was trending. He watched a lot of HGTV and was a big fan of Chip and Joanna Gaines from Fixer Upper and their whitewashed shiplap designs. Pig figured he could do the same and it would be a neat re-purposing story. The wood was from a Mennonite barn in St. Jacobs close to the farmhouse where he used to buy brown eggs and maple syrup. Pig liked to keep it local and even bought some extra barn board to build a cute chicken coop on the property just like his friends in Uxbridge had on their Caberneigh Farms property.

Photo Cred: PJ Moore, Coop Design by Nicole Robertson & PJ Co.

He always wanted to have a few Plymouth Rock Barred cockerels. Soon he could sell his own eggs at the roadside, and maybe some honey too.

The man selling the barn board was skeptical and told the pig to think twice about the material. The little pig was perturbed but not misdirected. He even bought some old pallets off the guy to replicate some outdoor furniture he’d seen on etsy. He paid for the wood, took a selfie with the load and went to work building the house with the help of his Pinterest board where he pinned houzz and Restoration Hardware designs.  He facebooked, tweeted, Instagrammed and blogged the heck out of the barn board house.

Pig had just opened a growler of Holy Smoke Scotch Ale from Church Key Brewing Company when the stupid wolf aggressively knocked on his barn board door. “Little pig, little pig, let me come in.”

If it wasn’t the telemarketers, hounding about cleaning his ducts or Rogers to upgrade his internet and cable package, it was the wolf of Wall Street.

The pig poured a perfect pint and re-heated a bowl of butter chicken that he’d made the night before. The wolf knocked again, clattering Pig’s cool new door knocker nearly off its hinge. Pig refused to open the door. “Not by the hair of my chinny, chin, chin.” This little pig just landed gainful employment as a bar hop at the Drake Devonshire Hotel in Wellington. A hipster beard was a pre-requisite and this wolf wouldn’t be having an inch of it. Besides, it was the Stanley Cup playoffs too. He needed the beard, superstitiously.

The wolf was on a bender and bitchy about a nasty break-up that left him in a crappy rental on the east side. He lost a lot in the relationship when his wife saw his text messages, or, “sexting” as she called it, with the sly fox from the coffee shop in Picton.

“I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house in,” the wolf promised.

The pig laughed it off. He had found some hurricane-proof R value 5 windows and the barn board came from a barn that had withstood everything from carpenter ants to tornadoes for 100 years.

But, the wolf took a long drag on the last of his medicinal marijuana joint (for vertigo), stubbed it out and then huffed and puffed and wheezed and blew the house in. And he gobbled up the little pig with some of the just nicely heated spicy butter chicken and Naan bread warm from the oven.

Now, the third pig and her partner (they had just met online through Tinder, but, things were progressing quickly. It was already their third date after all and they wanted to build a place of their own and stop paying someone else’s mortgage). The same-sex couple met a woman with a load of limestone and granite. “These stones will make for a remarkably sturdy cottage,” said the woman. Pig agreed. She had friends in West Galt who lived in a 150-year-old stone home for a few years and knew that they were invincible. She bought the stones and loaded them into their SUV and set about building the stone house with a sketch that the pig’s partner had drawn when she learned the art of sheep shearing in Ireland the previous spring. It was a small (7,000-square-foot) castle in Doolin, but, they would simply scale it down a little (700-square-feet) and build an outdoor pizza oven on the west side.

“Nice and solid,” the couple remarked. It took a long time, carefully mixing the mortar and integrating the stained glass church windows they found at an auction. Adding the fireplace and pizza oven was easy after that.

They had just unloaded the U-haul and their French bulldog, Mr. Knuckles, when they noticed the wolf loitering about. The wolf was still hungry and asked the kind pig couple to let him in. The pig couple weren’t naïve.

The couple actually hated unannounced company. “Not by the hairs of our chinny chin chin.” They turned on their SmartTV and started scrolling through Netflix. The pigs were well aware of this wolf on the prowl. He updated his Facebook status more frequently than a Kardashian. They knew he was looking for fodder for his next Pigging Out post.

The wolf promised to huff and puff as per usual, wondering how Woody Allen would re-write his tired lines. Who would he cast to play the wolf in celluloid? He hoped Jake Gyllenhaal.

The pigs sensed that the wolf was quite serious and asked him not to huff and puff on their new build. “We want this to be a heritage home one day!”

The wolf had earbuds in and couldn’t hear them. His barista girlfriend had created a new playlist for his iPod. Of course it included “What did the fox say?” by Ylvis. The song was like a cheese grater on his nerve endings.

The wolf huffed. Puffed. Nothing. The house stood firm as Pamela Anderson’s breasts. He blew again. It didn’t budge, just like Trump’s toupee in a gale force wind.

“I have another tactic,” the wolf threatened. He hummed along to the Of Monsters and Men track. He really loved that song, “Dirty Paws” and maybe after all this huffing and puffing was done, he’d look on expedia for cheap flights to Iceland. He owed the foxy girlfriend a trip, for all the drama of the affair and his ex-wife’s ranting in the coffee shop when she discovered the sexting messages. She went ballistic and poured a latte in the sunroof of his girlfriend’s new Fiat. But, back to the task at hand the wolf reminded himself.

He asked the pigs if they’d like to go truffle hunting. Pigs were good at that and could never resist a good truffle hunt. However, the pigs noticed that Carol was now on Netflix and they couldn’t resist. They had a thing for Cate Blanchett.

They told the wolf they were busy, they wanted to watch Carol. “It’s a movie of glances,” pig told the wolf. “That’s what the CBC said.”

“Tomorrow then?”

The pigs agreed. The wolf would come around nine in the morning, which gave them ample time to snuggle and have Americanos in bed. They knew what the wolf was up to. Duh.

The pigs got up earlier—at six even. They sniffed out a dozen truffles and dashed back home on their Honda Ruckus. When the wolf arrived at nine, the pot of water was already at a boil.

“We couldn’t wait,” the pigs said.

The wolf was a bit disappointed, but accepted a cup of French press. “The coffee is from a women’s collective in the Congo,” they told him.

The wolf was impressed. It was better than Starbucks, no question. “Shall we go pick some dandelions to make wine to enjoy with the truffles?”

The pigs said they were too busy, tending to the boiling truffles. “How about tomorrow morning, before the dew burns off. I have to boil down the truffles first before I can infuse the oil to make the black truffle mac and cheese.”

The wolf was all over it. “Okay, I understand. Yes, let’s say six a.m. for dandelion foraging.”

The next morning the pigs were up at five and went dandelion picking with Mr. Knuckles, not the scheming wolf.

The wolf showed up early though, and had them cornered in the meadow. The pigs pointed behind the lilac bushes and said they had just seen a fox to distract him. They’d heard about the coffee shop affair, mention of his foxy barista would rattle his nerves. The pigs and Mr. Knuckles ran towards their moped and sped home in a cloud of dust.

Photo Cred: PJ Moore, Sprinting Cred: to Olive, of Caberneigh Farms

The wolf was totally miffed now. He thought for sure he could have beat them in a foot race and gobbled them up with a few dashes of Marie Sharpe’s grapefruit hot sauce that he picked up in Belize. The fox thing did throw him off. He should have known his girlfriend would already be at work, baking pain de chocolat and pistachio macaroons.

The wolf took an Uber cab to the pig’s stone house and climbed the roof despite his vertigo and lack of medicinal marijuana at hand. He could smell that fragrant Congolese coffee from the women’s collective wafting up the pig’s chimney. He made a mental note to google a local location where he could purchase it, without telling his girlfriend.

“I’ve been nice long enough, pigs. I’ve followed you on Twitter and even sent you a friendship request on Facebook. Which you never replied to, but, no matter. I’m coming down the chimney to eat you both right now.”

When the little pigs heard this, they put a big iron pot in their fireplace and quickly stoked the fire with those Instaflame logs that are made out of sawdust and stuff. “You’ll be delicious with a little hot sauce and a bit of whiskey.”

No truer words were said. Except the wolf came down the chimney and fell into the big iron pot boiling away with rosemary, bay leaves and Meyer lemons.  The pigs ate the wolf with truffle oil mac and cheese and poached quail eggs and candied his whiskers for dessert. They made a lovely wolf pate with elderberries and hickory ribs in a root beer and brown sugar glaze. It was so good they raided the fridge at midnight, and wolfed down the wolf while watching Modern Family, semi-sauced on their potent dandelion wine. They’d have wolf burgers with frites for lunch with some brie and crab apple compote.

“And maybe a little bacon,” the girlfriend smirked. Even though it was wrong on several levels, they had to agree with the wolf, bacon was delicious. They couldn’t wait to post their snout-to-tail wolf recipes on his Pigging Out blog. Wouldn’t that be the kicker?

The pig’s girlfriend topped up their wine glasses and raised hers. “To stone houses,” the pigs cheered. Mr. Knuckles sighed, content with his pile of rib bones and new wolf-fur hooded jacket for inclement weather that he could wear with his tiny Hunter boots.