Roanoke County's Cloud Nine farm recently celebrated some pretty cute piggy nuptials (yes, you read that right!).
Courtesy of Beth Fulp.
Dr. Steven Pasternak and the bride, Darla.
A runaway groom, Perry managed to squeeze through the farm gate just before time to kiss the bride on Saturday evening.
“He’s getting cold hooves,” shouted Dr. Steven Pasternak. “Come back!”
With his wife Cindy Carney-Pasternak, Dr. Pasternak owns Roanoke County’s Cloud Nine farm, where Perry, a black pot-bellied pig, lives with his one true love, a pink pot-bellied pig named Darla.
Perry, who’s prone to anxiety, ran to the far end of the pasture and promptly hid in tall grass. He had no intention of returning to the pen where about a hundred well-wishers gathered for the pig wedding. Perry refused to come out, even when a handler tempted him with a can of much-beloved cheeseballs.
Dr. Pasternak, dressed in a pope costume he purchased off Amazon for his role as wedding officiant, wasn’t about to let Perry off the hook. “By the power invested in me by the Kingdom of Oz, you are husband and wife,” he said while the crowd threw handfuls of Froot Loops, which are Darla’s favorite snack, in lieu of rice.
A Love Story
The Pasternaks adopted Perry as a wee piglet from Harmony Farm Sanctuary, a Fincastle rescue for farm animals.
“Perry was very lucky because we are saps and we spend more money on our animals than you do on the college educations for your kids,” Dr. Pasternak told the wedding guests. “Perry saw that and really gave us the eye.”
Perry, who’s about seven years old, is a country pig. “He likes the simple life,” Dr. Pasternak explained.
Thirteen-year-old Darla, on the other hand, had a more refined beginning. Her original human reportedly had her shipped from a breeder in Texas to Roanoke on an airplane.
“She was very well bred and very high society,” explained Dr. Pasternak. “Darla moved into Roanoke City and took it by storm. She played bridge in South Roanoke with the Offermans.”
After several years, Darla’s human had to move and couldn’t bring her pet along.
Robin Barnhill, who lives in the Southwest quadrant to the city, offered to take in the pig. She set up a pen and an Igloo dog house for her new tenant.
Getting Darla to her new home proved to be a problem, though. Darla was and is a big pig. “I would say she was around 200 pounds,” Barnhill said.
For the move, Barnhill set a giant dog crate on top of a ramp. Once Darla was safely inside, she planned, with the help of her friends, to pull the crate down the ramp and into her Isuzu Rodeo.
Only Barnhill couldn’t coax Darla into the crate and it was getting dark. “We came up with the idea of getting her a beer,” Barnhill said.
Darla drank some beer, but that didn’t make her any more interested in getting in the crate. Barnhill and company called it quits for the night.
The next day, they returned. This time Darla refused to drink any beer. “She’d learned her lesson,” Barnhill said.
Happily, when Barnhill threw some Froot Loops inside the crate, Darla waddled after them. “We quickly closed the door,” she said.
About then, according to Barnhill, a workman, who was there to do a repair on the house, came around the corner. He asked what they were trying to do with a pig in the crate.
Barnhill told him and he lifted it into the rodeo like it held nothing heavier than a kitten. “We were very thankful,” Barnhill said.
Living in Barnhill’s backyard, Darla became a bit of a celebrity. “My neighbors loved her,” she said. “When they had company, they’d bring the kids to go see Darla. She’d shake hands and sit on command and things like that.”
As much as Barnhill enjoyed the company, she thought Darla might be happier on a farm. Barnhill arranged for her friends, the Pasternaks, to make her part of the crew at Cloud Nine.
The timing couldn’t have been better. The same week they planned the move for Darla, Barnhill received a written warning that pigs weren’t allowed in the city.
This time, moving Darla proved to be fairly simple. She went into the crate on her own. “This time she seemed to enjoy the ride,” Barnhill said.
Susan Shirley, a longtime friend to both Barnhill and Darla, was there the day Perry first laid eyes on the sow.
“Perry was lonely,” said Shirley, who lives in Roanoke. “When he saw Darla, he actually chortled.”
For her part, Darla quickly acclimated to life on the farm. Carney-Pasternak believes that’s because of Perry. “They liked each other a lot.”
Dr. Pasternak put it this way. “When Perry saw Darla, his tail went straight out.”
Carney-Pasternak grew so fond of the pigs, she wrote a children’s book about them. Like all good fairytales, the book ends with a marriage.
“I guess I talked about it to some of my friends, and they took it very seriously,” Carney-Pasternak says. “They said, ‘Let’s plan this wedding.’”
Tim Martin
Perry, a black pot-bellied pig, and one true love Darla, a pink pot-bellied pig were married on Roanoke County’s Cloud Nine farm.
Party of the Decade
Carney-Pasternak is founder and co-chair of The Riverdale Farm Neighborhood Organization, which works to improve the quality of life for residents of an area that includes parts of Southeast Roanoke and Roanoke County. She’s well known in that part of Roanoke. Meanwhile, Dr. Pasternak is an emergency physician at LewisGale Medical Center.
The result is a wedding party attended by people of all walks of life. Singletons and families and retirees.
The wedding’s dress code was country casual. Guests showed up in everything from sundresses to shorts to one gentleman who sweated it out in a full on Kigurumi pig onesie.
Guests brought gift cards for Tractor Supply or made donations to the Franklin County Humane Society. Charlotte Rucker, age 10, gave a painting she made of the pigs wearing wedding finery.
The Pasternaks provided plastic pig noses for the guests to wear. At the photo booth, more pig props could be found, along with boas and pairs of giant sunglasses.
Perennial Roanoke performer Tim Martin played music for the crowd. How did he decide what to play for a pig wedding? “I was just doing love songs,” Martin said.
Beth JoJack
Guests included one gentleman who sweated it out in a full on Kigurumi pig onesie.
Friends of the Pasternaks handed out copies of the lyrics for the theme song of the TV show “Green Acres” to the guests. At first, folks sang softly, but they grew more confident for the second performance where Dr. Pasternak asked women and men to sing different verses.
Next, wedding helpers poured champagne into plastic cups.
Family friend Macy Ware marched into the pen as the wedding’s maid of honor along with Avery Poff, age six, who was a flower girl and Daisy Mae, who was the flower goat.
Human wedding planners somehow managed to put a top hat on Perry and a veil on Darla.
The two were coaxed into the pen with the aforementioned cheese balls. “If you shake anything, they’ll come if they think it’s something to eat,” said Anthony Gibson, of Southeast Roanoke, who’s a farm hand at Cloud Nine.
At first it looked like Perry might hit the mud hole, but instead he and Darla walked in circles around one another. “We are gathered here today to join that little piggy and that other little piggy in piggy bliss,” Dr. Pasternak told the crowd.
Courtesy of Cindy Creasy-Pasternak
Sharon Merritt celebrates the wedding of two cute pigs.
At times during the short ceremony, the crowd’s laughter grew so loud it was hard to hear the officiant, but everyone saw Perry chase Darla away from some spilled Froot Loops so he could have them for himself.
Perry oinked his “I do” when asked if he would love and nuzzle Darla as well as always pick ticks off her back. Before Darla could take her vows, though, the groom took off.
Everyone toasted the couple anyhow. “Animals really teach us so much about unconditional love,” said Shirley.
Afterward, guests lined up for the meal catered by Jonathan Doran of Roanoke County. His offerings included shrimp and pimento cheese grits, cast iron corn and jalapeño poppers with turkey bacon. “Because pig bacon at a pig wedding wouldn’t go over too well,” he explained in an email.
Doran offered peach cobbler for dessert and cupcakes and s’mores were also on hand.
Kids did cartwheels down a hill in the farm’s pasture with goats trailing them all the way down. Adults played cornhole and sat around a fire pit.
“I knew it was going to be done very well because Cindy is very detail oriented,” said Beth Fulp of Southeast Roanoke. Fulp knows the Pasternaks from performing reiki on animals at Cloud Nine.
For Barnhill, the wedding proved to be a night to remember. “It was the best party I’ve been to in a long time,” she said.
And that — not the pigs — was the point of the festivities, said Carol Jacobs, Carney-Pasternak’s cousin who drove to Cloud Nine from Indiana for the nuptials. “It was for the community to enjoy this.”