Everything is better with bacon (Part 3)

As promised a week ago, here is part 3 of the series looking at the opening of the Pig Adventure.

Going through the shower room to get to the viewing area of the Pig Adventure, I met an escaping pig. 

The pig was unsure whether she would be a permanent feature of the exhibit or if this costume was only for the grand opening event. I was surprised that several little kids really liked her and were not frightened.

The first room you enter at the Pig Adventure, before you go through the shower room, has a variety of interactive screens, some in the floor. Onethat interested the kids was part of a display that illustrated the differences between how pigs used to be raised and how they are raised in the Pig Adventure. Gone are the pig sties with pigs wallowing in mud filled with their own excrement. In are clean quarters where pig poop is removed quickly and pigs stay clean and disease free.

The restrooms had unusual labels.

While some women might maintain that all men are boars (and maybe even bores), I doubt if they would maintain that all women are gilts. (A joke with the punch line "gilty pleasure" seem to be needed here, but I cannot think of any.)

The Pig Adventure has lots of informative signs, like the one below that tells you that in six months a pig can weigh 280 pounds.

One sign said that the farm has 18 boars that are used to stimulate the females during artificial insemination. They are robotically led along the stalls and their scent does the job.

There are pictures in the main hallway. The photo shown below is also used in some of the printed material.

Also along the hallway are some pictures that spoof famous artists. This is the first of three questions in this post: Can you identify the artist that this pictures spoofs?

I arrived at the grand opening a bit early so I had some time to wander around and check out the grounds. This is the fountain in the Green Gate Garden.

Below is a bit of the garden. Here is question two: Can you identify the large plant that is most prominent in this picture?

I e-mailed the people at Fair Oaks Farms before the event to learn more and found that I could pick up a media kit. The media kit included the cute little pig shown below. Here is question three: Can you guess what useful function this little pig performs?

Update: The three questions were answered correctly either in the comments here or on Facebook. (Almost every post here is linked on the Rensselaer Adventures Facebook page.) The artist is Andy Warhol. Other artists spoofed are Rene Magritte and Piet Mondrian. The plant is horseradish, which is used as a condiment. I never use it, though I tried to grow it once without much success--the plant died. There is some at the historical society's log cabin at the fair grounds, and the women who were minding the cabin this year at the fair did not know what it was. The little pig was actually a USB flash drive with several movie clips about the Pig Adventure on it. The head pulls off and it, not the body, contains the drive. It is cute, but because of its odd shape, it takes a bit too much room--if you have USB slots that are close together, it interferes with adjacent devices. Amazon sells one that is similar.