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<\/a><\/p>\nThe last couple “wintry mix” events have left a lot of the lettuce, radish, and other greens in the garden burned and curdled.<\/p>\n
Of course, the ice and snow hasn’t stopped the henbit, chickweed, and purple dead nettle from squeezing out the crops that are surviving.<\/p>\n As the days warm and the soil dries, someone needs to be down in the garden, turning over the raised beds, re-edging the rows, and yanking up weeds before they get a death grip.<\/p>\n I just couldn’t figure out who that someone would be.\u00a0 Last year I was forced to use a tiller to prepare the garden beds.\u00a0 We’ve expanded the garden so much that it’s too large for me to turn by hand.\u00a0 Plus, my insistence on letting grass grow between the beds, instead of mulching the paths, means there are tougher weeds like crab grass and Johnson grass getting into the rows.\u00a0 And if you’ve tried to pull crab grass and Johnson grass by hand, then you’ll understand.<\/p>\n I have always prided myself on a limited use of heavy machinery on our farm.\u00a0 Oh, sure we’ll break out the tractor when we need trenches dug or hilltops flattened.\u00a0 But I depend a lot on the wheelbarrow and the hoe and break big tasks into smaller, manageable chunks.\u00a0 The Other Half is the muscle and, if he should be at work, 4 kids lifting or pushing together are just as good.\u00a0 So although the tiller got the job done, and I was glad to have it, it required ear plugs, a tolerance for gas fumes, and an ability to work only during “reasonable” hours (i.e., when the neighbors were not sleeping or likely to be annoyed by its roar).\u00a0 It tore up my hard-earned earthworms and might have taken a leg off a toad or two.\u00a0 Never mind the time spent cutting and unwrapping the thick grasses, fibrous roots, and occasional hay twine from around the blades about every 1\/2 row or so.<\/p>\n I figured there had to be an easier, Earth-friendlier way.\u00a0 I knew<\/strong> there was an easier, Earth-friendlier way to turn soil.\u00a0 I saw it<\/a> in action once.<\/p>\n We still have an amorphous plan to put pigs on the pond to seal it.\u00a0 But we haven’t started the fencing yet and I was hoping to use the money from selling the spring goat kids (Cassie<\/a> is <\/strong><\/em>polled!) to purchase that fencing.\u00a0 In addition, it’s way too cold to put piglets down there without extensive shelter.\u00a0 Plus, they’re unlikely to start wallowing with temperatures dropping into the 20’s at night.\u00a0 Also, I haven’t found a supplier of healthy piglets.\u00a0 I don’t want to use the flea market where I got Papa Noel as he was a sickly piglet that required some coddling to thrive.\u00a0 And even if we eat pork 3 times a week, we won’t have room to put 4 or 5 pigs in the freezer this fall.\u00a0 So we’d have to line up buyers, and deposits, and consider butchering arrangements.\u00a0 Never mind the fact that Papa was a never-full grain pit.\u00a0 With the dairy goats kidding and needing extra grain during their heaviest milk production, I didn’t want a batch of pigs to add to the feeding expense.<\/p>\n In other words, if I went ahead and got pigs to turn the garden, I wouldn’t have any place to put them when they were done.\u00a0 And the feed bills in the mean time would be crippling.\u00a0 So I attempted to “borrow” a few pigs.\u00a0 I figured I could use them in the garden and\/or the pond, I would provide the care, the owners could provide the feed, and then I could return them—no butchering or buyers needed.<\/p>\n I considered the large neighboring farm.<\/p>\n They raise pastured pigs and have pork at their farmers market stand year round.\u00a0 I could have some of their pigs stay in my garden and then on my pond if they provided the feed.\u00a0 I would provide the land and the daily care, free of charge, and they could have them back in the fall when they were ready to be butchered.\u00a0 But they have hundreds of acres and don’t need my measly 4 acres to keep a few extra pigs.<\/p>\n I tried another local farm that keeps pigs mainly for agritourism and children’s educational activities.<\/p>\n They might have been interested in giving their pig pasture a break and some recovery time from their sow and her upcoming litter of piglets.\u00a0 Again, I was willing to let the pigs stay here until butchering time.\u00a0 But they don’t have piglets on the ground yet this year.\u00a0 And, even when the piglets are born, they’ll want them there until summer camp is over.\u00a0 So that wouldn’t work either.<\/p>\n I even talked to the pot bellied pig rescue group.<\/p>\n A farm down the street has several acres used for pot bellied pigs that have been surrendered and are awaiting their forever home.\u00a0 Surely they would be interested in letting a few pigs have a lush garden to dig in for a few weeks, while waiting for a pet home.\u00a0 But they didn’t like the idea of their pigs being contained in a 16’X16′ pen, even though I explained I would be moving it around the garden to a fresh area every time they finished turning up a section of the garden.\u00a0 They felt it was unsuitable for the “mental and physical health implications of allowing enough area for the pigs to defecate away from where they eat and sleep” and I needed to consider that “pigs are the 4th most intelligent mammal under humans.”\u00a0 It’s true.\u00a0 Papa Noel had a designated area where he always deposited his urinary and fecal output.\u00a0 It just happened to be about 2 feet away from his automatic waterer.\u00a0 And he had an entire pasture to wander around in.\u00a0 Pot bellied <\/strong><\/em>pigs might be the 4th most intelligent mammal.\u00a0 But I don’t think Papa Noel’s breed earned that distinction.<\/p>\n So on a balmy day last week, I sat on the deck, taking in the sunshine and pondering my dilemma.\u00a0 I wondered if I should go ahead and get some pigs or nix it and borrow the tiller.\u00a0 I wondered where I could find piglets this time of year.\u00a0 I wondered if I should just get pigs to till the garden and then resell them or try and keep them to seal the pond this summer.\u00a0 I wondered if I had enough friends interested in natural pork to sell the meat from several pigs this fall.\u00a0 I wondered what other women wondered about when sitting on the deck, taking in the sunshine.\u00a0 Normal women.\u00a0 Women without pig problems.<\/p>\n Eventually I went inside and did what any reasonable person would do.\u00a0 I put a wanted ad on craigslist for a couple of feeder pigs.\u00a0 I shrugged as I hit “post” and figured that sometimes you just had to let the Universe decide.\u00a0 Or the denizens of craigslist.\u00a0 Which is kind of the same thing.\u00a0 Either there were pigs out there for me.\u00a0 Or there weren’t.<\/p>\n I only got one response.<\/p>\n One positively perfect, supremely suitable, cosmically correct response.<\/p>\n Apparently, just 15 miles away, a little homestead raises American Guinea Hogs.\u00a0 In addition to some dairy goats, and chickens, and a pony for their three kids.\u00a0 For real.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n American guinea hogs are a breed that came to America in the 1800’s, were widespread in the southeast, where I live<\/em><\/strong>, and they are now listed with the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy.<\/p>\n They are not big grain eaters, as they get too fat on rich feed, and do better foraging for grass, weeds, roots, nuts, etc, and were traditionally used to clean out gardens<\/em><\/strong> on small family farms.<\/p>\n They only reach 150-300 lbs, making them easier to handle and butcher, producing a smaller carcass, and just enough meat to fill the family freezer– no need to line up buyers for hundreds of pounds of meat. <\/em><\/strong> Since they are a lard breed, the meat is darker, more marbled, and more tender than commercial pork.\u00a0 It is listed with the Slow Food USA Ark of Taste. They are hardy, adults don’t normally need worming and piglets don’t need vitamin shots, and docile.\u00a0 <\/em><\/strong>Boars <\/em><\/strong>and even sows with litters are rarely aggressive with their handlers or other animals. <\/em><\/strong>Their easy-going and friendly temperaments are just right for being raised around families and other livestock.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n I am not making this up.<\/p>\n Just one town over from mine, a family farm had the perfect breed of\u00a0 homestead hog.<\/p>\n And they had two female piglets, just under 40 lbs, for sale for $40 each.\u00a0 Which they offered to deliver for free the next day after their daughter’s dance class.\u00a0 Which I immediately agreed to and told them what time we’d be home from our son’s basketball game.<\/p>\n When I told The Other Half, he asked if I even attempted to bargain on the price.<\/p>\n OMG.<\/strong><\/p>\n You do NOT bargain with The Universe!!!!<\/strong><\/p>\n You accept your perfect, garden-tilling, forage-eating, family-friendly piglets from the nearby, more-than-the-average-number-of-kids, random-assortment-of-barn-animals homestead, you pay cash, and you say, “Thank You!”<\/p>\n The farmer showed up on Saturday afternoon with the piglets and 2 of his 3 kids.\u00a0 Because his wife and the baby couldn’t all fit in the truck together, not if everyone was strapped into their car seat.\u00a0 (Oh, the pain of the full size car seat and the joy of the switch to the booster.)\u00a0 His kids hopped right out, the little girl introduced herself and her younger brother, they pushed CC the sassy Shetland pony out of their way, patted Bruno the 115 lb Great Pyrenees on the head as he rushed toward them, and moseyed into the kidding barn to catch and hold Cassie.<\/p>\n God, I love farm kids.\u00a0 The individual presence of CC or Bruno standing at the barnyard gate is often enough to make city kids wet themselves.\u00a0 Together their proximity can cause fear-induced seizures.\u00a0 Or instantaneous onset of E.Coli.\u00a0 But farm kids move around livestock with the confidence of city kids around cars and crosswalks.\u00a0 It’s a beautiful sight.<\/p>\n I asked the farmer if they had goat kids at their place yet.<\/p>\n “Yeah,” he said as we pulled the crate out of the truck bed.\u00a0 “But the kids can never get enough of baby animals.”<\/p>\n Kids??\u00a0 Can anyone ever get enough of baby animals?\u00a0 Isn’t the presence of spring babies the Universe’s trade off for some of the more grueling and dreary chores of the farm?\u00a0 ‘Cause I’m pretty sure it is.<\/p>\n I asked him what the piglets were eating at his place and he told me they were eating greens out of the garden and whey from a cheese farm, plus hay or chaffe hay on occasion.\u00a0 Not grain. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n I’ve got lots of greens.\u00a0 Especially since that warm day on the deck was the last day before the arrival of snow.\u00a0 Several inches of snow.\u00a0 I knew as soon as I woke up and saw the flower pots on the deck, there would be lots more frost burned and soggy vegetables up for grabs.<\/p>\n I don’t make cheese often enough to use whey as the main source of protein for piglets.\u00a0 But I do have something else.\u00a0 Right now the chickens are laying 2 dozen eggs a day, not including the ones I am putting aside for the incubator.\u00a0 Or the ones in the way back of the coop that I’m too lazy to climb back to get.\u00a0 The local farmers market is not up and running yet and I give away as many eggs as possible at work.\u00a0 But the farm fridge still looks like this:<\/p>\n So greens from the garden and leftover eggs it is.\u00a0 At least until the snow melts this week and the piglets can be in the garden, unearthing their own goodies.\u00a0 As hardy and healthy (and hairy!) as these girls are, a straw filled doghouse should be enough to keep them warm on cold nights.\u00a0 In the meantime they’re in a section of the kidding barn, where we pet them and talk to them and push our palms against their rubbery noses when they come to greet us.\u00a0 Because you can’t touch enough cute, rubbery pig noses.\u00a0 You just can’t.<\/p>\n So far they have been happy and easy to care for.\u00a0 They escaped out of their temporary pen in the kidding barn on the first night and we discovered them hanging out, agreeably, with Charlotte and Cassie in the morning.\u00a0 Not that Charlotte was pleased with that socially demeaning occurrence, but no one appeared agitated, injured, or stressed.<\/p>\n We have named the smaller one Penny.\u00a0 Because having a Penny the Pig was just too irresistible.<\/p>\n The fatter one is named Pushy.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
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