Piglets are probably my fave
The piglets are coming, the piglets are coming!
New piglets enjoying some Non GMO cracked peas, barley and corn.
I cannot tell you how much I LOVE piglets. Since I was 8 years old, so like a few years, I have loved pigs. It all started when my sisters got their first 4-H piglets for fair. It was the start of my love of animal husbandry, and it began with those beautiful piglets. I can remember laying in their bedding with them and playing tag, yes, pigs can play tag and I DID lay in their bed. I remember too being momentarily crushed when they left to be processed, but the love and joy lasted through. I was thrilled the next year when I was old enough to raise my own pig for fair. When we decided to begin our farm, after the first pigs came on and we stood back to enjoy watching them smack their feed. I told him I think I could just die happy if I could watch pigs eat everyday, for the rest of my life, no vacations necessary. It’s been 8 years since those pigs came on farm and a lot has changed, but I am still ever so in love with piglets. What makes it all the better is that we have found a great farmer, right down the road, who farrows and has a beautiful and clean operation, respecting of his sows and boar. We totally scored and are so excited to start a professional and personal friendship with him, his wife and their son. We are also preparing for their transplant into our ecosystem and fencing! Before that first group of pigs, we had been enjoying books about farming, some originally were blogs with first hand experiences from first time farmers and some were “how-tos” from experts. They all agreed, be careful with your fencing because the piglets WILL get out, in fact, just make sure not to bring them on late in the day or you will find yourself running around in the dusk/dark trying to recapture your little escapees. We laughed at their inexperience and chalked up the experts to lacking the skills we possessed. Well, I didn’t mentioned earlier that while we enjoyed watching those little piglets eat, we were breathless and mostly just happy we didn’t actually lose any. Yep, we brought our piglets home at dusk and they definitely escaped through what we thought was small enough fencing and took right off into the pasture and even to the neighbors’. We figured it out when their dogs went crazy and we spent the next hour or two chasing tiny piglets in a 3.5 acre pasture and were eventually successful enough to trap them in the garden, which had just seen its first frost and thus was finished for the year. AND that is where they stayed. We didn’t even dare move them to their paddock, we just filled the garden with bags and bags of woodchips and used an old chicken tractor, filled with organic alfalfa as their shelter. We learned that the alfalfa kept them warm enough to keep a LOT of fat on them, even though we wintered them, and then used the accident as a perfect way to expand the garden and have them root the grass and weeds for free! I guess it was an experience worthy of any farmer and we probably needed the humiliation. So, this week, before the piglets come, we will prepare the paddock for tiny and strong little escape artists and pray for the best.
