Living Garbage Disposals

Lined up to eat

Ok, we don't actually feed them garbage, but they do eat pretty much every scrap of food that is left on our plates.  We have raised pigs now for three or four years.  The first year we had seven or eight up on the hill.  The main purpose of the pigs was to try to seal in the pond that's up there.  Their wallowing, pooping, walking, and generally living on the space was said to be a great way of making the bowl-shaped depression that was unable to hold water into a pond.  So, we bought pigs.  We did a co-op adventure that year, raising the pigs for not only ourselves, but our neighbors and friends.  We each paid a share of the feed costs and then when the time came for butchering, everyone paid their own bill.  Because, if you didn't know it folks, that's what  you do with farm pigs.  They did a pretty good job that first year, but we felt the "pond" could still hold water even better with another year of pig living.  So, again they came. 

Cam got really tired of toting water and feed up the hill twice a day for several of the hottest months of the year, so this year, we scaled back and he built a more permanent shelter in which to house them in that is near the barn.  The down side to that is that they're near the barn.  Which also means near the house where we can smell their smelliness.  And, yes, folks, they do smell.  Cam positioned the pen in such a way that the wind doesn't often blow from the pen to the house, but when it does, peeeeeuuuuuu!  
Aside from the smell, I do actually like having the porkers around.  It makes me feel pretty good that our "waste" becomes food for them and any excess we have actually makes it cheaper to raise these guys because it means less feed to buy. It's also really nice to know exactly where our pork comes from and how it was raised.  I love that the distance from the farm to plate is, oh, about 100 feet.