We Bought a Farm: Pot-Bellied Pigs

We heard about a local family selling two female pot-bellied pigs for a very reasonable price. JB wasn't expecting to get pigs quite yet. (We have an order in for two breeders which he will be getting at the end of July). But when the opportunity for these gals came along, he decided to put his hand at pigs a little sooner than expected.

Here they are:

It is amazing the things you can repurpose on the farm. The previous owners had a dog kennel up that with a little bit of work, quickly made a fantastic pig sty. However, as you will see from the picture below, the cows cross through a small channel right in front of the cage. They are quite separated, but the cows still had no idea what to make of the pigs and absolutely refused to cross into the other pasture. They were very freaked out by two tiny, 9-week old pigs.

These pigs will, eventually, be food for our family.

I know that is hard for some of you to hear. Don't worry. It's hard to make sense of in my own mind as well. This is definitely new territory for me. I appreciate that I have some be vegetarians reading my Blog, and I respect your differing viewpoint. However, we believe that we were designed by God to eat meat and vegetables. That being said, we believe that killing your food should be a difficult thing to do. We believe that if you are not prepared to treat your animals kindly and kill them with great respect for the food cycle, you shouldn't be eating meat!

All right, back on track.

In the meantime, I (or JB) will be sharing exactly how permaculture works with these two pigs doing the demonstrating. They will be moved out into the pastures where they will be sectioned off with fencing. They will then begin rooting and working all the soil up. Basically, a free tilling machine!

In the meantime, we are enjoying going out two times a day to feed them and meet them. Here is a video we took this morning of Sidge and Abigail helping with the pigs. If you listen very closely, you will hear Scrubs just whining in the background. We are working to train him on acting appropriately around the animals! We use a shock collar, but we don't have to shock him much at all. We simply play a ding on his collar to get his attention and refocus him on not acting, well, like a dog. Ha! This is going to be very important when we have ducks and geese running all over tarnation!

Here's a photo of two of the kiddos with the box turtle we discovered in the pen. We are pretty sure this turtle must have been in this kennel for a long time because we can't find any way he would have gotten in with the gate door shut.