This is a big one for us.
We have always worked so hard to provide the best possible pork year round. To give the pigs a good life- to allow them their piggyness until that last day of betrayal when we honour them by making them part of ourselves.
After many seasons of trying different pasture based housing systems- large straw bales, plywood, cedar log houses, rock walls, tin walls, recycled plastic ceilings… you name it, we have decided to embrace the seasonality of food production in the northern climes and start only raising pigs outdoors Spring through Fall. To get the best of the fresh green gasses and forbs, the sun and rain of the summer and the fantastic nourishing fruits and harvest of the fall.
We have traditionally fed the pigs a base of gmo free hog ration from a trusted local feed mill but have experimented with local organic feeds as well, only to find them too costly or in a mash and not effective to feed with our system. But we have tried.
We have also supplemented over the years. Once we were donated a skid of gingerbread cookies no one decorated after the holidays. For years, we would collect crate after crate of apple pulp from a local cider press on a weekly basis. We’ve tossed full trailer loads of pumpkins and squash to the pigs in the fall pastures. We fed totes full of hemp and flax and amaranth and black seed cakes. We’ve partnered with more than one grocery store to take their expired produce as well. It’s been fun and exhausting sometimes.
What we want to do is to plant a forest that will allow our pigs to feed themselves. I want an upper canopy of nut trees like pecan, walnut and oak that will mast hundreds of pounds of nuts for the pigs. With mulberry and persimmon and honey locust dropping fruits and seed pods all through the summer and fall. I want to see if I can grow thickets of raspberries, blackberries, haskaps and currants that will withstand feeding, nourish the animals and thrive, if only briefly grazed in harvest. Apples and pears in the fall too and chestnuts as well… there is no shortage of food we can grow.
I have been growing and experimenting with many of these plants for over 10 years now, pushing the growing zone limits and finding varieties that work well here in our soils. I am still listening, observing, learning and trying to find more.
And now is the time to prepare for the next stage.
I recently participated in a course on Agroforestry with the University of Missouri and have been re inspired to continue the path. And we’re very excited to do so. I will do my best to document and share what I can here, both for my own records and to share with all of you.
I have always believed there is a better way to live, to eat, to be and share in this world and I’ve never and will never stop looking for a way to discover and share that with the world. With hope, love and curiosity we will find the beauty of the best way.
