Thursday, August 18, 2011

Pigs


Well, here is the LAST addition, well, the last animal addition, to our farm. Well, for now, at least. We got a mama, a daddy, and a baby, although they are not blood related. We will raise the baby for meat and keep the mom and dad as a breeding pair. When they have babies, we can sell the babies or raise them for meat. ALTHOUGH, we just read that when you have an adult male pig, he needs a few Sow's (female pigs) for his libido. BUT, we'll cross that hurdle when we get there...just like everything we do around here! So the pigs have been a fun addition. Just like the other animals, they basically need food, water, and shelter. Now the pigs have a shade shelter and a mud pit. They love eating, then rolling around in the mud. They need the mud pit in the summer to keep them cooled off. And they are smart little things! The second day we got them, we raked all of their poop into one corner and we've never had to rake again. The pigs go into that corner and do their business, every time. Isn't that great? I wish cows and horses would do that. Anyway, pigs are definately pigs. They eat anything! And they are sloppy and noisy and piggy when they eat. Its actually fascinating to watch. Do you love my sign? I will post all the signs that I made for the other animals. The black one is the daddy, his name is curly. They do have curly tails, but his tail is ALWAYS curly. The one on the right is the mama, we named her Pepper Pots. And the baby is no-pac. He was two-pac before we castrated him. Yes, we castrated our own pig. It was an adventure, and again, something we just learned about on Youtube. Just look up how to castrate a pig and it gives step by step veiwing instructions. It took me, Nathan and Richard (a guy from church who has pigs himself) and it went pretty flawlessly. I felt super accomplished after we did it ourselves, since there is a guy in town (his name is Bernadino) who does it professionally. Actually, we were in the middle of holding the pig down on the table, he was squealin pretty good. I was holding his ears, Richard was holding his feet and Nathan had his fresh new razer about to do the cutting and we all 3 were asking each other, "Are you good? I'm good, are you good? Well, yeah, I guess...okay, well, no backing out after we start cutting...or should we call Bernadino? Well, what about you? You good? I'm good, just hold on tight. Okay, lets do it..." Then Nathan just made two small slits, pushed each testie through, twisted and cut. There was minimal bleeding, the pig went back to eating and playing right away and with a close watch and spraying antiseptic on it for the next couple days, he healed just fine! SO, I think if word gets out around here, people might be calling us instead of Bernadino to do their castrations! (F.Y.I. you always castrate the animal you are going to butcher. If not, there will be too much testosterone in the meat and it will make it taste funny) Oh, another thing, if you DO browse the "how to castrate a pig" videos on youtube, there are some good ones, and there are bad ones that you just cringe at. We did ours the quick and clean way, I was really impressed!





This is our slop bucket. Holy cow, you would be amazed at how much stuff you throw away or put down the garbage disposal! We just save any edible thing and throw it under the sink here. This whole pot was filled up within a 24 hour period. There are banana peels, egg shells, leftovers from our plates after meals, the ends of veggies and seeds inside that we would normally just throw out. Then when it gets full, just bring it out to the pigs. Its a treat for them! And its so cool for us that we literally waste nothing. And if there are things in the fridge that I haven't gotten to, even yogurts and other dairy products, I don't have to throw them away. Pigs and cows have stomaches to handle even spoiled food. Well, not that my fridge is filled with spoiled foods...hmm, although there are some questionable things in there when I actually do get around to cleaning it out!



Oinking out on some old produce...





Check this out! A couple days a week up here, a guy sets up a produce stand and sells to the locals. This is a big hit around here, even though he's a bit more expensive than a store, its convienient and saves the trip in gas going down the hill. He has everything, its a pretty big stand. Well a couple weeks ago I was there and I asked the guy that runs it, Hector, if he had any bad produce that he was just going to throw away. I told him I have pigs. Now, I was very skeptical and living on a prayer when I asked him. I mean, come on, wouldn't everybody already have done the same thing as me?? Well, he told me to pull around the back and he'd load me up. And that he did! Look at this trunk full of produce! AND he said I could come every Tuesday and he'd give me is bad produce! Needless to say, Hector is getting a little present when we butcher the pig! So besides generously feeding it to our pigs, I gave the produce to our cows, chickens and goats and it lasted all week, till the next produce trip. WOW, how cool is this? I think its so great because we are raising our animals to eat, raising them on fruits and veggies, along with their grain will just make their meat all the better.


Nathan sorting though our produce jackpot...