The Art of Cleaning a Barn

Cleaning a barn has to be the single most disgusting job and, simultaneously, the single most rewarding one on the farm.  There is an art form to cleaning the various pens out in an efficient way, a method to getting it all clean with the fewest number of wheelbarrow trips. It isn't really anyone's favorite job to have to do on the farm, but it is definitely one of the most necessary.  With four pigs and thirty three chickens living under one small roof, it needs to be cleaned routinely.

Chickens are just plain messy.  There really isn't any way around that fact other than to frequently employ the use of a shovel and broom to their best effects.  Feathers and "litter" ( I love the cute words that people have come up with in place of 'shit'....clearly those people never had to deal with much of it to any extent)...., their litter is everywhere, and I do mean everywhere.  The worst part about this mess is that if it is left too long, it turns into a very dusty mess thus necessitating the use of dust masks.

Pigs, however, are incredibly clean animals.  That may come as a surprise to many people because when you think of pigs, many people generally think of them in mud.  They do love mud, but they like a clean nest to lie in when they are not wallowing in mud.  With enough room to move, a pig will keep their enclosure very clean.  An area to eat, an area to sleep and an area to um, ...well, you know.  Too little space to live in and, against their will, they are forced to make a mess.

Imagine this.....picture yourself locked in a small room in your house.  For convenience, let's say it is the bathroom.  Fine,... now picture several other people locked in there with you....enough people so that moving from one side of the room to the other requires certain tetris-like skills.  Now imagine that all day you have all had to use the same toilet and nobody can flush.  I don't know about you, but a day spent in that sort of environment would likely bring out some homicidal tendencies.  And yet, this is what we expect animals to endure for their entire life.

 The currently accepted CAFO (confined animal feeding operation) system has hogs housed on top of  a vat that holds their own excrement.  The flooring is a slated cement that allows all the waste to fall through into a vat so they don't have to sit in it, but they do have to smell it for their entire life.  This liquid slurry (again with the cutesy words that somehow makes it slightly less disgusting through connotation) is pumped to holding tanks or lagoons to be stored until it can be pumped out onto fields as fertilizer where it will make the environment for miles around stink and potentially run off into creeks and streams....that is if it doesn't spill out first and contaminate ground water.  Chickens, turkeys and beef cows have it even worse....typically their lives are so short that they just have to live on top of their litter the entire time.

Back in the day, when farming actually required husbandry and animals were known as "animals" and not "units", they slept and were housed in barns. They were kept warm and clean with straw.  Let me attempt to explain how the concept of straw works....it provides a carbon source that absorbs the liquids in waste.  Most animal waste contains nitrogen which is what gives it the strong smell.  That nitrogen, when combined with carbon makes a fantastic mix for compost.  Allow it to sit in a pile for a few weeks, get some water rained down on it and it will start to heat up, thus killing harmful bacteria and weed seeds that are present in it.  I haven't actually stuck a thermometer in the middle of my pile, but I do put in a metal rod in it to objectively test the temperature - that rod gets too hot to touch, or roughly about 150 degrees.  When the pile cools down after about 3 weeks, it gets turned and allowed to reheat.  After three or so turns, it is finished enough to go on the garden.  The problem with the current commercial method of dealing with waste - it has eliminated the straw...the carbon is gone.  What that leaves is a large amount of high nitrogen containing waste, and nitrogen on its own without the combination of carbon, smells and, when applied directly to fields, disrupts the natural balance of carbon and nitrogen in the soil.

So, just to reiterate and simplify:

Confinements - litter and slurry in large quantities in a small space, stressed animals, bad smells, contamination of water and unbalancing of nutrients in the ground, but fewer farmers needed.

Traditional farming - straw and manure into compost, happy animals, no bad smell, high quality and complete fertilizer for fields, many hardworking farmers needed.

Yes, traditional farming requires more person power, but for a country that needs to figure out how to come up with 23 million more jobs, and a way to improve the health of its people....this doesn't seem like rocket science.

It is that "hardworking" aspect that is daunting to many people who would like to go back to more traditional farming.   Farming isn't an easy job....never has been, but lately farming has jumped on the corporate and technology bandwagons. Ever larger farms requiring ever larger equipment. There are more computers, GPS units, and entertainment units in most new farm equipment than I have ever had (or will ever have) in my entire house. Farming is not the same physically demanding profession that it used to be, which I guess is good because the average age of most farmers is going up significantly.  In the last 80 years farms have increased significantly in size, but the number of farmers owning the land has decreased and they are aging rapidly. How and why did this happen? One of the main reasons behind some of these changes are that farmers need to grow more and more just to make ends meet.  In a country that demands cheap, highly processed food, the farmer is the lowest link in a chain and doesn't get paid what he or she should be for their efforts, thus they plant more and more corn and soybeans to pay for their new, state of the art, farm equipment. The government has to provide subsidies just to keep these farmers afloat, while at the same time America is facing an obesity crisis because we have to find stuff to do with all this corn and soybeans so we process it into everything. 

 It is a crazy cycle that is completely out of control. 

• huge, subsidized, monoculture crops of corn and soybeans 
• cheap, processed food 
• obese people with metabolic disease 
• increased medical costs 
• generally sicker population that is unable to work effectively.

 And then people wonder why we are in a financial crisis? It's because of the food that we eat! 

Starting at the top of that cycle, and getting away from huge farms with huge crops is the place that we need to start. If you look back at pictures of farmers in the 1940's, there wasn't an overweight one in the lot because they were all physically working hard.  I, personally, have never seen the need for a gym membership when working outside all day burns almost more calories than I can grow.  I think of it as the "farming diet".  If you can't grow it, don't eat it...I should trademark that and take it on the road.  I could make millions....but I digress.

Cleaning a barn is not really all that hard; it is the juggling of the animals that live there while you try to clean it that is often the hardest part. Convincing a 550 pound hog that she really should go investigate outside while her home is stripped of all its soft, well worn, and dusty straw requires a little bribery with some fresh green plants pulled from the garden.  Mr Pig was easier to bribe with a little cracked corn and the chickens come and go as they please while I clean out their coop. The rooster, however, was determined to watch my every move in case I should harass one of his hens.  Fourteen wheelbarrow loads of manure and bedding later, the muscles of my arms twitched with exertion and I was ready for a break.  The highlight, however, is hauling in the new straw.  Watching as the pigs tear into it and spread it around just the way they like it, is immensely entertaining. When Mrs Pig was finally settled into her new clean nest, the chickens meandered over to check it out and Tigger the cat quietly curled up next to her.  It was such a bucolic moment that I just had to smile. If anyone were to tell me that caring for farm animals is a thankless job, I would just point to the look of contentment on my animals' faces and say, "No, they say thank-you all the time."

So, today, as I type this with sore arms, I am reminded that not only did I clean something up, I enlarged my compost pile and made several beings very happy in the process....including myself.

Mr Pig Goes A Courtin'

Spring is starting to roll slowly around.  The sun is peaking up over the horizon a little earlier and staying up a little later every night.  There are many times when the weather has been warm enough lately to even smell the warmth of the earth, but the biggest signs that lets us know that Spring is on its way is that love is in the air.  Valentine's day isn't just for the humans of the world....our pig gets to have her love affair as well.  Granted, her pool of eligible bachelors was somewhat smaller than she might like, but then a kept pig can't be choosy.

For the last four years, we have purchased baby piglets to raise and then eat, but in the last two we have thought about saving the gilt (that's the female) and have her bred so we could farrow and raise our own piglets.  Last year's gilt was fine except for one small thing....she liked the taste of chicken a little too much and whittled away our chicken flock significantly with her ravenous habits. 

Mr Pig

But this year's gilt?  She was taught at a young age by the local rooster, Dominique (which is both his name and his breed....we aren't very creative with names for the animals that we might one day have to stew in a pot..."Bob-noodle soup" turned us off to that practice).  Anyway, Dominique taught her not to mess with the two footed and feathered crowd.  She happily allows chickens (and cats) to partake of her bounty of cracked corn and kitchen scraps without so much as a proprietary grunt.  In short, she is a really nice pig.  And so, she was nominated to stay and hopefully pass on not only her beautiful chops, but also her winning attitude to a herd of small screaling piglets. 

The question, however, was where to find the boy?  Technically, we would most like a Large Black - this is a particular breed that is easier to raise on pasture since they don't rut it up quite as much, but we weren't  into spending the prices being asked for a purebred boar, not to mention that you have to be able to house them and feed them - no small task to be undertaken when they can reach approximately 700 pounds. We found a rather nice one that was due to go to market unless they could find him a home, but he was already full grown, exceptionally large and more than we were up to paying once again.  Craigslist has any number of fun and interesting items for sale....including pigs, and we contemplated these options, but none of them stuck out as suitable matches for our pig. Our breakthrough came with finally taking the time to meet some of the neighbors. 



First encounter



My husband had been told about a farmer just north of us that had cows and pigs and sheep - doing basically what we are doing, but on a much larger scale.  It had been suggested that we stop up and see him some time and finally, one chilly December day, we made the trip of six miles and found a resource for bottle/bucket calves, milking advice and .....you guessed it, a boar.  All too often we forget to look around and tap into local resources.  We get caught up with the idea that we are the "lunatic farmers" of the neighborhood amidst an ocean of "conventional farmers" and we forget that there are, in fact, more and more of the us lunatics out there all the time - small family farms that are starting to make a small but significant difference in how food is raised.  But we need to work together and depend on each other - just like farmers did in the past.  All too often now, conventional farmers are out there on their own - big fields, big equipment, big risk.  The competition to produce more and more soy and corn has led to isolation and a general lack of public interest in farming in general.  Ask any non-farming person if they would want to farm and most of the time the answer is "No - I don't have the first idea how to do that!"  Conventional farming is daunting - even for the farmers that do it, and unless you are born into a family that farms, it isn't likely to be something that you would want to jump into.   But small farms, such as ours, are do-able.  With a little time and sweat equity we have been slowly turning this old homestead back into a productive farm.  One adage that I have stuck to when it comes to trying new things is, "Learn by doing" - you can read all the books on a subject you want, but until you are up to your elbows in it, it doesn't sink in.  So we were up to our elbows with a gilt that needed a boyfriend and, in this case, all it took was making a neighborhood connection to provide us with the answer.  The Rent-a-Boar.

A purebred Berkshire boar with proven quality...essentially meaning that he has been with a pen of sows and proceeded to get them all 'with pig' as the case might be.  Originally, the plan was to take Miss Pig for a visit up to the other farm and let her hang with the rest of the pigs, but Bill (the farmer) was a little worried that his sows might beat her up, so it was decided that Mr. Pig should come hang out in Shangri-La at our house.

Any time that you mix two 350 pound animals together there is a certain amount of blind faith that goes along with it because you realize that if they really don't like each other, there isn't anything that you will be able to do to stop the ensuing battle until the smoke clears.  We didn't need to worry with Miss Pig, she was smitten almost immediately and we are fairly convinced that he was taken with her as well. 

If you ever hear a person say that an animal doesn't have feelings, do me a favor -first, kick them in the shins and then direct them to this post.  Our Miss Pig had been without her pig friends since about late September when we took them to market.  The first few days had been difficult and she had mopped around without her buddies, but her gregarious nature and love of food brought her around fairly quickly.  On Sunday, however...when Mr Pig showed up....suffice it to say that it was love at first sight.  If you have never seen a happy pig with her new friend smile....you really should.

Happier Than A Pig In......Grass!

Next time you pass a confinement, see if you see any pigs doing this.......



This is a mound of grass that I dug out of my garden.  Pigs are the ultimate processors of grass, dirt, vegetable matter of all kinds.  They rut it apart, eat what can be eaten and simply enjoy the rest. This is what a pig was designed to do.  They weren't designed to live in closed confined buildings with no access to dirt and sunlight - it goes against the very grain of all that is pigness.

When pigs are born and raised in confinement they are typically given iron shots....know why? .....because they don't have access to dirt in a confinement and therefore are iron deficient and anemic.  But, by giving pigs access to dirt they are fine - no iron deficiency.  Pigs and dirt go hand in hand.

**in the background are any number of free range chickens, one crazy fun-loving grey cat named "Tink" and at one point, near the end, Hazel makes an appearance while chasing a chicken.

The 4 - H Conundrum

Had an interesting discussion with my daughter the other day. She is very much into doing things that other people are doing (or have done) lately. I think she is trying to find her niche in the world.

The discussion of interest, however, happened while deciding which 4-H projects to tackle this year. They were due to turn in their enrolment forms and had to have their projects figured out. Food and Nutrition - check, Aerospace - check, Wood Working - check, Horticulture - check, Poultry - ......."what? you don't want to take the chickens again?"

No, .....she wants to take something bigger!

Bigger, as in something that she can "show" around a ring. Not just a simple chicken that you take in and out of its cage while talking to the judge.

She wanted to take a pig because that is what I had done in 4-H. Well, we will have pigs, so I could totally see how the idea crossed her mind, and they say that imitation is the best flattery, but I felt conflicted suddenly. Here is where we come to the conundrum.

4-H is a group that built out of the farmers of the community and as the farming practices started to change back in the 40s, 50s and 60s, so did 4-H. It is now very production oriented - the most animal units in the smallest space for the least amount of money. 4-H does focus on taking good care of these animals and some of the science behind the production is sound, but the bulk of the animals that go to the show are, sadly, raised in confinement type production systems.

We like to imagine that the problem isn't around here. It isn't our neighbors that do this horrible thing to animals, but when you peel off the denial....yeah it is. I drive by several confinement units on my way to work and there is one particular horrid cattle feedlot on the way to my parents with beef cattle piled nose to tail in muck up to their elbows and 6 foot fences all around their tiny enclosure while nice green fields stretch out in every direction for miles around them.

We grow pigs on this farm, but only two or three at a time and very slowly. We feed only organically grown feed and produce scraps from our garden.....well,.... and the occasional chicken that they corner and help themselves to. There is no possible way that a pig, grown in the way that we like to grow them, will gain enough, quickly enough to be shown at the fair. They would be close, but not quite.

Sometimes I wish 4-H went a little farther. Take those pigs on the hoof newly judged and then take them to the butcher and re-judge them based on meat quality and taste after they are butchered. Take it even further and judge them based on nutritional differences found in the meat. I would happily have Faye take a pig to the fair then.

So, how to change the system? This is what I contemplate as I drive by confinement units, hear the latest news on the farm bill, receive letters from my Alma mater vet school and cringe.

Speaking of Vet school....there, too, lies a problem. I cut my teeth in the production animal world in the very bosom of all farm animal knowledge....Iowa State. Did three years of an Animal Science degree and then launched into Vet school with the plan to become a mixed animal practitioner. I learned all the ins and outs of production animal medicine and surgery only to give it all up after I graduated. I started out at a mixed animal practice, but since I was 4 months pregnant with the daughter that now stood in the kitchen staring me down for a bigger animal to show at the fair, I had done only small animal work. Time, distance, and a lot of kids later I find myself where I am now - firmly entrenched in disliking my own industry for their narrow minded views on producing animals.

The AVMA (American Veterinary Medical Association) themselves are pro-confinement operations, pro-antibiotic use in the feed, pro-large scale production. I try to unravel the "why" behind their political stance on all of these issues and I honestly can't see it. Are they (and by they I mean the production animal vets that make up the AVMA) afraid of what might happen to their multi-million dollar money makers - essentially IBP and Tyson foods? Are they afraid of what those huge corporations might do to them? Personally, I say "who cares!" I am a scientist and I have to look at all the ways and means of raising an animal - which is best? Best for the animal and best for the people eating the animal? Becoming a scientist teaches you how to think critically and then becoming a veterinarian promptly brainwashes you into thinking that the large scale production method is the way to go. It would seem to me to be in the best interest of the veterinarians of the country to be the leaders in raising animals - dictating what truly is the best method of raising an animal. We are supposed to be the animal advocates.....or is it that we are supposed to be the large scale production owner's advocate.....I forget....the brainwashing makes my head hurt.

I distinctly remember one production class. The professor was talking about beef production - raising cattle to put on the most meat as fast as possible and what they need to be fed to do that. Silly me, I always thought that cows were supposed to eat grass - they are ruminants after all, designed by thousands of years of genetics to be able to eat the stuff that omnivores and carnivores can't eat and digest. But here was a professor giving us a recipe for what to feed to beef cattle to make them grow really fast....and it wasn't grass. Not only that, but he said....and I remember this almost word for word because it struck me as somehow very wrong, "their feces should be so "hot" they almost bubble" What this actually translates to in non-vet lingo is that they have very loose stools and you will sometimes see a little 'froth' or 'bubble' on the top of the cow pie that they leave. Apparently, that is a sign that they are getting a really high protein feed and laying down a lot of muscle. But then he went on to talk about the liver abscesses that this can lead to because when we feed cattle this unnatural "hot" feed it screws with the bacterial flora of their rumen and then essentially end up with what amount to ulcers in the gut. The bacteria cross from the intestines into the liver and set up shop. These cattle may be putting on a lot of weight, but they are miserable doing it. Imagine someone cramming those "high performance energy bars" down your throat when you have a constant case of severe heart burn and gastritis. What is the production professor's answer to this? Antibiotics in the feed to help keep those bacteria in check.

Wrong, this seems so wrong.

And how did this start? I have no flipping clue. Somewhere along the line the big became bigger and they started thinking of ways that they could produce more faster and make more money. And, as so often happens, overproduction happened and then you have to make a market and a reason - we have to "feed the masses" , have a marketing campaign - "Beef! It's what's for dinner!"....remember that one? The prices eventually fall and the little guys go bankrupt and the big just keep getting bigger and start having a lot more political clout because they have the money to control the legislation. This is all a very sick and twisted system that we live in. What is done to mass produce slowly becomes the norm to the point that veterinarians start learning how to deal with the mess that is the confinement raised beef cow, hog or poultry and accepting it as norm. The norm becomes what is pandered to and taught to the next crowd of young aspiring vets and what is sent down to the extension services in each county as "good production practices" and further taught to young 4-H members contemplating what to take for fair that year.

So, we have come full circle - from me, growing up taking pigs to fair, thinking that this is the best way to do things, to a full veterinary degree later realizing that maybe we should be raising our animals differently and trying to find a way to help my children realize that as well, while fighting a system that tries to teach them the exact opposite.

"Can't do pigs, Honey."

"But why not?"

To which I attempted to explain the above at an 11 year old level.

"Well, how about a cow? Can I take a cow?"

"Beef steer or dairy cow? Because you know that the beef steers don't come home, they eventually go to market and we are back to the production conundrum again."

"A dairy cow. They come home right? And we can raise them like we want to and still take them to show right?"

By God, I think she might just understand and have it figured out. And, she may have just put me over a barrel. Yes, we have talked about getting a cow at some point. Why not now? Why not for a 4-H project? That would give us two years to watch it grow, build what will, no doubt, need to be built to have a milk cow in residence and re-learn my dairy cow medicine that I might need to know.

Therefore, I am now in the market for one newly born Brown Swiss heifer calf. If anyone should know a local dairy that would be willing to sell me one, let me know.

Photo credit: Farmer's Daughter.....clearly another person after my own heart.

Ham and Eggs

What goes really great with eggs? Yeah, you guessed it. We figured that since we had officially launched into having animals on the farm that we would try for a well rounded farm and bring on a few pigs.

I love pigs. Grew up with them for the most part (and, no, that is not a veiled reference to living with my brother). We always had a few on the farm for 4-H purposes for my brother and eventually for me when I got old enough. We even had a sow named Gus, that had a litter of piglets one year. The runt, Porkie, lived in our basement for about 3 weeks drinking milk from a baby bottle attached to the end of a hockey stick......hmmm, maybe that is where the idea of Lambie in the basement came from.....

There are very few farm stories from when I was a kid that didn't somehow involve a pig in one way or another. Leaping Leland, Gus, Dr. Jekyll, Brutus....all pigs of legend on our farm. Our pigs always had a great time of it. They were never confined. We had a wonderful English type piggery at our farm in Minnesota - they could come inside the hog house at any time, or be outside in the cement walled enclosure if they wanted. And, if they were very good pigs, we would set up a low electric fence and run them out onto dirt and then I would overflow the horse tank and let the water trickle down to the hog wallow where they would happily lounge for the entire day like crocodiles in a swamp with only their eyes and noses above the mud.

People that don't know pigs always assume that they are very dirty animals when actually, the exact opposite is true. Pigs are, by nature, very clean animals and highly intelligent. Of the farm animals, the pig ranks the highest in GPA. If they are given half a chance, and a little room, they keep their enclosures clean.

The very worst thing that modern farming practices have done is to confine these wonderful animals. If this entire blog does nothing more than convince just one person to consider where their meat comes from and consider that their "meat" at one point had a life that should have been worth living, then it will have been entirely worth all the writing.

As a veterinarian, we are required to learn about some production animal medicine. We have to have the basics down for approximately nine species - cats, dogs, pigs, chickens, cows, horses, goats, sheep, turkeys....and, as you can see, most of those species are production animals. So we learn about the antibiotics that get put into feed to help them grow quicker or protect them from disease since they are raised in such large quantities in such close quarters. What people don't understand....not even veterinarians in many cases, is that this is not the way these animals developed. They didn't develop to live in tiny confinement units with hundreds, if not thousands of others. If you take them out of that horrible artificial environment and put them in a more natural setting, guess what?..... they don't need any of the food additives or antibiotics to survive. The salmonella and pathogenic E. coli strains disappear.

I have seen confinements, been in them as well and I can tell you with all honesty that I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy much less an animal that lives and breathes to rut in the dirt. It is sad to see a pig in a confinement. They are stressed from the first day there and they are denied every essence of what being a pig really means.

CAFO (Confined Animal Feeding Operations) this is what they are typically called in the business. In the business of agriculture, an animal is reduced simply to an end product from the moment of its birth. It is only seen as a "unit of production" as in "how many units of production can we fit into that new building". We have become so focused on producing as many units as possible in the smallest space possible, that we have completely forgotten that these so called units are beings with a similar physiology to our own.

What is sadder still.....most non-farming people have no understanding of the conditions that these poor animals suffer in before they are butchered and served up to us in a grocery store under so much plastic wrap. Movies like Food Inc have definitely helped to open peoples' eyes and journalists like Michael Pollan have also helped with books such as An Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food, but what helps the most?....drive around and look at where these animals are living! If you live anywhere in the Midwest I can almost guarantee that you can find some close by. It is depressing, disheartening and simply wrong on so many levels and the apathy that we have for these animals.....even more wrong.

It depresses me, as a veterinarian, to see animals treated this way. I stand very much opposed to the American Veterinary Medical Association's stance on antibiotic use in animals not to mention the entire idea of a CAFO in and of itself. For a group of people whose lives and careers are devoted to the care and well being of animals, we are a sad lot when it comes to production animals. I typically get the response, "well, they are just food animals" to which I say, any animal that will be forced to give up its life for me deserves to be treated better than they are.

I can sense my production animal vet friends sharpening their knives to come after me. Questions such as, "Well, how would you suggest we raise enough animals for this country then?"

Easy! Small family farms. The way that it was done a generation ago, before Americans became fat and slow and idiotic. Joel Salatin, owner and operator of Polyface Farms in Virginia has been farming with a conscience and sustainably for years. We all bemoan the loss of the "family farm" and hate to see corporate farms take over. Why do they take over? Because we buy their cheap, confinement raised, unsustainable meat, that's why. If we were to STOP buying it, the confinements would disappear.

If I can say nothing else about this issue, it is this......PAY ATTENTION! Notice where your food comes from, how it was raised. If you cannot account for its well being, then you shouldn't be eating it. We are what we eat and likewise, we are what our food eats as well. If our food is raised up to its elbows in shit....it is very likely that we will soon be up to our own elbows in shit (metaphorically, if not literally).

Alright, enough soap boxing for a while.....back to the pigs. One of my clients happened to have pigs that she raised. Farmers that actually farrow pigs are starting to become fewer and farther between (another type of corporate takeover, I'm sorry to say) but I lucked out with her because she had just had a litter of piglets one day when she came in for some other animal related service. We struck a bargain.....2 piglets at weaning for a bag of cat food.

I received 28 pounds of piglet and she went home with 17 pounds of cat food. Who said bargaining wasn't alive and well.

Two tiny little pigs in our new "piggery" section of the shed. They looked so small and lost the first few days. There were times when it appeared that they had disappeared entirely because they would be buried under the straw beneath the heat lamp, but pigs are very food motivated animals and within a few days they recognized us as the prime "food givers".

The reason that pigs are one of the main "meat" animals is that they are about 99% muscle. This was quickly realized as they grew incredibly fast and could move 60 pounds of cement block around with just their snout. We had to catch and treat the smaller of the two pigs once with a shot of antibiotics, but catching him and holding him up long enough to give the shot was a full workout of its own.

We had toyed with the idea of naming them or not. I was one to suggest that maybe we shouldn't name them, as then it becomes exponentially harder to eventually eat them, as discovered by the "Bob noodle soup" incident. So, we decided to name them based solely on marks....we had "Patch" and "Bongo" .....how exactly we came to Bongo is a bit of a mystery, but it involved a thesaurus and an alternate meaning for the word "stripe" I believe.

Pigs love to play. They chase each other, they have running "dashes" and will often make a "woffing" noise that sounds a little like a dog bark when they are having a good time. They are mischievous and humorous and very friendly. I made friends quickly with Patch and Bongo because I almost always had old produce from the garden that I would cart over for them to have. That, and I would share my beer with them.

Pigs will eat just about everything. They are omnivores just like us, but they are much less particular about what they eat. Left overs were a main staple of their diet at our farm. We would save all the scrap produce that we peeled off carrots or potatoes, left over onions, squash seeds, old beans, etc and take them out to the pigs at the end of the day. They would come running for any treats that we would bring. Old windfall apples, peach pits, corn cobs, watermelon rinds, rotting squash and cucumbers, pulled up grass weeds.....any vegetarian produce that we could come up with they loved. We had a strict rule though....no meat, although there was one instance of them catching a chicken on their own and making quite a feast of it. Eggs and milk however were allowed.....so they weren't vegan pigs. They also had an incredible sweet tooth and loved the chocolate chips and marshmallows that sometimes found their way out to them.

Our Patch and Bongo went from 14 pounds each at the start to well over 260 pounds within 6 months. And then it was time to go to market. The week before they left however, they received a special treat every day and split a beer between the two of them the night before.

Thankfully, we live in a small town where there is a small butcher. These, too, are becoming harder to find as the USDA grows in strength and tries to further limit what people can and cannot eat.....apparently it is fine to eat unwholesome, CAFO meat, but healthy happy meat....not so much. But I digress.

Was it difficult to watch Patch and Bongo go off to market? Yes! The shed was a sad and quiet place suddenly, but they had been reaching an age and size that they were clearly uncomfortable and the place had to be vacated so that we could clean it out and get it ready for winter and then, in turn, next year's piglets. The meat from those two pigs filled a chest freezer for us and fed our family of 7 as well as two other families throughout the winter. I cannot express to you how wonderful is bacon that has been raised on marshmallows, beer and fresh air. So, as sad as it was, we gave those two pigs the happiest life we could, we loved them well and cherished their bodies that helped to feed us. They were well treated and well thought of their entire lives and even after.....I would be happy if as much could be said for me when I die.