Friday in the late afternoon the first 5 pigs arrived in the back of our pick up.  Adam drove 5 hours south to Williams OR to pick up the piglets from Full Circle Bison Ranch, where Tobias Hatfield is experimenting with heritage swine raised organically and following Swedish farrowing practices.  They are the much anticipated cross of two heritage breeds;  a Tamworth sow crossed with a Large Black boar.  The tamworths are good mothers and an excellent (dare I say the best) bacon pig available because the meat is lean and red in color, and has tremendous flavor, fast growing for a heritage breed, and good foragers.  The large blacks are slower growing and tend to be lardy when bred pure so should add perfect marbling as a cross, love grazing by the mouthful, and are docile.  Should be a prodigal combination.

Most of the gang...

Friendly and curious....

I made them a fresh space in a shop stall with a deep straw bed, where they will adjust for a few days.  They are already about 8 weeks old and weigh in at around 30 pounds each.  They are curious, smart, beautiful, vigorous, and playful with lots of personality.  As expected they all sleep in a pile, and we’re keeping an infrared bulb on them for comfort.  We are attaching a small run to the stall today so they can go in and out and touch the Earth.  In a week or 10 days when they are acclimated and we have developed good trusting relations, we plan to bring them out to our garden-to-be and experiment living on pasture.  We are hoping they can help us prepare the vegetable beds, with assistance from some movable electric netting and a quonset-style hutch that Adam built from reclaimed dead-shed materials.  Depending upon how that goes, we have more pig tillage plans in a larger pasture we hope to trial some grains.

For those of you who were wondering: the dogs are ecstatic about the arrival of our new friends.  They had many an exciting encounter with the pigs when we lived in Healdsburg.  Wild pigs would come right by the front door of the cabin.  A testament to Willa and Trout’s raw intelligence (not training) is that they seem to be able to make the important distinction between wild animals, and farm family members they must be stewards of.  We had some great licking and tail wagging on both sides through the wire mesh.

The friendliest female pig...

And most strategic pig...

Do you still wonder which sow we will keep for breeding? This act of sweetness saved her life.

We will be selling these pigs in wholes and halves.  This batch will probably be ready around mid-October.  Please send an e-mail or comment if you want to be added to our mailing list.  Later in the spring we will be bringing in a few more heritage crosses of different breeds, so the pigs will be coming available for your freezer throughout the fall.  Our goal is to raise around a dozen pastured pigs each year, their feed supplemented by the local bounty of the gorge such as seasonal fruit, spent brewery grains, nuts and possibly milk right from Trout Lake’s Organic Valley dairy producers.  The heritage weaners are a bit hard to come by and come at a premium, so we intend to keep at least one (if not two) of our young females for breeding.  This year is the learning year, an experiment.

They love to root around for little bits of cob.

Saskia came out on Saturday night to visit.  She brought with her dinner supplies – fresh pasta, tomato sauce and some ground pork from our friend Brad’s happy pigs.  My stomach rolled with nausea at the thought of eating pork, after bonding with my little piggies.  I did manage to eat some of the delicious pasta and pork sauce she whipped up.  And I have to say I saw it and tasted it differently, being so much closer, with my own growing bevy of animals, to the lives we take so that we can eat meat.

In spite of all my meditations over the years on the  non-duality of the universe, it’s often hard for me to keep this connection at the grocery store.  The package of Niman Ranch bacon now has a face living in my barn, something I love.  Here on the farm interconnection is part of everyday life, reminding me of some Mary Oliver line about how love essentially is paying attention.  Doing chores, taking care of the lives here, is helping me to pay attention.  It’s not that I don’t want to eat meat, but to be more reverent and frugal of the lives I take to provide for my own.  I did my customary time as a vegetarian during college years but who knows, this animal farming could have that effect on me.  It’s like Adam’s dad Pete, lifelong farmer, LOVES chickens, I mean he loves his girls – and just can’t find an appetite for eating their meat.  There’s another childhood story of midwest chicken farming, maybe we can coax out of Pete, that reinforces his preference.

My parents also came out this weekend, and they (along with Adam) did some major work on the farm’s ditches.  These ditches are used to convey water throughout our property, from a larger main irrigation ditch that flows through the valley.  Its a wonderfully primitive and fun little waterworks system.  Next month it will be time to irrigate, so we are starting the spring clean out now.  The DREAM TEAM — Barry on the weed-whacker trimming the edges, Kathy double-fisting Felco’s (her family tool) and hoeing out the trimmings, and Adam in front raking back the dead grass, they made wonderful progress, clearing our most important ditch that feeds the withdraw pond where all the irrigation water is pumped from.  The weather held out for us all weekend and as always Monday comes too soon.

Kathy and Barry hard at work on ditch clearing.

before

after