Some Observations about Pigs

On Wednesday, I had to go in to work on a computer, so I left the three older boys with the Bessettes for a couple of hours. Isaiah and Abraham were thrilled to get to sit on and “ride” the horses that the Bessettes started boarding. I drove away with the sight of Isaiah, bike helmet on his head, sitting on Sue-the-horse, with a HUGE grin on his face. What a precious sight. He has wished for a horse for a long time.

On Thursday, the pigs ran out of food. I decided to be frugal and go to the little orchard I had visited before, and buy several buckets of grounder apples for the pigs. So we drove there—45 minutes—to find that they were closed for the season. We drove home—45 minutes. Blah. Jadon called it “the fateful apple orchard trip.”

Today I worked in the garden, shoveling compost and making more raised beds. And making the raised beds I have already made higher, so when I go to plant garlic and onions, those crops will thrive. I had planted turnips and turnip greens in a bed. The turnips are doing great; the turnip greens produced about one reasonably sized plant, and the rest didn’t come up. So I will make that into an onion bed, I think.

The baby, unfortunately, does not like to be away from me, but he doesn’t like walking around the garden, either, as there are pricklies all over (and I don’t like him walking in the garden, as he doesn’t respect the raised beds very well). So he was on my back, which makes shoveling a bit tiring.

As the pigs are still out of food and have begun to look at me longingly, I drove to the Bessettes to get one of their large bags of feed. Michelle was going through her kitchen cupboards, and I was THRILLED to help. I love to go through kitchen cupboards and make them more efficient and orderly. Fun!

I was out feeding the animals after dark this evening with my headlamp on, and I saw glowing eyes from the pig pen. The pigs were ecstatically consuming the feed I had fetched, and as I got closer, I realized that the eyes belonged to Bouncer! Our cat is yet nearby. There have been hints that Bouncer had not permanently vanished (thawing ground beef on the table a bit eaten; butter wrappers removed from the garbage bag), but I was happy to see Bouncer again, even for a brief second.

And finally, some observations about pigs.

It is a bit shocking to me to have animals on the land who are dedicated solely to growing large for slaughter. Up until now, we’ve had domestic pets (dog, cats) and breeding animals (sheep, goats), all of which may become a bit more plump or a bit more skinny, but not noticeably different in size.

Now, behold the pigs. Abby and Alice came to us weighing, Phil figured, about 60 pounds. I almost think I can see them growing day by day. In the two months since we’ve been here, the Bessette pigs have more than doubled in size; seeing them today made me a bit concerned for our little land—a full-sized pig is BIG. And the Bessette pigs have a month to go before slaughter! Eek!

Phil was hoping to do a “root, hog, or die” type feeding system, where they would root up our plants or die in the process. But they look so HUNGRY to me when I don’t feed them, I have been feeding them.

But hog feed has its own issues. We bought a 50 pound bag of organic feed for $22.50 or so from Countryside Naturals. It was good quality stuff. The shoats ate it in about three days. And, calculating that a pig needs about 5 pounds of food to produce one pound, we are looking at a price of $2.25 a pound, not counting butchering costs or waste costs (I’m not planning to eat bones or anything). This is pretty expensive pork!

I don’t think that’s terribly fiscally responsible.

So Phil picked up a bag of nonorganic feed from the feed store. It’s what a standard farmer would use. Meaning: it’s medicated.

Medicated feed has tetracycline. I was just reading this week an article about how animals routinely fed antibiotics—tetracycline—poop out those antibiotics. Even in trace amounts, it causes up to 40% biomass reduction in any plant grown on the soil where the manure lands. So to feed standard feed to a pig is basically death to the soil.

I don’t think that’s terribly ecologically responsible.

What to do?

I called the Bessettes. Michelle doesn’t THINK their feed is medicated, so I bought 100 pounds from her for about $17. Much more reasonable. And I suppose that the pigs are eating some food from their rooting and their foraging, so the total price per pound isn’t quite so high. But still—the question of feed looms large to me.

Michelle gave me the number of the man who mills Joel Salatin’s feed. How handy that she has all these resources already figured out.

Other pig notes: their awesome noses remind me of an elephant’s trunk: they move in different directions. The pigs can’t grab things with their noses, but they can sure flex them in neat ways!

I have heard that pigs are very intelligent. Well, I am going to guess that, as a group, perhaps, pigs are intelligent. I suppose, though, that some are smarter than others. We have less-intelligent pigs. They still get shocked by the electric fence (I’m SO thankful we kept the chicken netting up around the pen—I cannot imagine chasing pigs all by myself). I fill up their water bucket and they go and sit in it and dump it over. Multiple times a day.

Since filling a bucket multiple times a day won’t work long-term (what happens when we need to leave for a few hours?), Phil brilliantly fixed up the following: he bought a “hog nipple,” which is a metal device on the end of a hose that allows water to flow when the hog presses on the nipple. The hose runs up to our 35 gallon water container. I leave the water open, ready to run at all times, and the hogs can get water when they need, and they can’t wallow in it or dump it out. GREAT!

The pigs are not really scary. I was pretty scared of them at first, because the previous owners seemed pretty scared. And they will, apparently, nip. However, Michelle scratches hers behind the ears, and showed me that they got started with a stick, scratching the backs and bellies, and now the pigs are okay with human hands scratching them. I will try that soon; it would be nice to have Alice and Abby not bark in fear and scatter whenever we approach.

They are together all the time. They will sleep next to one another, with their hooves on each other. And sometimes they tussle. I try to be far away when they do.

Pigs smell bad. Well, their manure smells bad. I think sheep and goat manure (at least the females’) smells rather nice. So barn-like, or hay-like, or natural. Pig manure, though, probably because they are omnivores, smells stronger and stinkier. Right now the pigs are penned just upslope of our trailer-house. I don’t know if we can keep that up long-term, as I fear the smell will continue to get worse. And their manure is not nicely pelletized like the sheep and the goats; it is larger than dog droppings, and about the same shape. Eeww.

I am glad I do not have piggy eyes. They are small and, I think, a bit mean. If chickens have reptilian eyes, and goats have eyes with strange irises, and sheep don’t want to look you in the eyes (too threatening), I think pigs have, maybe, malevolent rodent eyes.

Do I like pigs? I like sheep the most, and I like the goats. Maybe after I touch the pigs, I will feel a greater affinity for them. Right now I look at their haunches and think HAM. I think they are interesting to watch, but I am not a pig lover … yet.

Teeny Tidbits from Two Dull Days

On Monday, I worked a bit and did internet research (guineas for sale? Satellite internet available?) and Phil spent much of the day getting ready for his last trip to Colorado for the project that has been ongoing for several months. He ran errands, put the pig waterer up where I would only need to turn a dial and the container would fill, and hacked out another pen for the sheep and the goats. They are down at the bottom of the cleared area now, in a very acidic spot (presumably, at least, as all the downed trees there were pines, as opposed to the redbuds and tulip poplars and oaks in the higher pasture).

We woke well before 5am to bring him to the airport, and were at the Whole Foods parking lot almost two hours before the store opened (98 minutes, but who’s counting?). All four boys were awake, and we somehow managed to read and be calm the entire time—it was a near thing by the end. We had so little food left at the homestead, it really didn’t make much sense to drive all the way home and all the way back in, but it was certainly an interesting and unique challenge.

We drove around in the afternoon seeking working internet. At the moment, we’re signed up for internet service come next Tuesday, but we will see if it will be much good.

The Return of the Pigs

I woke early this morning and thought, “If the pigs DO come back, we should mix honey with the grain we got from the Bessettes, and make little yummy treats for them to entice them.” Then I went back to sleep, full of hope and expectation.

As the hours passed, though, and all my gazing out the window didn’t bring the pigs back, I had to resign myself that the pigs were gone for good. It’s hard to live in the country sometimes. And yet I couldn’t get rid of the hope they would come back. I finally had to give them to God.

And then, 22 hours after we had seen them last, the pigs trotted out of the woods! Unscathed! Unconcerned! While I continued to pick up the trailer after several days of severe neglect (we’ve been busy this week!), Phil went up to entice the pigs.

Now Dennis Bessette assured us that there is no gentle way to corral pigs. He said, “You back them into a corner, then grab the hind leg. Hold on for a bit until the pig stops struggling, then pick up the whole pig, but don’t ever let go of the leg!” I wondered if there was a gentler way, as that sounded pretty stressful (and, having witnessed it, I know that it IS stressful).

Thankfully, in this case, Dennis was wrong. Phil, with no “helpers” and no time constraints gradually enticed the pigs with the honey/grain mixture, and then gradually walked them down below the trailers. He then strung goat netting across the whole clearing, creating a clear path for the pigs to enter their pen.

They entered the pen! And exited through the hot electric fence as if it wasn’t there.

Frustration! He strung poultry net behind the hot wires, as a visual barrier, and, with incredible patience, talked and walked the pigs back down the slope. This time they entered their pen and, for the first time, finally found the water! The feed! The slop I had been strewing around in faith that they would return! The pigs gradually rooted around, used their snouts to dig up little resting places, and grunted happily. They grunt almost continually when happy.

They are so fun to watch! Phil named the striped pig Alice and the pink pig Abby. To have happy pigs, happy sheep, happy goats, happy boys, happy parents, beautiful weather … what a fantastic day.

The Spreading of Minerals, Day 2

Before all the boys were even up, Phil and I went to get two of neighbor Butch’s tractors. Phil continued to think of better strategies to get these minerals spread. He loaded up the first tote before I had even finished breakfast.



Right after breakfast, while we were reading the Bible, one of our (still escaped) pigs started screaming. My thought was that someone with better farming instincts had caught the pig, or maybe that it was caught in a trap on the neighbor’s land.

Phil had a better idea of what the issue was Phil went to find the pig, and, on the neighbor’s land, found it under attack by a Rottweiler and some other dogs. Phil threw stones until the dogs dispersed. The pig had sustained lacerations, and when the pigs trotted back to our land, the pink pig had some blood smears, but did not appear to be in too bad of shape. We managed to coral them both into their pen! I lunged to turn the electric fence on, and the lunge spooked them and they once again escaped the electric fence.

Argh! It makes me so mad I could spit! If the pigs would just go into their pen, they would have organic feed and clean water and all the rooting and safety their hearts could desire. But no, they want their “freedom.”

That was the last time we’ve seen them. We all had to get water around midday, so we went to the Bessettes and it took maybe a half hour. It could be that the dogs came and finished them off at that time. As often happens, we also heard gunshots (rural Virginia—gunshots are a part of life, and we contribute our own); it could be that the owner of the land where the pigs wander got hungry. Time will tell if the pigs yet live.

But back to the spreading of minerals. Towing the hopper behind the truck meant that we had a very large turning radius. Phil decided to tow behind one of the tractors in order to keep it all tighter. He also wanted to hit our upper field again—we shortchanged it the first time, and since it is supposed to be our orchard, that’s no good.

Unfortunately, he got stuck again. This time, I had to drive the truck, which was connected to the tractor via the sling. Phil drove the tractor, which was still pulling the hopper. We were a large-machinery train. I felt a bit stressed because my biggest fear is failure, and I was trying to do something really out of my element, with the possibility of a great deal of damage (or so I believed). Thankfully, all went well, and Phil was soon unstuck. Much better than the previous day’s fiasco. But still—stuck twice! What else could possibly go wrong?

For five wonderful minutes, nothing went wrong. Then one of the two spinning discs on the back fell off. Unfortunately, it was the one connected to the gear shaft, so without its spin, the other disc wouldn’t spin. The machine was useless. With about 2500 pounds of minerals inside. And we are responsible for any breakage.

Based on our experiences, I highly doubt that we will ever succumb to heavy metal sickness—a common malady of farmers, who continue to buy ever larger and heavier machinery. I cannot imagine anything more frustrating than trying to accomplish a task on a given day and having it break. Yuck! And, as it was now 11:38 and the store, a half hour away, closed at noon, we were stuck for the weekend with the broken hopper. (For the record, when Phil examined the machine later, three of the four bolt holes were corroded, showing that they had been broken for some time.)

In order to empty the hopper, first I drove the tractor, with Phil shouting directions and watching the hopper drop a steady stream of minerals off the back, rather than fling them. Then he drove the tractor (too stressful for me), and I ran behind, baby on the back, spinning the whirly so it would actually spread a bit. It was a run of about a half hour, I would guess, and I was pretty beat by the time it was done.

But hooray for biologically correct minerals! No problem to get covered in the dust, to breathe it and eat it. Our escaped pigs had even licked the minerals off the ground—I think it’s good stuff.

So now we were done with three totes.

For the fourth tote, we brought back one tractor, and hitched Butch’s little spreader to the back of our John Deere riding mower. Phil shoveled about 50 pounds of minerals in, and drove off. The little spreader hardly spread. The ride was bumpy. He did that only long enough to get the tote empty enough so that the bobcat could raise it into the back of our truck.

Then Phil stood in the back of the truck and I tried driving slowly so he could shovel the minerals out the back. Even in first gear, I couldn’t go slow enough, and, as I was driving over uneven ground, I was not the smoothest driver, either. Then I drove forward, and Phil flung minerals out with the shovel in great arcs. It was beautiful to watch, as the dust spread high and the larger pellets sank to the ground. Then I would drive another truck length or two forward, and Phil would do it again.

By the time he had shovel-flung the ton of minerals off the back of the truck, he was pretty beat. But that was the end of four totes.

Phil then skimmed the tops of the three remaining totes so we could move them with the bobcat away from the road and down behind our trailer. Another 2000 or 3000 pounds into the back of the truck. I took that little break and planted nine little goldenseal roots, in hopes that, in four or five years, I will have a little harvest of that good herb.

Then we did the truck-fling thing on the lower pasture, and our long day was finally done.

We were totally, totally filthy, covered in salt. The boys, too, were dusty. We drove to the Bessettes again for a quick bath, and we were all happy. Ahh. Warm running water—what a great thing!

The Spreading of Minerals, Day 1

Before breakfast, Phil assembled the pallet boards he had recovered yesterday and constructed a very cute box for our 5-gallon bucket toilet. Once we get electricity inside (October 12! October 12!), and the toilet already in the bathroom is removed, we’ll be able to use the facilities indoors! Wow! Luxury!

Mid-morning, Phil went to get the broadcaster for the minerals. The full moon comes, apparently, at 2am on Sunday morning, but I wasn’t sure how long it would take to spread 10 tons of minerals, so we opted for a bit of an early start. And if Friday and Saturday aren’t enough, we can finish on Monday before Phil flies out of town Tuesday morning.

It took a long time for Phil to rent the broadcaster, but he finally pulled in after about 2 ½ hours. It has a large hopper (holds 5000 pounds, I believe) with a conveyor belt on the bottom that conveys minerals to two spinning discs that fling the minerals out. Butch had figured that it could take two or three hours to do our land, but that was with the minerals pre-loaded at the rental place.

Well, it turned out that the shop doesn’t usually rent out the broadcaster unless you use their minerals. But they had not been willing to have me ship minerals to them, so Phil struck a deal: he’d rent the machine for a reasonable set price, and pay for anything that broke. (Apparently what we’re doing, with the lab we chose and the place we ordered our minerals, is all very off the beaten path.)

Phil got started shoveling minerals into the bucket of Butch’s tractor. When full, he’d maneuver the tractor over to dump into the hopper. When he’d shoveled enough, he could use the tractor bucket to lift about the last ¼ of the 3000 pound tote into the hopper (a little break from shoveling—glory!). It took some time.

I spent the time gathering all the pulled stumps with roots from the top acre or so. Butch had graciously pulled some on a day when he “had a free hour,” and they were littered across the land, making a drive a bumpy experience.



I think the first tote was spread after about 2 hours of hard, constant labor. It was 3:45pm, but we had high hopes that, now that we’d worked out the kinks in the system, we’d be faster and more able in the future. We started the second tote.

The shoveling seemed to go a bit better. Phil tried three times to lift the tote into the hopper; twice it was yet too heavy. That was a lot of knot tying and untying. When all 3000 pounds were loaded, he started to broadcast our lower fields. On the first pass, disaster struck.

Our 1-ton dually, the monster truck, the manly truck, the truck that we get complimented on every time we go to buy gas and even get on-the-spot offers to purchase … this amazing machine got stuck. Our clayey soil and steep hill did not offer enough purchase, and the wheels spun out. Phil backed up, but the 2800 pounds in the hopper were not helping. He backed as far as he could without running into a tree. It seemed hopeless.

I suggested putting some cut saplings under the tires (I think you’re supposed to do something like that in a blizzard, but I could be wrong). That didn’t work.

Phil unhooked the broadcaster from the truck, hoping that a different angle would help the truck escape first, and then tow the hopper out at a different angle. Anything to avoid having to shovel out 2800 pounds from the broadcaster. Anything! The truck did indeed get out, but when Phil backed up from a different angle, the truck hitch was now about 12” too high for the hopper’s connector. Argh!

I think Phil was born to be a farmer, though. He said, “I have an idea!” and went and got a sling (a thick piece of webbing, like what window washers might sit in when washing a skyscraper) and a carabiner. They each can pull about 12,000 pounds or more. So he connected the two large machines with the sling and carabiner, and drove right up the slope. But decided he was done trying to broadcast our treacherous lowest slope.

He drove a careful loop around the upper fields until the broadcaster was empty. Now it was after 7pm, and we were done for the day.

Two totes done. Five to go. But we might not do all of them, because I bought for five acres. Now that we have the driveway and the trailers and the garden and a large brush pile, we probably only have about 3.5 acres of cleared and accessible land, so maybe 4 ½ totes will be enough. We will see.

A Rotten Day with a Good End

Usually when I wake up in the morning, I am happy to greet the new day. But, having fallen asleep in September with no offer on the house, no pigs on the land, and no electricity, I woke up to find the situation unchanged. Phil had woken earlier than I, and driven several miles up and down the road, searching for the lost pigs, with no success.

I was discouraged all day, feeling just on the edge, and the edge grew ever more slender. We tried to talk through the various options we have open to us with the house in Boulder, without ever coming to a solid conclusion. I suggested that Phil build a toilet box (basically a wooden box to fit around the 5-gallon “honey buckets,” or poop buckets, we have, so the bucket can be inside without danger of tipping over—gross!) out of the pallets we have. So he spent some time dismantling, sawing, and such. It was slow work, and probably would have been better to just drive in to the hardware store and buy some wood.

The electricity, which we are ready to install on Friday or Monday, is delayed. The trench-digger can’t make it, so the date is now October 12. I should be thankful to have a date, but having a one-week delay was disappointing.

The pigs showed up around noon, trotting down the driveway … and back up, across the road and into the neighbor’s field. They showed up again a few hours later, and again after dinner. We were so pleased—we corralled them, and got them into their fenced-in pen.

They enjoyed the slop I had poured on the ground, and they each got a good shock on the nose. We were training them to the fence. But then we pushed them a little too hard, made them a little too uneasy, so they bolted out of the pen (through the 10,000 volt charge!). We managed to corral them briefly again, but the fence was off and they made good their escape.

I hadn’t showered in eight days and felt disgusting in body, mind, and spirit. We left for Bible study.

Ahh—a shower. A time of worship. A time of being in the Word. So wonderfully refreshing. I can look back on this whole discouraging day and see that it really was not that bad. I got the office trailer a bit more cleaned out; I read 13 picture books to Abraham; I made meals for my family, and we learned a very teeny bit about how to manage pigs. And I read some good poetry.

We studied Luke 9, where Jesus tells his disciples that if they follow him, they must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow him. And they must lose their lives to find them. Jadon, again, was really intent on the study, really involved and flattered at Doug’s amazement at his knowledge of the Bible. He’ll answer a question and get really embarrassed and squirm away with a funny look, but he keeps answering. Apparently Berenice, the lovely older African-American, kept dropping her jaw in amazement at Jadon’s answers: “I would just like to point out that the king of Babylon did not do what Jesus says here,” said Jadon at one point. Or, “Good Ananias made the scales fall from Saul’s eyes; bad Ananias held back some of the money and so died.” Or, “Aaron was anointed [followed by a quote from Psalm 133].”

All very precious.

Besides Bible study, my very favorite part of the day was also almost traumatic. I brought the sheep and goats some minerals. The sheep didn’t move a bit when I offered them—they didn’t even get up. So I sat next to them on the ground, worried that they were ill. How uncharacteristic! For the lounging sheep to not run away! I was able to feel Ashley’s spine—she’s a fat lady. And her hooves do need to be trimmed, but not too badly.

But I got to pet my sheep! I got to dig my hands into her wool and rub her nose—all things I have been yearning to do since they came on the farm. Lovely!

Our Five Seconds of Pig Ownership

Phil worked incredibly hard today. It turns out that we could potentially get electricity installed on Friday or Monday, so he spent time figuring out the electrical box all on his own! No books to help! All our books are packed, so he just reasoned it out. “If you look at it long enough, it starts to make sense,” he said. (I’m fairly confident that I could look at it for a month and it would make no more sense to me than it did in the beginning.) He ran again to Charlottesville, and bought, we hope, the rest of the wiring we need.

I planted 74 ginseng seeds after preparing a teeny bed in the forest in back of our trailer. It was restful and fun, though whether I actually get a harvest in five or six years is more than I can say.

Phil casually mentioned today that, for the first time since trying the Atkins diet, and the second time since we’ve been married, he’s below 185. He’s 175. Wow!

Our truck has been driving with a little shimmy at times, usually on the dirt road. We wondered if it was a harmonics issue, where the vibrations of the road built up over time. When Phil examined the truck more today, he found that one wheel had a nut sheered right off, and, perhaps in a related issue, one front tire was bent. That is not good news. And the power steering and power breaks are not working well. He is currently at the Bessettes, hopefully taking care of those issues with Dennis, who, as with many things, apparently is an expert.

If it weren’t for the Bessettes, we’d be up a creek without a paddle so many times over.

The worst of today was that we went back and bought our two $80 pigs. We enjoyed talking to the couple and the boys enjoyed playing with the children, so much so that it was dark when we returned home. We let the pigs out of the dog crate we had used to transport them, into the large electric-fence-lined pen built at such cost and pain. They walked right out.

We have no idea where they are. Phil, uncharacteristically, was beside himself. What a disappointment! What a frustration!

And that’s the news from Farm WoeBeHere.