Animals Behaving Badly (Escapes and Attacks)

We had an exciting morning around here. It started off nicely enough; I was sitting at the kitchen table around nine am having coffee with my husband, and we were enjoying the fact that our children are now in high school and get themselves off to school without even waking us up. The sun was out and it looked like it was going to be a nice day. 

Then our neighbor called. 

"Your cow and the pigs, they are over here on my side of the fence," he said. So we jumped up from the table, ran around looking for ropes (to lead the cow) and stale bread (to entice the pigs) and headed outside. The animals were indeed just on the other side of the fence, on the east side, near the orchard. Luckily, there is a cattle panel on that side that is just attached with carabiners, which we had done in order to let our neighbor come through on his tractor and pick up compost for his garden. So it was fairly easy to open the fence and chase the animals back in through the gap. Except for the Kune Kune pig, who had apparently decided he wanted to run away and join the circus. 

I assumed we had a breach in the fenceline somewhere along the eastern side of the property. Pigs will test fences and push cattle panels up off the ground and go under,  or detach them from the t-posts if, as is there case at our house, they are but loosely affixed with baling twine. So once the animals were all back in the main pasture, Homero grabbed some zip ties and got on the ATV to inspect the fences, and I went back inside to finish my coffee and peruse Facebook. 

Where I saw this:

Shame!! Shame and embarrassment! Animal escapes are always entertaining unless they are your animals. It's bad enough that people know my animals were out, but the fact that they were actually wandering along the state highway was worse. Tanker trucks blast by at 60 MPH and we live on top of a hill with a very short sight distance. Only blind luck prevented a terrifying accident. Oh well - all's well that ends well, and at least somebody driving along got a giggle out of it. As it turns out, there was no breach in the fenceline (although we do need to do some maintenance). The chain holding the main gate shut had broken. Probably secondary to a couple of big pigs pushing on it. 

Then, when I went back out to feed everyone, the black rooster attacked me noiselessly from behind and gouged two good sized holes into my thigh, right through my skirt. I never saw him coming. It was like being hit by a very small meteor. He's always been a vicious bird. I think I'll have Homero wring his neck and make a fan out of his very beautiful, glossy black evil feathers. 

Paloma’s Pigs

Some years we raise a couple of pigs, and some years we don’t. The decision whether or not to get a pig in any given year is based on a number of factors - how much meat we have in the freezer, the price of local weaner piglets, whether or not our neighbors are raising pigs this year, etc. 

In general, I have more or less decided that it is as cheap to buy pork from our neighbors as it is to raise a pig of our own, and much less work. However I can be swayed. This year we were swayed by our youngest daughter’s need for an FFA project coinciding with the availability of some handsome well-grown weaners raised by a close neighbor and offered at an excellent price. 

Paloma, our youngest, swore up and down to us that she would be in charge of feeding the pigs. Of course, she doesn’t know what that actually entails. We get much of our pig food from the Gleaner’s Pantry, and she can’t participate in that. The truth is that I will be doing most of the sourcing of food for the piggies, and Paloma will only be in charge of doing her pig-related homework. 

The question she posed and will be trying to answer is “is it financially advantageous to raise your own pigs?” For those who are interested enough to follow the links, I’ve already done the math and answered this question to my own satisfaction:

http://newtofarmlife.blogspot.com/2017/03/meat-math-2017.html?m=1

 

For those who aren’t that interested, the answer is - you can get nearly free meat if you don’t put any value on your own labor. 

But of course labor counts. Here is Homero, after spending some twenty minutes chasing down a couple of well-grown piglets today. His face clearly shows that labor counts.  My neighbor told me we could choose our own pigs from her litter of fourteen, and there were a couple of standouts. In the end, however, we took whichever pigs Homero was able to catch. 

This handsome boy was the largest of the entire litter, and probably tipped the scales at sixty pounds. Homero was hard pressed to keep ahold of him all the way home. 

The second piglet he managed to catch was the smallest one of the litter, a little pink girl with curled back ears. They seem to be happy with their new digs - we have them in the sacrifice area which is about 100 x 100 feet. Their house is a round calf hutch stuffed with hay. 

Raising pigs over the winter has its challenges, and it obviously costs more than raising the same animals over the summer months, because mammals require many more calories to keep their body temperature up during the cold season. Also their natural rooting behavior causes more damage during the wet season. That’s why we have them confined to the sacrifice area, which is compacted and has a bad weed situation. Any rooting they do may actually be beneficial, and their manure will help fertilize the sandy poor soil. 

As in past years, the idea is to sell one pig (post-slaughter, in cuts) and use that money to offset the costs of raising the other pig, which we will keep for ourselves. Paloma will be keeping the books this year, and I’ll keep you all updated on her conclusions. 

The Fat of the Land

What's in these jars? Honey? Apple cider?

No! Lard!

I finally took the big package of pork fat out of the freezer and rendered it all. It was a slow day. I don't know how many pounds of fat these six quarts represents - probably about fifteen or sixteen. The sliced fat filled my largest cauldron.

It's not all from our last pig - when I went to the butcher's to pick him up, there was no fat, which I had specifically asked for. The lady behind the counter said  - "oh, let me go look."

A suspiciously long time passed. When she reappeared she apologized and said that the order to save the fat hadn't gotten written down. She gave us a big bag of pork fat that was clearly from a much fatter pig than our had been. I hope nobody else is missing their fat! Not likely - most people don't even want it.

Which is kind of hard to understand. Lard is a wonderful thing, assuming you like pork. Home rendered lard will not be odorless and tasteless like the lard at the store; it will have an unctuous, rich, porky taste. And contrary to popular belief, lard is not a terrible fat, health wise. In fact, it is probably better for you than butter or coconut fat, which is so trendy these days.

To render lard from pork fat, keep the heat on medium to medium-low. Even if all the pieces look like pure fat, there will always be skin and connective tissue, and you don't want to scorch it. As the fat starts to melt, add a cup or two of water. This will help you regulate the temperature (water is simmering = good) and also help avoid scorching. The water will boil off as the fat melts completely.

Occasionally stir and turn the fat to make sure all parts come in contact with the hot bottom of the kettle. The connective tissue and skin and little bits of meat here and there will start to fry, eventually becoming dark, crispy cracklings. These are not the same as chicharrones, which are made from pieces of actual skin. These cracklings will probably be too fatty or greasy to be good, except for the occasional piece of deep fried meat. They do make good dog treats, though in small quantities!

When everything is melted, the water has boiled off, and the cracklings are dark brown, you are ready to store the lard. I am storing mine in quart jars in the chest freezer, plus one jar open in the fridge, for everyday use. There's no need to actually can the fat - it will keep virtually forever in the fridge or freezer.

Simply wait an hour our so with the kettle on the lowest possible heat, for all the solid bits to settle at the bottom. Then you can ladle the clear lard off the top. The last little bit can be poured through a coffee filter. The lard in the photos above is still hot - when it cools it will turn almost pure white.

Lard has a myriad of uses in the kitchen. I probably wouldn't use this lard for pie crust, unless I were making a savory pie like a quiche. Might taste a little funny in a sweet pie. But you can use it as a regular sautéing fat; it's especially good for frying eggs or making fried rice. A spoonful of lard is the best medium for making refried beans. However my favorite use for lard is in tamales. There is nothing like the lard from a real pastured pig to make tamales taste fantastic. One of these days when we are all home and have nothing to do, we will get together and make a whole bunch of tamales together as a family. Here's how my mother-in-law taught me do it. 

I don't think we will get a pig this year. We are going to be gone most of the summer and lately I've been feeling that we have quite enough animals already, thank you. Plus the pasture is still recuperating from the last pig. We have eaten most of that pig already - there's just some unflavored sausage and a ham left. But with all this lard I can have some pig flavor whenever I want, for the foreseeable future.

The Bog of Eternal Stench, The Dog from Hell, and Bad Knees

Once again it is November, number one on the list of months I wish I could fast-forward through, closely followed by February. Torrential rains have turned the barnyard - as always this time of year - into a sucking swamp. There is still a small pile of hog fuel we could spread, but so far we haven't been able to figure out how to do that without the pig charging out of the yard and into the backyard.

The pig has been able to get out of his pen for months now, and he has rooted up huge clumps of the pasture. He is now about 350 pounds, and that's no joke hurtling towards you at high speed and emitting high-pitched screams at the volume of a Van Halen concert, circa 1984.  The pig has a date with destiny, courtesy of our local mobile butcher, in a little over a week, so the problem will work itself out soon enough.

I did make a deal, way back last spring, with a tree service guy to trade cheese all summer in exchange for cedar chips come fall. He has called a couple of times, but we haven't been able to nail down a delivery, and now it is looking more and more doubtful that I will ever receive any chips.  That's the risk of trading for future goods. Meanwhile, the mud threatens to come up over my boot-tops.

Haku, our new German Shepherd puppy, has apparently made it his mission to tear my entire house into bite-sized chunks. I would post a picture of our playroom, if I could figure out how under the new operating system, but that would probably bring FEMA down on our heads. Seriously, it looks like - well, like a German Shepherd puppy has torn apart two queen-sized mattresses and one large sofa, not to mention gnawed an antique Victorian dollhouse to matchsticks and knocked over a shelf full of board games, torn up the boxes and ripped up all the cards, etc,  and evenly distributed all the chewed-up bits. I figure there's no point in cleaning it all up until he's finished - it might keep him occupied enough to leave a few of our furnishings alone. Why he isn't interested in the fifteen chew-toys I've bought for him I have no idea.

Homero has been suffering greatly this fall from a torn meniscus in his right knee. As a mechanic, he spends a lot of time getting up and down onto a concrete floor, sometimes squatting and sometimes kneeling. His knee will freeze up on him and leave him hobbling back to the house, unable to work for the rest of the day. He hates to take medicine of any kind; apparently he prefers to lay about looking pitiful and asking me to bring him stuff.

I know I sound unsympathetic - and maybe I am. He never reads this blog, so I feel free to say that his knee is nowhere near as bad as mine was - MY meniscus had two big "bucket handle" tears and various smaller tears.  My ACL was completely severed (the surgeon who read my MRI report used the word "trashed" to describe the state of my joint). Without health insurance, I had no choice but to live with it for four long years. I did my share of bitching and moaning - I'm not saying I didn't. I'm just saying I know how he feels, and then some. And then some more.

In my case, as soon as the ACA kicked in and we could finally afford health insurance, and the insurance companies couldn't exclude pre-existing conditions, I scheduled surgery and Hallelujah it has been almost a total cure. They had to remove almost all of the meniscus, and I was told that I'd need a total knee replacement sooner or later, but the pain has almost entirely disappeared, and the instability has been reduced by about 75%. The surgery - first surgery I ever had, unless you count wisdom teeth - was a piece of cake. From the time I woke up in the recovery room I was in less pain than I had been the day before. The next day I was walking on the beach.

Homero has been reluctant to schedule surgery. I'm not sure why. He's never had surgery before either - not even wisdom teeth - so maybe he's afraid. I was. But just as everyone told me, the only thing I was sorry about is that I hadn't done it sooner. I guess Homero just had to wait until it got bad enough. He's finally having surgery at the end of this month. I hope it will be as good for him as it was for me.

The first part of December looks to be a nice quiet time. Homero will be recuperating, and I will be taking a break from work. Right now I'm just finishing up a big job that, though it has left me exhausted, will pay enough to ensure a merry christmas and let me take time off to nurse my husband back to health.

Now if it we could just get a nice, hard freeze to lock up all the mud.

Pig and Cow (Major Meat)

Long summer evenings and good weather have us out in the yard until late in the day. I haven't mowed the back yard in a few weeks; partly for the benefit of the bees and partly to have a nice carpet of clover available for fattening up the cow, who will be meeting her destiny as a meat animal as soon as this summer is over. Today when I let the goats out to graze, the cow came barreling out as well - nearly knocking me over - and so I grabbed a rope and tied her up smack in the middle of the clover-carpet. 

The rope was maybe too long, and the cow was overexcited at being out of the back pasture for the first time in her woefully short and dim memory. She capered about, knocking over the burn barrel to eat the salty ashes, upending the ferret's play-cage, and generally wreaking havoc. She trampled the new lawn game I bought last week (ladder ball) and now we will have to repair it with many yards of duct-tape. As annoying as all that was, it was also hilarious and delightful to watch her happily kicking up her heels. Homero was moved to try and ride her, with the results you see above. 

We have a new pig. It's been years since we had a pig - I'd have to look back over the blog to see exactly how long it's been and exactly why I swore off pigs forever. I remember doing that, but not precisely why. Since I have belonged to the Gleaner's Pantry, it almost seems a sin not to have a pig, when I have access to a literally unlimited amount of fresh clean bread and produce. Also, it being high milk season, a nearly unlimited amount of whey from cheese making. The waste-stream to which I have access is abundant enough to support a half-dozen pigs - I have been partaking only minimally, but now I will have to up my participation.

There is a local farmer, a neighbor of mine, an older gentleman who has lived around here since Hector was a pup and who in his retirement still raises pigs and chickens and who imparts wisdom to all and sundry via the medium of the local Facebook Farmer's group. I'll call him the Livestock Guru, or the L.G. for short.  This week, he was advertising barbecue pigs (100-150 lbs) for the fourth of July, dressed out and ready for the spit for $350. At the end of the ad he added "or you could raise them out for meat." I asked, "same price live or dressed?" and he answered that I could have a live one for only $200.

Considering that a 40-50 lb piglet goes for $125 to $140, and they usually sell out in minutes, that seemed like an extraordinarily good deal. I consulted with Homero and he agreed. He spent today fixing up the old pigpen - putting new hinges on the old broken gate and hauling the calf-hutch over from the pony's pasture.  Around 6 pm, L.G. brought over a beautiful, healthy pink pig who immediately went to town on the pile of compost in his pen.

If all goes well, he ought to be ready for slaughter at about the same time as the cow - late September, when the grass is dried up. I have heard that I ought to get on the waiting list at local slaughterhouses, as it isn't always easy to get a slaughter date in those prime weeks at the end of summer.

Psst... Wanna Buy a Pig's Head?

Today I went and picked up our pig from Keizer Meats. One hundred and nine pounds of pork (hanging weight) transformed into ham, bacon, chops, spareribs, smoked hocks, and sausage. I'm delighted, and the first thing I did is put some dried corn to soak so I can make a big pot of posole tomorrow (for a recipe, see: New To Farm Life: Posole (Mexican dried corn stew)).

For the most part, we try to eat only sustainably raised meat, meaning in our case, our own pork, beef from our neighbors, and our own young goat. I have not yet found an acceptable substitute for factory-chicken. We tried raising our own, with mixed results (Broiler Report (Caldo de Pollo and Liver Pate)), and we may yet try again, but for the time being, we still buy chicken at the supermarket.

Part of being responsible meat eaters is using as much of the animal as we can. Now - let's be clear. I am not trying to assert that we eat ALL POSSIBLE parts of the pig. Far from it. Sorry, but I am not interested in chitlins. Been there, ate that, won't do it again. Also, I am not going to deal with feet. Once upon a time I tried to cook pigs feet for my then-boyfriend/now-husband, and only succeeded in stinking up my kitchen so badly that I told him to pick one: me or pig's foot tacos. Luckily, he's not a complete fool. Last time we slaughtered a pig I asked for the liver, which then remained in our freezer for nine months until I threw it to the chickens.

Okay - so I'm not a fan of organ meats. At least, not pig organ meats. I do like calf's liver and I have heard that heart is delicious. We also make use of the lard. People who let the lard go to waste are just sadly ignorant. This time around, I told the men from Keizer meats to forget the liver, but to save me the head. Mostly, this was to mollify my husband, who feels that any scrap of meat not saved is a waste of his hard-earned cash. Now, I have a whole pig's head (frozen) in the trunk of my car and I need to figure our what to do with it.

So far, the only websites I have found are recipes for headcheese, which just sounds so disgusting (think: smegma) that I'm not sure I can cope with it. I don't like pate at the best of times. I may just toss the entire thing into my husband's lap (how often does a wife get to do that??) and leave it at that. Just in case you have a pig's head of your own to deal with, here are a few of the recipes I've found.

The Nasty Bits: Pig's Head | Serious Eats : Recipes

The Ingredient: Pig's Head - Gourmet Magazine - YouTube

RecipeSource: Crisp Roasted Pig’s Head

Meat Math

Now that Keizer meats has called me with the hanging weight on our tiny, skinny, little pigs (109 lbs and 137 lbs, less than I expected) I can do the math to figure out how much our own pork is costing us and whether or not it is worth it to raise two pigs.

Since we are leaving for Mexico in six months and already have a freezer full of beef, we decided to keep the smaller pig and sell the larger one. The Costs to us of raising two pigs are as follows:

Piglets (2) $80 = $160

Feed (15) $12 = $180

Kill fee on our pig: $62

Cut and wrap on our pig : (109) $.60 = $65.40

Cost of both pigs to us: $467.40

I am not making any attempt to factor in labor because caring for two pigs is pretty much exactly the same as caring for one pig. Feed is necessarily something of an estimate, but I know we bought at least 12 bags of feed, because I counted that many empty bags, and I'm chucking in three more because it seems likely I'm missing a couple of empty bags. That wasn't all they ate, of course: they also ate all the household scraps and pretty much anything else I could scrounge up. But those things didn't cost us any outlay of cash, so they aren't counted. We didn't vaccinate or otherwise doctor the pigs, so no veterinary costs.

The fellow who is buying the larger pig will pay all of Keizer's fees, both cut and wrap and the kill fee. Then he pays me $2.5o a pound of hanging weight, which works out to $342.50

$467.40 - $342.50 = $124.90

Our 109 pounds of meat cost us $125, which is $1.15 per pound. Hanging weight, of course. We won't get back 109 pounds of wrapped meat, more like 75 or 80.

Wow. Assuming that this pork is as good as our previous pork (and why wouldn't it be?) then that is a hell of a deal. Let me do a quick google search on prices for pastured pork.....

The chart below is taken from Coulee View Family Farm in Wisconsin. Their prices are very much in line with the prices I saw on three other pages for pastured, naturally raised, but not organic pork. Looks like it probably is worth it to raise two pigs at a time.

Price Per Pound	Estimated Weight (lbs)
Smoked Products	Smoked Bacon	$5.50	1
	Smoked Bacon - MSG & Nitrate Free	$5.80	1
	Smoked Boston Butt Bacon - MSG & Nitrate Free	$5.95	1
	Smoked Canadian Bacon	$5.75	0.75
	Smoked Boneless Chops	$5.35	1
	Smoked Ham	$5.25	2 to 5
	Smoked Ham - MSG & Nitrate Free	$5.60	2 to 5
	Smoked Hocks	$3.30	1 to 3
	Smoked Hocks - MSG & Nitrate Free	$3.60	1 to 3
	Sliced Honey Glazed Smoked Ham	$5.25	1
Ground & More
	Ground Pork	$3.95	1
	Seasoned Ground Pork	$3.95	1
	Roast BBQ Pork	$5.75	1
Sausage	Bratwurst	$5.50	0.75
	Itallian Sausage	$5.50	1.25
	B-fast Saus. Links MSG & Nitrate Free	$5.50	1.25
	Andoulle Sausage	$5.50	1.25
	Bratwurst - MSG & Nitrate Free	$5.80	1.25
	Chorizo - MSG & Nitrate Free	$5.80	1.25
	Andoulle Sausage - MSG & Nitrate Free	$5.80	1.25
Cuts	Boneless Pork Chops	$5.00	1.5 to 3
	Tenderloins	$8.00	,75 to 1.25
	Fresh Hocks	$2.25	2 to 3
	Shoulder Steak	$4.75	2 to 3
	Shoulder Roast	$4.75	2 to 4
	Loin Roast	$5.00	2 to 4
	Side Pork	$4.75	1
	Baby Back Ribs	$4.00
	Spare Ribs	$3.50
Extras
	Liver	$1.75	1
	Tounge	$1.75	,75
	Heart	$1.75	,75
	Rendered Lard	$2.10
	Pork Soup Bones	$1.50	1

Putting the Pork in my Pocket (Farm Finances)

The time finally came to call our local meat processors and schedule the pigs for execution. These two have been slow growers - probably due to the time of year more than anything else - and just as loud and obnoxious as every other pig we've ever owned, and we are heartily sick of them. Sometimes, pigs actually bowl me over when I head out to feed them. These two haven't actually knocked me down into the mud, but they do chase me, push me with their horrible snouts, and scream. I am not actively frightened of these pigs, but I can't say I enjoy their company either.

There were two reasons for getting two pigs this time around. The first was that pigs are very social, and a pig alone gets lonely - so I've been told - and we thought they would be happier if they had the company of their own kind. The other reason was to bring down the price of our own pork. As I think I have mentioned before (Big Pig, and Big Decision), raising your own pork isn't actually any cheaper than buying it at the store. In fact, it probably costs somewhat more. It's the vastly superior quality of homegrown pork that makes it worth it - plus, of course, the able-to-sleep-at-night factor of not participating in the evil, earth-destroying factory farming industry.

If we raised two pigs, the thought went, we could sell one and recoup some of the costs of feeding both of them, thereby rendering (haha) our own pork somewhat cheaper. I am not at all sure that actually works... that would require about fifteen minutes of math and I don't feel up to it at the moment. However, without doing more than fifteen seconds of math, I can guesstimate that one of the pigs will bring us about $350, which, when you discount the $80 he cost in the first place, is $270... which is probably somewhere close to as much money as we spent on feeding both pigs. So, very broadly speaking, I feel more or less somewhat confident that this scheme actually reduced the price of our own pork by something between five and fifty percent.

There is a totally unrelated reason to sell pork. Our land is classified by the tax man as farmland. We enjoy low property taxes (relatively speaking, of course), but in order to maintain that status we have to be able to show we are reaping actual financial gain from agricultural endeavors on this property, to the tune of $1,500 three years out of every five. So far, we have met that goal... by the skin of our teeth, and by doing some creative accounting as regards barter arrangements. But it is a constant struggle to make good, and $350 bucks or so from a pig goes a fair way towards meeting this year's goal.

I made another $65 today by selling a half a dozen young laying chickens. My chickens have been hiding their eggs quite craftily for the past few weeks and I am getting sick of feeding two dozen chickens and getting bupkes in the way of eggs. Yesterday I put up a Craigslist add offering my 6 month old layers at $10/apiece, with a five dollar discount given for every rooster taken as well. So today, a lady bought seven hens and one rooster: $65. That leaves me with about fifteen hens and three roosters, which seems about right.

Pig Farming is Not Sexy

I'm sorry to disappoint those of you who were dreaming of a glamorous existence raising a few hogs in your perfectly manicured back yard, but I have got a news flash for you. Pig farming is not sexy. Not remotely. There are no paparazzi, there is no jewelry or red carpets, and there is no fanfare or glory.

There are only pigs, and mud.

this is reality.

Pig farming is not romantic. Piglets are cute, I'll grant you that, for about six weeks. Then they turn into pigs, which are not cute. They are not adorable; they do not make friends with other animals like Wilbur from Charlotte's web; and they are not clean and pink.

this is a fantasy. this is not reality.

Pigs are large, aggressive, pushy animals with teeth. They WILL knock you over, and you WILL land on your ass in a pile of pig shit. Pig shit, by the way, is one of the more offensive types of shit. Like that of other omnivores, pig shit is stinky. By comparison, horse shit smells of newly mown grass. Goat shit is practically invisible, and smells like nothing at all. Pig shit smells like an open sewer on a hot August day. And pigs shit every two minutes, on average.

Pigs are not easy to move around. It is a struggle to get pigs to go where you want them to go (this is also true of goats, but a little less so). Like goats, pigs are escape artists, and like goats, they will ruin your fences. Goats ruin fences by mashing them down from the top; pigs ruin fences by crumpling them up from underneath.

A pig's nose is like a mini-bulldozer. By the time a pig weighs fifty pounds, it is stronger than you are. I don't care if you are Arnold Schwarzenegger on his best day: a fifty pound pig can lift you right off the ground with it's nose. They are fast as deer, too: older folks might remember that county fairs used to have greased-piglet-catching contests. Whoever took that ribbon home earned the hell out of it, I'm here to tell you.

oh, you aren't scared of pigs? really?

Pigs are destructive to pasture and -God forbid - gardens. Ten minutes in your vegetable patch and you can kiss your harvest goodbye. Wherever pigs are, mud is not far behind. Put a few pigs on a major league baseball diamond and in a week flat there will be nothing but brown soup.

There is only one thing that justifies keeping pigs, and you already know what it is. It is their unearthly deliciousness. If a more delicious animal than a homestead-raised pig roams this earth, it hasn't been discovered yet. I pity the person who has only tasted supermarket pork. Pastured pork may be hard on the pasture, but is is heaven on the plate. Pork is one of those few products, like sweet corn or tomatoes, that when raised at home is simply in a whole different league than the commercial product.

In the past, we always raised one pig at a time. Then somebody told me that the pig must be terribly lonely, that more than other animals pigs need the company of their own kind. Also this person said that many of the obnoxious behaviors I complained of, such as screaming and biting, were probably related to loneliness and that two pigs would actually be easier than one.

twice as much bacon; twice as much hassle

This made some kind of sense to me, as I have myself noted that two children are usually easier than one. However, I am sorry to say, this fellow was just flat out wrong in our case. Two pigs are twice as noisy, twice as hard to manage, and twice as scary as one pig.

Here's hoping they will also be twice as yummy. :)

Double Piglet!

We acquired two new piglets yesterday. Here they are: two handsome girls, a cross between a Large Black Hog boar and a Tamworth Sow. These girls are quite a bit bigger than the last piglet we raised was when we got him - they are eleven weeks old and have been weaned for several weeks now. The farmer said he likes to leave them get a bit bigger before they head off into the cruel world. It's nice for us, as well- a few weeks less feeding.

It's been quite a while since we had a pig. The last one one has been all eaten up for months, except for a couple of smoked hocks. We thought about getting one in the spring, but when I searched for some, they were all so expensive! The price of weaner pigs has gone up about 60% since our first pig, in 2008. We paid $75 for him (well, actually the first one was a trade - Holy Pork Chops, Batman! (the Backstory on Pigs)), and then the next year they were all $85 or $90. This year, I couldn't find any weaners for under $125.

We might still have sprung for one, except that I learned recently that one pig alone really suffers for companionship, even if housed with other hoofed animals. Pigs are extremely social animals, and a pig farmer my sister knows suggested that my pigs have been so obnoxious, loud, and bitey because they were lonely. Therefore I decided I wouldn't raise just one pig again - and we couldn't afford two. The economics of raising pigs is pretty marginal - you can't raise pork cheaper than you can buy it at the store, but the homegrown variety is so much better, on so many levels. Since we finished off our last pig, we just haven't been eating pork, since I can't bring myself to buy commercial pork and thereby contribute to a number of heinous evils (sorry! No lecture, I promise! Just - Hog CAFOS = environmental disaster + animal abuse + worker abuse and injustice).

Then, day before yesterday, I saw that a neighbor of mine, a guy I know and have traded with before, was selling off a litter of piglets at a discount, to pay off some bills and make room for new litters coming up soon. Instead of $125, he was letting them go at $80 apiece. I took the idea to Homero and he said to go for it. So, a quick repair of the pigpen and off we went! Our neighbor has a great set up, large roomy stalls and big outdoor exercise areas. The piglets were in one stall, and the grown breeding pigs in the next one - enormous animals, somewhere between six and seven hundred pounds. They looked pretty scary to me, but the farmer walked right in and scratched them and petted them.

I hope these little girls inherited the gentle temperament.