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dragonlady7I was inspired by yesterday's farrowing news to dig for my photos of past farrowings on the farm.
My sister's farm has had a continuous bunch of pigs for a few years running now-- prior to that, they always bought in a few, but the breeder they liked considered retiring, so they established their own breeding program, and then she didn't retire, so-- it's been complicated.
And in farming there's always a fine calculus of what's worth doing and what you gotta pay someone else for to break even on because doing it yourself is too expensive. Breeding pigs is one of those fine line things. What put it over to "worth doing" was pursuing organic certification. You just can't buy in organic pigs. In order to be certified, a pig has to have been fed organic from the last trimester in the womb onward.
And in the local market, there are several other farmers offering pork, but nobody who is certified organic. So they took the plunge and got the certification, and then the old boar failed so they had to buy in pigs to raise this winter who can't be certified, so. Sigh. But! These new babies can be certified organic, so they can resume their program.
In the meantime:
Did You Know: there are dozens of breeds of hogs to choose from. As with poultry and most other farm animals, most of the beloved old heritage breeds are endangered. The vast majority of commercial pork comes from one specific type of hog, which I don't even know what it's called, but it's kind of a mutant freak of an animal really only suited to being born in a box and living in a box and growing HUGE and then being killed for meat.
So... that's not the kind of pigs they have, on the farm.
They have mutts, but they're mostly heritage-breed mutts. The foundational breeds are, to my knowledge, Gloucestershire Old Spots, Tamworth, and Berkshire. Old Spot pigs look like the sign on a tavern from the 18th century-- huge bodies, bellies that nearly drag on the ground, ears that flop over, and these quaint little double chins. Tamworths are also pretty iconic-- a deep copper red, with long legs, upright ears, and a classic rounded boar-looking back. And Berkshires, I'd never seen a purebred one until they got this new boar-- he has enormous thick legs and is very tall and long-legged, and his head is enormous. The sow that came with him is I think a mutt; she's speckled. I have photos of the new pigs somewhere but I can't find them.
So every year they have a rainbow of pigs. Last year's offerings were exceptionally generous in the redness calculus-- there were three sows last year, and one is visibly Tamworth but the other two were a mother-daughter pair that looked mostly Old Spot but produced piglets of all different colors. So I'd say "oh that one must be one of Red's" and Farmsister would squint and say "eh might not be."
They've debated trying to get purebred somethings to raise, but it seems better for them to keep working on their own kind of individually-tailored little landrace of hogs; most of their customers are mostly going to care about the taste and nutritional content and humane status, and that's mostly going to come down to the feed and the pasturage, so.
I like the chubby sweet faces of Old Spots but I worry that their ears block their eyes.
However, an important consideration: immature pigs run a lot, with this odd stiff rocking gait because they're not very flexible-- their spines really don't bend much at all-- and it means their little ears flop like mad when they run and it's so fucking cute, so. I'm a fan of the floppy-eared pigs purely for the aesthetic when they run when they're little.
Pigs are fast, though.
Which just makes it seem that much more cruel when most of them are kept in such tiny boxes their whole lives!! I don't mean to preach about pasture-raising meat or whatever, it's just-- I know you can't ascribe human emotions to animals, but when you move them to fresh grass and they scream about it and run like crazy, it really feels like they're happy, you know? and it makes you feel bad for the animals that never get to do that.
Maybe it's less cruel to eat an animal that was never happy, like you're freeing it from its prison by killing and eating it, but-- if you figure, neither animal would have had cause to exist if not for the demand for meat; the one in the box has stood in one place and created so much shit that's had to then be disposed of as a hazardous material, and the one on a pasture has eaten grass and then pooped on the pasture and the poop is spread out enough to return fertility to the soil instead of burning it, and after the pigs passed across the soil the farmer tilled in new cover crop seed and let it regenerate and now is running chickens across that same land...
anyway. That's the philosophy, behind all of it.
(edited to add: i was googling around the pig breeds and i see i was wrong, tamworths have straight backs! the curve to Red's back is the evidence that she's part Berkshire, it's their characteristic to be convex like that. she's such a beautiful pig!) (and if arthur's a pedigree berkshire he should be black, but he's a dark gray. i should take a closer look when he's not covered in mud, lol.)
My sister's farm has had a continuous bunch of pigs for a few years running now-- prior to that, they always bought in a few, but the breeder they liked considered retiring, so they established their own breeding program, and then she didn't retire, so-- it's been complicated.
And in farming there's always a fine calculus of what's worth doing and what you gotta pay someone else for to break even on because doing it yourself is too expensive. Breeding pigs is one of those fine line things. What put it over to "worth doing" was pursuing organic certification. You just can't buy in organic pigs. In order to be certified, a pig has to have been fed organic from the last trimester in the womb onward.
And in the local market, there are several other farmers offering pork, but nobody who is certified organic. So they took the plunge and got the certification, and then the old boar failed so they had to buy in pigs to raise this winter who can't be certified, so. Sigh. But! These new babies can be certified organic, so they can resume their program.
In the meantime:
Did You Know: there are dozens of breeds of hogs to choose from. As with poultry and most other farm animals, most of the beloved old heritage breeds are endangered. The vast majority of commercial pork comes from one specific type of hog, which I don't even know what it's called, but it's kind of a mutant freak of an animal really only suited to being born in a box and living in a box and growing HUGE and then being killed for meat.
So... that's not the kind of pigs they have, on the farm.
They have mutts, but they're mostly heritage-breed mutts. The foundational breeds are, to my knowledge, Gloucestershire Old Spots, Tamworth, and Berkshire. Old Spot pigs look like the sign on a tavern from the 18th century-- huge bodies, bellies that nearly drag on the ground, ears that flop over, and these quaint little double chins. Tamworths are also pretty iconic-- a deep copper red, with long legs, upright ears, and a classic rounded boar-looking back. And Berkshires, I'd never seen a purebred one until they got this new boar-- he has enormous thick legs and is very tall and long-legged, and his head is enormous. The sow that came with him is I think a mutt; she's speckled. I have photos of the new pigs somewhere but I can't find them.
So every year they have a rainbow of pigs. Last year's offerings were exceptionally generous in the redness calculus-- there were three sows last year, and one is visibly Tamworth but the other two were a mother-daughter pair that looked mostly Old Spot but produced piglets of all different colors. So I'd say "oh that one must be one of Red's" and Farmsister would squint and say "eh might not be."
They've debated trying to get purebred somethings to raise, but it seems better for them to keep working on their own kind of individually-tailored little landrace of hogs; most of their customers are mostly going to care about the taste and nutritional content and humane status, and that's mostly going to come down to the feed and the pasturage, so.
I like the chubby sweet faces of Old Spots but I worry that their ears block their eyes.
However, an important consideration: immature pigs run a lot, with this odd stiff rocking gait because they're not very flexible-- their spines really don't bend much at all-- and it means their little ears flop like mad when they run and it's so fucking cute, so. I'm a fan of the floppy-eared pigs purely for the aesthetic when they run when they're little.
Pigs are fast, though.
Which just makes it seem that much more cruel when most of them are kept in such tiny boxes their whole lives!! I don't mean to preach about pasture-raising meat or whatever, it's just-- I know you can't ascribe human emotions to animals, but when you move them to fresh grass and they scream about it and run like crazy, it really feels like they're happy, you know? and it makes you feel bad for the animals that never get to do that.
Maybe it's less cruel to eat an animal that was never happy, like you're freeing it from its prison by killing and eating it, but-- if you figure, neither animal would have had cause to exist if not for the demand for meat; the one in the box has stood in one place and created so much shit that's had to then be disposed of as a hazardous material, and the one on a pasture has eaten grass and then pooped on the pasture and the poop is spread out enough to return fertility to the soil instead of burning it, and after the pigs passed across the soil the farmer tilled in new cover crop seed and let it regenerate and now is running chickens across that same land...
anyway. That's the philosophy, behind all of it.
(edited to add: i was googling around the pig breeds and i see i was wrong, tamworths have straight backs! the curve to Red's back is the evidence that she's part Berkshire, it's their characteristic to be convex like that. she's such a beautiful pig!) (and if arthur's a pedigree berkshire he should be black, but he's a dark gray. i should take a closer look when he's not covered in mud, lol.)
no subject
Date: 2019-03-23 12:17 pm (UTC)the one on a pasture has eaten grass and then pooped on the pasture and the poop is spread out enough to return fertility to the soil instead of burning it, and after the pigs passed across the soil the farmer tilled in new cover crop seed and let it regenerate and now is running chickens across that same land...
anyway. That's the philosophy, behind all of it.
Yes, this! The first pastured meat I ate was pork, and my god, after that there's NO going back to grocery store pork chops. I know there's constant pressure for vegetarianism/ reduced meat consumption for the environment / etc but all the meat/poultry I purchase and eat now is farm raised, within 20 miles of where I live. I've seen videos of newborn lambs from the farm on Facebook and thought "Oh, cute!" as well as "Yum!" I know we're privileged to have this kind of opportunity, but to support local farms and farm families? And get great food? I'm all in.
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Date: 2019-03-23 12:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-03-23 01:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-03-23 01:39 pm (UTC)So the local association of small farms has a program where everybody's farm apprentices meet twice a month and tour one of the farms. There are so many little local farms that have banded together and do this, it's really great. There are farms that do just vegetables, there are farms that have whole dairies, there are horse-powered farms--
anyway, one time the tour was at our farm, and someone asked about raising livestock. he was vegetarian, isn't it better for the environment to eat plants, so and so on, it was not confrontationally asked but it was asked, y'know?
and my brother in law gave a really good response, which was "either we raise animals or we close up shop."
It's not possible for them to compete on vegetables. They have 175 acres, but of that, only about 20 are really suitable for tilling, and even of that-- the soil's not great. They're next to a gravel mine. The ground's really rocky. They can grow vegetables, but they've got to work much harder at it than the huge CSA ten miles away, with 500 members, and 450 acres of river-bottom land.
What they've got is pasture. They have a lot of fairly vertical land, too steep even for the rolling chicken coops-- but pigs can climb hills, and so can cattle. And the slaughterhouse waste makes rich compost that can help the rocky vegetable field keep producing, since the soil itself isn't that rich. The chicken manure keeps the pastures green, and the pigs fight back the brambles, and if you do a little of everything, well, you can break even.
Which they couldn't, on vegetables.
And it takes a little bit of mental maneouvering to be able to say "what a cute [x]! I want to pet and snuggle it!" and in six months, pick it up cut up into roasts in a cardboard box. Like... I respect that animal, I want it to have a good life, I know its commercial value lies in filling my belly and I respect that too.
(Also pigs can store vitamin D from the sun in their fat, so cooking with pastured lard helps a lot in the chronic vitamin D deficiency that plagues everyone at this latitude! you don't get that from confinement hogs, no matter how good their feed is.)
But if you think about it-- having animals only as pets is a weird and warped thing and not at all what humans evolved to do. we evolved to packbond with stuff, sure, but we also evolved eating anything we could catch, and agriculture neatly threads that needle there. I see no real contradiction in finding them both adorable and delicious, if you're respectful about it.
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Date: 2019-03-23 01:44 pm (UTC)it is so ridiculous. pigs are so ridiculous.
It's also funny when the full-grown sows decide they need to run for some reason but it's a very very different aesthetic. also they rarely run.
The feeder pigs are pretty shy, they don't get handled much-- Annie's figured the sows are worth spending time handling so they can be managed over their longer lives, but there's not time with the feeder pigs, but there's one little gelt that she managed to sneak up on the other day, and scritched her with both hands before she noticed that it was AACK RUN AWAY FROM THE EVIL MONKEYS-- and so the little gelt was like oh! what is! this! delightful! senstation! and just kind of melted, it was very cute.
I was like are you going to keep that one and Annie was like no because she's horribly unsentimental nowadays. Maybe the scritching will make her more delicious, she said ruthlessly. My sister is mean.
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Date: 2019-03-23 01:51 pm (UTC)I am intimidated by them. I like to pet them but they like to be petted, is the problem, and so they'll come and lean, and uh they're uh, really big
the other thing is that pigs are extremely violent with one another as just... normal behavior? they crash into each other and bite each other and are just generally drunk frat boys about all of it all the time. and that's fine whatever, except that it means they're used to being extremely violent all the time, so they'll just... crash into you and bite you and whatever, and sometimes they're being assholes but a lot of times that's just how they do, they don't have any other models of behavior you know? so like.
I've rarely seen a hog actually intend to hurt anyone, but I've seen some terrifying things anyway. And once there are babies, uh, you just, uh, don't go in there, because if you're between a sow and her piglet and the piglet makes a noise the sow will go THROUGH you teeth-first whether you had anything to do with the piglet noise or not.
So I'm fairly afraid of pigs actually!!! I will pet them but usually when standing on the other side of the fence! and I would not have a pet one. People do! and they're as trainable as dogs, easily! but I would not. they have sharp feet and it's mean not to let them get muddy and they like to eat poop, like even more than dogs do. semi-relatedly i let my wikipedia search about pigs this morning take me on a spiral via "pig toilets" to the concept of toilet gods and I had to close that window and re-evaluate my life choices.
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Date: 2019-03-23 03:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-03-23 04:58 pm (UTC)yeah, this is so true. I believe animals can feel joy, and so they are probably quite happy in that moment - what's not to enjoy about running about in fresh grass?
this prompted an old memory. growing up, there were milking shorthorn cattle, a dual-purpose (milk/meat) animal, on the farm. my grandfather died when I was little, and no one kept up the dairy, just kept the herd for meat for family and to sell. when the bull died they brought in a Hereford bull to bulk up the animals. they were pastured, though in the winter there was hay in the cowshed. once my grandmother died, no one was living on the property, and my dad & uncle were tired of driving to the farm daily to tend to the cows. so they sold the herd, with the option to bring them back to pasture every spring/summer. the first year the trucks offloaded at our farm, the older cows recognized the place, and their joy was palpable. they were dancing jigs of glee at being 'home'
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Date: 2019-03-23 07:54 pm (UTC)Where I'm from, they're allowed to wander in the deciduous woodland and eat acorns which really makes for extraordinary meet.
Old Spot is also the name of a locally brewery there. I love that the extra-strength beer they brew around Christmas is called Piggermortis. :D
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Date: 2019-03-23 10:52 pm (UTC)that's great.
They're a fine pig! I'm fond of them. And their floppy ears and double chins. They look like fine stout ladies, and their spots are extremely cute.
We don't have quite enough acorns around these parts, though we've tried to find some. Mostly ours wind up with apples, as treats. Too much pine, not enough oak in the woods.
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Date: 2019-03-24 12:13 pm (UTC)Out of curiosity... can you still use pigs to "upcycle" your food scraps with organic certification? I guess if you have organic food scraps...? Porcine garbage disposal and the fast growth seemed like the major advantage of pigs as meat animals (flavor aside).
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Date: 2019-03-24 12:20 pm (UTC)They do remember, and it's funny what they remember, and for how long.
Even the chickens-- they remember stuff, year to year, even the egg-laying hens who only live to three or so most of the time, and so the flock collectively does things because a few of them remember.
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Date: 2019-03-24 12:28 pm (UTC)You really can't feed pigs rejected food if they're organic. A lot of small farmers rely on the stuff that's too expired for food pantries to take, but-- well, it's usually pretty garbage, a lot of that "bread" is mostly corn syrup and yeah, your pigs can get fat on it, but the meat's not nearly as good. Yes, ideally, pigs can be part of your food waste cycle and gain efficiency that way, but so much of the food in that waste cycle is gross-- well, it's a kind of debate people have, and it's a debate worth having.
The pigs do get the leftover/rejected vegetables from the CSA, because all that is certified organic, but there's very little waste now that the local food pantry has a program where they'll come pick up excess CSA harvests (and they'll come salvage-harvest a farm that's got a crop they can't sell, too-- they're so efficient, it's a great program!)-- they're so well-networked they've just hooked the farm up directly with the Methodist church two miles down the street, so that the across-the-street neighbor comes promptly on Thursday mornings and takes anything left over right down to the pantry where it's distributed to extremely local families by the weekend, and basically nothing gets thrown out.
So the pigs have to eat purchased, certified food! The next thing the farm's trying to do is to begin growing their own feed, but it's hard to just-- do that, so. (And my little pet project is to raise flax for linen, and I'd like to add linseed products to the feed stock to phase out the more common soy, since there's so much panic about GMO soy in feedstocks; linseed can't be a direct replacement, and chickens can't eat that much of it, but pigs can and actually it's apparently really beneficial to sows near farrowing time, so.)
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Date: 2019-03-24 12:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-03-24 12:31 pm (UTC)