Barreca Vineyards

Barreca Vineyards

From Vine to Wine since 1986

Pigs in the Woods

When I was younger, not very studious and there was no Internet, I decided to add pigs to our menagerie of goats, chickens and a donkey.  We had extra milk from the goats and I could supplement the pig diet with culled potatoes from the Doukhobors in Grand Forks, British Columbia.  The pigs didn’t put on a lot of weight during the winter because they didn’t have much shelter, just some bales of hay.  Realizing that was a problem, I built them a solar-heated pig house.

Actually that worked well and they loved it.  Here’s the thing, pigs are naturally happy.  They love to dig for food.  Well they love food period, hence their reputation.  You can’t really herd them, but you can lead them around with a bucket of anything tempting.  They are smart and not really that dirty.  They only pooped in one corner of their pen.  Still they do get big, too big to wrestle or do much with.  So eventually we gave our big sow to a neighbor and she didn’t last long there.  Too much trouble I guess.

That was a different time and place.  I didn’t get into the craze of pot-bellied pigs as pets which followed by a few years.  At least it recognized the Marvelous Pigness of Pigs, which is the title of a book by Joel Salatin.  Joel uses pigs as a study in the divine nature of nature.  I would have preferred a little more direct description of pig farming. Salatin used them to transform a run-down family farm into a thriving regenerative food source by letting them graze on acorns in the woods.

Thinking back on my experience, I realize that I could have used them to plow and fertilize patches of ground for a garden. The old Case 22 bulldozer with a hand-cranked starter that I bought was lousy for plowing and hard to start.  I would have had happier pigs and more pork.  Common practices in raising pigs had skewed my understanding away from their real nature.

So it was with some surprise and enjoyment that I recently saw an email from Eileen of Ramstead Ranch near Ione discussing their use of pigs to prevent forest fires.  No.  We are not talking about Smokey the Pig.  But remember those fire lines that fire fighters dig around a wildfire to contain it?  Pigs do pretty much the same thing naturally but over a wide area and they love doing it.

So naturally this left a lot more questions in my mind and I arranged to talk to Eileen about them.  Remembering how hard it was to keep these four-footed track hoes from digging under fences I asked how Ramstead kept them in.  Eileen said it’s no big deal once they become familiar with electric fencing.  At Ramstead they start them young getting to recognize electric fence wire.  Being pretty smart they tend to stay clear even if it is not turned on.  So a little electric fencing that can be moved to rotate pasture areas is all you need.

They do well on grasses and friends of ours have used them to root out quack grass, which has LOTS of long-running roots.  But bushes and their roots, thistles and a wide variety of plants are all dinner for the pigs.  At Ramstead they can use a one-two punch by having cattle trample bigger woody material and pigs rotovate it into the ground.  After a season or two of this kind of rotated grazing, their brushy woods with lots of “ladder fuels” (small trees, brush and low branches that fire can climb up into tree tops), are eliminated and the woodlot turns into “silvopasture”, grasses under trees where cattle, sheep and pigs can graze comfortably away from scorching sun.

Don’t get the idea that these are far-flung fields where wolves and dogs can become a problem.  Pigs still need fresh water and supplemental feed that need to be hauled out to them.  If they are close to where they were raised as young with plenty of food and drink, they are more likely to stay close even if they escape the electric fencing. 

So remember what I said about pigs being naturally happy?  I’ve heard stories of them digging head first up to their hind legs in pursuit of tasty roots and then popping back up again ready to dig out another.  But normally we think of them in crowded pens, making a mess, smelling bad and creating huge runoff problems for streams and neighbors.  Salatin notes that “Factory farming pigs makes them stressed, so they fight each other and develop other problems.” He decries efforts to find a “porcine stress gene” and genetically modify it as if that would eliminate those problems.

Eileen is proud of how low-stress life is for Ramstead’s pigs.  She notes “Our pigs live outdoors in the sun and shade.  They run, root, wallow, lounge and get to behave like real pigs.”  The waste they produce is worked directly into the ground where it does the most good.  As a result the meat is cleaner, leaner and tastier than factory-farmed pork.  That is the kind of benefit from recognizing the marvelous pigness of pigs that I didn’t realize when we had them.

Actually I’m also recognizing the difference between how a city boy (that would be me 40 years ago) sees animals as cows, horses, chickens, sheep and pigs but a country boy (not that I am entirely there yet) sees breeds of cows, horses, sheep and pigs.  Beyond that if you really raise these animals, you see personalities.  There may be general tendencies of breeds but for instance can you really say that since you have known one cat, you know them all?  Both nature and nurture make a big difference. 

Eileen prefers Berkshire pigs, a heritage breed recognized as far back as 1642 in Reading England as renowned for its size and the quality of its bacon and ham.  They are also known to be gentle and friendly to other animals and people.  So pigs just want to have fun.  Let them be themselves and we will all be happier and safer.

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