New Piglets

Our Berkshire piglets have arrived!  About a month ago we bought a pregnant Berk sow (Dolly) to pair up with our boar Sirius Black.  The plan is to mate the gilts from this litter with Sirius once they get old enough.  This litter produced two healthy girls and four boars.

Dolly's Piglets

In another month or so we'll introduce Dolly to the rest of Sirius' herd.

Watchful Mom

Smoked and ready to cure

Landjagger and Venison Truffle Salami.

Pigatiller

A couple weeks ago I set some of the Ossabaw Island Pigs loose on the garden. Pigs are natural rooters and we've been using them to help prep the garden for spring for the last two years. They turn over the first couple inches looking for roots, grubs and other foods - natural rototillers; or Pigatillers.  The leftover plant material from the previous year and the early spring weeds get turned over while I'm inside keeping warm.  They also leave wonderful fertilizer in their wake, which is much easier than spreading it yourself.

In this picture you can see the early weeds sprouting to the right and the fresh look under the pigs.  Since all but the top couple inches are turned over in this process, it is very good approach for maintaining the subsoil structure that is so helpful in long term soil health.  Tilling down six inches is pretty damaging to the worms and other beneficial creatures in the earth.

The final benefit is the pigs dig to the last inch in the garden.  Running a heavy duty tiller along a fence line is nerve racking and I've had more than a couple rough moments when the tines get caught in the wire on a tight turn.  The pigs are much more thorough and I don't need to worry about fence repair or untangling the tiller tines.

The main issue with using the pigs in the garden is keeping them in too long.  Once they've turned over the soil, their running around compacts the earth and you need to go back in to till it up for planting, which offsets some of the benefits.  This year, we're planning to keep them on a short leash and move them out while the soil is still fluffy.

First Piglets

Our first piglets born on the farm were delivered this week.  Our adult Ossabaw Island Sow (Daphne) had four healthy piglets on Wednesday and they are all doing fantastic.  There are two color variations with the Ossabaws - Black and varied color.  We got three black and one multicolored piglet this time.

Four is a pretty small litter for pigs, but the Ossabaws throw pretty small numbers compared to the refined breeds that can easily produce over ten piglets in a litter.  This is due to the fact that the Ossabaw Island breed has been genetically isolated for 500 years and adapted to some pretty harsh conditions on the island.  I'm hoping to get slightly better numbers in warmer weather, however.

The Ossabaws are very hearty and don't need a lot of extra shelter.  The shed in the background was crushed in the blizzard last year, but the pigs aren't very picky on aesthetics.  Some dry hay and a little tarp covering and they are good to go.

Animals Should be Happy

We do our best to make sure our animals are treated right.  Beyond just being the right thing to do, it makes managing them that much easier.  Siruis Black is our new registered Berkshire boar.  He's about 25 or 30 pounds right now and he loves to get pet.  We're working on having him establish a strong relationship with people so when he's 500 pounds he's safe to be around.

Sirius Black

If you get him at the right time and the right spot, he'll sit and lie down like a dog.

Jack is our new Angora goat.  He's a sweetheart.  He jumps up to be pet and grab a snack.  I've been trying to break one of our dogs of that habit for the last year, but it's a neat habit with a goat.

Jack the Angora Goat

Of course making the animals happy is sometimes easier said than done.  I'm doing some shuffling with the goats to move our pygmy buck Otis out of the pygmy herd so our new Angora Buck, Jack, can join the girls.  We're starting a line of Pygora Goats and the two bucks will be sires for different genetic lines so we can produce breeding pairs of the Pygoras.  Let's just say that Otis is not a happy Camper.  He's a rather jealous bully at this point and is insisting on escaping from whatever fencing solution I put together to keep him separated.  Hopefully he won't hold a grudge too long.

Otis, angry & waiting for a quick fence repair

Pigs

Growing up I was never a big fan of pork. However they were prepared, pork chops usually came out with a bland flavor and texture similar to cardboard. The Holiday ham was good to look at, but once I got past the salt and cloves there wasn't much flavor that jumped out. Every once in a while a dish would stand out, like the smoked, dry cured Virginia Bacon I picked up in Williamsburg, but in general I've passed over the pork section of supermarket for most of my life. At some point I realized I was missing out on something.

A few years ago I started reading about heritage pigs and began to consider raising our own. Our farm is mostly wooded and there is little space for grazing animals, so pigs make a lot of sense for our landscape. I found an opportunity to have a wonderful pork loin from a Berkshire / Tamworth cross when I was on a business trip and that made up my mind. It was like nothing I had tasted before. It was juicy, filled with sweet balanced flavor and had the texture of a tender steak. I was hooked and set on a path to recapture the lost flavor of pork.

Currently, we are building two herds of heritage pigs and are in the process of establishing quality breeding lines for Berkshire and Ossabaw Island pigs. We will be selling piglets and meat once the herds are established and producing.