When it’s time to harvest our four-legged food storage, if we butcher at home we can use every part of the pig – like the old-timers used to say, ‘everything but the squeal’! And on the small farm or homestead, you can put it to work. Or let them turn and aerate the compost pile. Pigs’ stout noses and instinct for digging means they can plow up a new garden site. But the homesteader can take advantage of the whole animal. In the commercial farm setting, pigs are just bacon and sausage. What about using pigs as earth-movers and compost builders? On many homesteads it’s possible to feed your pig entirely from what your homestead has to offer. Pigs used to be a common site in the homestead orchard, where they cleaned up windfall fruits, ate grubs and stirred soil for better aeration and percolation.Īnd they can forage in the garden after the main harvest, rooting out perennial weeds and gleaning overlooked vegetables. In autumn he can be turned into the woodlot to forage wild edibles like acorns and nuts. With good planning, at certain times of the year a homestead pig can harvest food for himself. canning and other food processing wastes.
But when there’s plenty of surplus to eat, they’ll just, well … pig out!
It’s true that pigs can get along fine on a small ‘maintenance’ ration. Traditionally, of course, pigs ate what the farm produced. This valuable knowledge has almost been lost in the last 70 years, with the commercialization of farming and loss of small family farms. What was the traditional role of pigs on the farm?įinding answers hasn’t always been easy.In our own journey, from city-dwellers to independent homesteaders, we’ve asked a lot of questions about traditional small-farm pig management, including: Read more: Pigs will eat just about anything-but be careful what scraps you toss them. But the small farm can aspire to better things. So why is it that so many of the instructional books, pamphlets, bulletins and videos on raising hogs tell us homesteaders to raise our hogs just like commercial hogs, only on a smaller scale?Ĭonfinement, commercially compounded hog pellets, farrowing crates, lots of pharmaceuticals-these may be best protocols in large-scale pig production. The pig is truly necessary homestead livestock. And they are ready for harvest in less than a year!
Pigs are four-legged food storage units, happy to eat whatever we have to give them, in whatever quantities. Which is why every small farm and homestead needs a pig! For thousands of years, pigs have been one of humanity’s traditional partners in turning soil and sunlight into a healthy, stable, resilient food system.Īs omnivores, they will eat almost anything and turn it into solid flesh and valuable compost. Like the old saying goes, ‘Waste not, want not’! But for productivity, beauty, health and enjoyment, the family-scale farms have it.Įven in the area of true efficiency, tiny farms excel in making every detail count. Let’s hear it for the small farm! Big farms and big equipment may enjoy certain advantages when it comes to mechanical efficiency.
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