The pig: A lazy gardener’s best tool
The garden’s planted. Kinda pathetic looking, eh? This is from two weeks ago, so you have to visualize that it’s about 2% better now.
We spent most of last year in Florida. When we returned to home, the weeds were 10 feet tall. So I was thinking: maybe we didn’t need a garden. Maybe cleaning out the barn counts as farming. I can think of worse things we do to ourselves than eating tomatoes from Wal-Mart.
However, Greg (the husband and manual labor) and Wilma (the only farm animal who doesn’t give me grief) came to the rescue. <—— Awkward sentence alert.
Enter Wilma: stage right (…and then stage left and center and back and left and right-left-left-ooomph….).<<< – That’s us trying to figure out how to catch a pig.
(The way I see it, bacon ought to be $20 a pound.)
A pig is a wonderful tiller. Just pop her in there and let ‘er go. Pretty much. I’m into stuff that doesn’t require sweat and back-breaking labor.
She’s fantastic.
I’m not sure how this helps anyone in a neighborhood with a homeowner’s association, but I’m throwing it out there anyway.
Don’t forget to leave time for the sow’s manure to decompose. Other than that, that’s my tip for the year.
I’m sure this was helpful to everyone.
Someone left a comment on an earlier post saying that their pig ruined their garden by making the soil all clumpy. So keep that in mind. This may or may not be horrible advice.
Love pigs! Ours are great gardeners, too. Throw scraps to the pigs, they eat them and ummm, recycle them into lucious butternut squash plants that grow like crazy. Last year, we harvested four 5-gallon buckets full of butternut squash from the pig pen. Yum! Now that’s low input gardening!!!
Your sense of humor always gives us a big smile and laughter. Is your pig going to be eaten or stick around and provide baby pigs?
I think you are just using that pig as an excuse to show off your WOW, GORGEOUS landscape! We just moved to Minnesota from dry, desolate, prickly, dirty Arizona, and I thought I was almost in heaven here. But you are nearer, I think.
It’s all about perspective, isn’t it. :)
The way prices are going, I think bacon will be $20 per lb by the end of the summer. I had sticker shock last time I bought it.
To which address would you like me to send my check in payment of services rendered? Laughter is worth mucho deniro. You are a hoot! :) I think, even if your cute pig didn’t actually aid in your horticultural efforts, she adds a great deal aesthetically.
I know you said in an earlier post that it was going to be difficult to eat her one day. Perhaps you should make her a breeder for future bacon and ham. Since she doesn’t give you any grief and does her farm chores well, she might be worth keeping as a work pig. Just a thought.
The game plan for Wilma right now is this: she’s due to deliver in July. If she produces a great litter, we’ll probably breed her once more before our friends butcher their boar. If it’s a small litter or she’s the kind of mom that eats her babies, we’ll eat her in the fall.
They do that?! Oh yuck.
I’m not sure how this helps anyone in a neighborhood with a homeowner’s association, but I’m throwing it out there anyway.
Don’t give up hope: Gene Logsdon on backyard pigs.
But if you are considering it, be sure you have odors under control. I’ve been in the vicinity of traditional pigpens, and I’d say that neighbors have the right not to smell such a thing.
I need her. Now. Scratch that, I needed her weeks ago. I have a garden goat who does great at killing the weeds and filling up my compost bins, but I NEED a tiller. So far in my garden I’ve grown a killer crop of rocks and more rocks… and if I have to build one more lasgana bed I might scream. Anywho, we have thought about buying a few pigs, but the fencing part ruins the whole thing… digging fence post holes in rocks suck. Oh well. :)
Emily – two strands of electric on small stakes works wonders.
I was gonna post the link to Gene Logsdon. But I see Rick has already done that. Joel Salatin is really fond on pigs as farm laborers, too! Pigaerators, I think he calls them.
I don’t know…I must be an even lazier gardener because sending my 12 year old out to run the tiller seems like alot less work than keeping a pig! Personally I am on the laziest route available and took a year off from gardening. You can pick about anything you want from the pick-your-own farms around here so that’s what my game plan is for this year.
I needed a good laugh today! I read butchering the bull also-too funny!