Some Pigs

Since I posted last we have had a lot happen. Our sheep were sheared and we are in the process of skirting our last 2 fleece. We skirted and shipped out all of our white merino fleece. There was a lot of illness. I lost feeling in my pinky and ring finger for a few months, my pinky is still numb. My mom and her husband both had heart issues, one of them major, and the other somewhat serious. So, sorry I have not kept up here.

One Thing we did accomplish was a home for our pigs. We get rejects from the hog "factories" about once a year and this year we wanted to give them a better home. So we set to building an enclosure that we hoped would contain them.


We chose this location for a few reasons: it gets a lot of shade so the pigs will not get sunburned, it is shaded by oak trees and pigs love acorns, it does not get a lot of grass so it will not take valuable pasture from the sheep, and it is not going to stink up the house or yard (not that they are really al that stinky when they are outside.)

We had to dig a lot of holes for the posts and then tamp them in carefully. We also put a line of barbed wire about 1" from the ground to discourage them from digging under the fence. Dear liked to give them a large mud puddle (it is sunscrean for them and keeps the flies off of them).

But, a nice storm, like we had yesterday, turns the whole thing into a mud puddle. It will be dry in a day, so the pigs better have their fun now. They loved the storm.

We throw them apples, cabbages, tomatoes, weeds from the garden, and watermelons. They love it all. We only have 2 weeds that are dangerous for pigs and we all know what they look like. The pigs are pretty happy and dirty, but at least they are muddy dirty, not poopy dirty.