Hit the Dirt; Swine Tilling

What is pink and around which should not be found in the garden. Lest we mourn. But we'll help out if it is about in a garden that is not yet born. The answer to this riddle is one of the techniques I use successfully for the first time this year. Of course I'm furring to the age old practice of swearing tillage that is using pigs as a big pink wrote a teller's to help prepare a new plot of land for cultivation eager to expand my existing gardens. I had my eye on a nice little 5000 square foot parcel out back. Unfortunately like most of my place this old field had been the go to grow back up to a thicket of hard tack and wild cherry. The two years I've been mown it has kept down the top growth of brush allowing a nice sod to develop. However underneath it remains an intertwined tangle of thick and quite strong Hardock roots making the prospect of filling it even with a tractor and plough a formidable task. But I did not want to wait a few more years of moaning that would take to kill off the hard rock and really loosen its hold on the field. So when I first caught wind of the idea

of using pigs as road tellers from a friend who had tried it years ago my interest was piqued researching the subject a bit I discovered it has a long rich history both in this country and in many other parts of the world. In fact it is still a common practice in a number of cultures and it is no wonder this practice came about for the pig is an animal which has evolved into a highly efficient router. It's incredibly strong snout and thick muscular neck and body are ideal for carrying out the turf in search of delectable grubs and roots upon which they feed. In this country the most common method seems to be just fencing in a large piece of clear cut woods or overgrown field that has to be brought back to pasture cultivation. Then the pigs are let in and that is their plan for the season or however long it takes them to root out the stumps and rocks which of it they eventually do as well as any bulldozer could. I know of a local farmer who does it this way today and another fellow has told me that was how his

grandfather did it on his farm in north central Maine years ago. However I took a slightly different approach which while being a little more labor intensive I feels more effective. I constructed a moveable pen 12 by 12 feet for the two pigs I raised. I started them in one corner of the plot and whenever they had thoroughly torn up the sodden roots I moved the pen to an adjacent spot. In this way I systematically covered the entire field in a season. On average I move them every three to five days depending on the conditions. During drier spells it took the pigs a bit longer to dig them up. Thus I found that by raising two feeder pigs in this fashion from late April to mid October I was able to prepare one eighth of an acre for cultivation. After the pigs were finished it was much easier for a tractor to plow up well for me to hand take the piece. And I spent a fit of using a living rototiller is that rather than just leaving behind fumes they fertilize the plot at the same time as they dig

it up. I have read that during the period in which a hog grows from 30 to two hundred twenty pounds on average it will excrete a total of four thousand six hundred pounds of manure. That is a lot of fertility and if your land is anything like mine you can use it. Which leads me to some of the advantages of the movable pan method. Contrary to popular belief pigs are quite clean animals if given a choice they will tend to choose one corner of their pen as their toilet. Thus with a large stationary pen the Manoora tend to get concentrated in just a few places causing potentially harmful very owners of over fertilization there and under fertilization elsewhere with a movable pen. The pigs are introduced to a new area every few days or so and the manure spread around the field. Also they are moved just before the ground has a chance to get turned up into a muddy mess. Hence the pigs stay cleaner they are

more likely to remain healthy since they get less exposure to disease and parasite carrying excrement. Another plus is that since they are rotated around regularly they always have fresh turf to feed on and they can't get the chance to burrow out. So it is easier to keep them contained. And as you can imagine it is no fun trying to catch a loose pig. What's more pigs confined to a smaller area will do a more thorough job of rooting it up. Where is it in a big area. They will tend to develop a few favorite spots while other areas remain relatively untouched. Finally pigs confined to a small space and used to being moved around are much easier to catch when it comes time for slaughtering. Of course the other big benefit is that when you are through you have some very tasty pork which including the cost of all the feed the initial price of the feeder pig the fencing and watching came to a little more than a dollar a pound for me this year. Not a bad deal.

This might be a little cheaper than conventional pig raising as I didn't need to feed them as much since they did some of their food for themselves. So all in all it seemed to work quite nicely for me. And if you are at all interested in raising some meat either for yourself or to sell I'd recommend swine tillage as a means of getting a new piece of land ready for cultivation. If you'd like more information about hog killing or the design of the movable pan I used to write to me Keith Goldfarb care of W or you had House Blue Hill Falls Maine 0 4 6 1 5. Well so long for the dirt. See you next week on the radio.