Romeo's First day on the Job.

There is a lot of labor necessary on a farm. This fact is inescapable. One of our goals, however, is to learn how to be smart about getting the work done. The common route today is either to do the work yourself, or hire someone to do it for you. The problem with the first approach is, you get VERY tired doing all the farm work yourself, and that takes away from the ability to enjoy life itself. This is often where farming gets a bad reputation. The problem with the latter is that if you pay someone else decent wages to do so much, the profit from the farm quickly disappears.

I believe there is a third option. The option that our recent ancestors used, the american pioneers. When you view a farm as a bit of an isolated ecosystem with a balanced collection of animals living together, this begins to look plausible. Each animal has abilities, takes input, produces output. What one needs, another can do. Instead of attempting to personally meet the needs of all the animals, there are ways to get hte animals to help each other. Then the farmer becomes a manager, or steward, of the farm system instead of the primary labor source. In addition, less fossil fuel is burned to accomplish work, and the environment is healthier too! Besides, who wouldnt want free labor, or at least labor that works for food only!

In line with this goal, one of our first attempts of this is demonstrated below. Our stationary chicken coop uses the "deep bedding" method. (simply put, very deep bedding is kept in the coop, replced once or twice a year when the garden needs fertilizer). The only downside to this method of bedding is that it needs to be "stirred" or "turned" every month or so. This is a backbreaking job that tends to get put off more often thatn not. So... if we apply the principle oif animals helping each other, we discover that ther eis a particular animal on our farm that is a good candidate! Pigs love to root in the ground for foot, digging and turning the ground for every tiny morsel. Pigs love chicken food. Lets put these together, and put a pig in the coop alone, and sprinkle chicken food around the bedding! Hopefully what we have is a new farm hand that loves his job and works for nothing but a few food scraps.

Romeo's first day on the job! He starts a bit slow but soon gets into his work.

Alarm system

No no... This is not intended to keep Romeo at work longer... But to alert me with noise if he decides to leave early. That door latch was built to contain 5 lb chickens... Not a 150 lb pig!


Tiger the supervisor

Tiger takes a keen interest in the new laborer... Or maybe she's wondering what her new job will be!

Some remodeling

Apparently romeo was in a hurry to leave when he finished work today, or he chose to do a little remodeling and put in a door for himself.

 Chickens take advantage

I locked the chickens out 2 days ago... But they seem happy with the remodeling Romeo did. Is it a conspiracy???

The finished product

Overall the job was a success. Romeo managed to stir up the entire pen, leaving it ready for a new layer of bedding on top and put back into use for the quickly growing chickens in the nursery.

Sure, there are a few lessons leanred here... dont leave to go to town while romeo is at work.... build better doors on coops that pigs will work in.... bury some of hte food deeper to keep him interested for a longer time.  Nevertheless, i'd rather fix the door than stir all those pine shavings by myself. It was fun to sit outside the pen with a cup of coffee and watch him work. Ever closley watch a pig "snort" to blow light dust and shavings away to carefully uncover one tiny chicken pellet? It is actually quite amazing, reminded me of watching a archeologist carefully unearthing a dinosaur bone.

I suspect that if we can regain an appreciation for each animal's natural instinct, and leanred to mange and make useful their abilities, this concept will work, saving money, keeping animals busy and happy, and increase farming profit with less human labor.