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.

Grass is Greener

Apparently not only is the grass greener on the other side..... But the bugs are juicier too!

Conclusion of the compost problem

So... The trailer loaded with compost the didn't fit through the garden gate.... After contemplating all my choices... I decided the pasture really could use a load of compost anyway.

Hooked the tractor back to trailer... Pulled it into the pasture with the back left down and drove to barest spots. Each one got a few shovels full.

It won't go to waste. The pasture is really poor now and needs more organic material anyway to grow decent grass.

Tomorrow.. It's back to a bucket at a time to move the rest to the garden before rains predicted sunday.

A look at the pig "pasture"

When we decided to try our hand at raising pigs, we needed to build a pen. We wanted them outside in the sun and open air to simulate the wild as much as we can on our farm. Our goal is to learn how to create a farm that makes the3 animal feel like they are in their natural habitat. This is a real challenge with pigs unless you have part forest in the pasture, which we dont! 

The Original Pen

This is the first pen we built a year ago... It is the ladies quarters and birthing center. Built syrong with 2 by 4s and plywood and a real roof. The interior is fixed for housing little ones. It has a protective shelf, heat lamp, and even an evaporative cooler if necessary. It is oversized itself by modern standards. Many pig farm barely provide room for the pigs to turn around. Nevertheless after a year, this seemed just way too small to us.

Bachelor Quarters

So this year we built the bachelor's quarters. Here is Romeo's 'pad' when he is seperated from the girls to prevent constant breeding. Built from scrap wood for the cost of a bag of nails, it contains no new lumber. Retired fence posts.. Leftover roofing panels.. And the rotted decking from our patio rebuild. He loves it!

If you look closely on the left side you notice the self made pond. Apparently the pigs have leanred to turn on the faucet. I have found a small pond of water and an open faucet every day this week!

The "Pasture" Area

Heres a look at the roaming area for the pigs surrounding their pens. When the door to either pen is open, they are free to roam and graze, but return to the safety and warnth of their pens at night. This gives them a LOT more area to roam than even our oversized pens. and ROAM they do!

The Happy Trio

Girls in the front chasing the cameraman... Guy in the background... Eating as usual. They are very happy to be all together again. We separated them for a few months to time the baby births.

Hunter the Lumberjack!

He loves driving the tractor, and today he got to work the frontloader bucket also!

A pig play spot

It's not much, but this will be the starts of simulating a real forest. Looks fun? It will be torn to shreds by tomorrow.

Some things dont work according to the plan

So today was the day to start moving the compost pile into the garden so that we can get the ground ready for planting. The compost pile by the barn has been building and working since last summer and should be exactly what our garden needs to get a great start.

The compost pile ready for the garden... Just gotta find an easy way to get it there.

Last year I just drove the front loader back and forth a bucket at a time, but it takes hours to move the entire pile. There has to be a better way!

The Garden Area

The garden waiting for compost and tilling

So I had a bright idea... instead of making a hundred trips back and forth, why not just load the flatbed trailer, drag it into the garden, and throw the compost around. Seems to make sense right? Well, the first step went fine... loaded the trailer high with compost only took a few minutes.

BUT is there a problem?

Maybe I should have measured the gate! It would seem that the trailer is a foot or so wider than the garden gate!

This is just embarrassing!

Oh well, perhaps tomorrow will bring a new idea as well as a new day.