Hogs On The Farm
October 25th, 2005 by Northern FarmerDon’t know if it’s just me or what, but I can’t stand eating pork from the store or resturaunt the last ten or fifteen years. This has got to be the classic example of taking one of the best foods on earth and making it into something a few grades below dog food. I remember years ago when the pork chops would be frying in the kitchen and you could smell them way out in the farm yard, boy did them chops smell good. Now a store bought chop smells almost rancid when it’s frying up.And has the taste of compressed sawdust. They’ve taken the hogs and have made an inferior food, the same as was done to commercial chickens and turkeys. Since my teens I raised pigs steadily until 1998, and do off and on since for family food. Up until 98 the number of pigs we raised was in the ten’s of thousands. And we never raised them the modern way that most are raised like today. And we made a good living to boot. The freezer was always full of good pork. I practically lived on it.
The secret to good pork is dirt! Every hog should have acsess to the soil, one way or another. And greens, grass, weeds whatever. Now some might say, “it isn’t efficient to raise them this way”. To that I say, the heck it ain’t! Hogs are no different than the farm raised chickens that have the run of the yard or are grazed in chicken tractors. They will do splendid outside and like the grass raised chicken, will be so far superior to the “modern” conterpart, taste and healthwise, that most expenses the factory farms have will be nulled by the “traditional” farming method. The factory farming method spend a large percentage just trying to keep the pigs alive, same as factory chickens.
To the homesteader or small farmer, pigs should be considered. They can gobble up huge amounts of garden waste and field waste and thrive. And they can provide income. I think if a person would just work into them and develope a market for “home grow” pork, they would be able to build up a money making business, not to mention having one of the best foods on earth gracing their tables fairly often. But be on the lookout when getting into this, the modern industrial ag has practically ruined many breeds of hogs, like the chickens, so that they are almost dependant on a factory style operation just to stay alive that very, very short time. Around here, and I suspect in many area’s of the country there’s some farms raising the old strains yet that haven’t been mutated into something freakish. A person doesn’t have to spend big bucks on some breed that is rare and the prices are sky high, being sold as a homestead hog or something like that. Here we just get some old Spotted Poland China, Chester Whites, Yorks, or Hamps. They’re around yet if a person looks, and will raise up good, and the taste is something that you can’t ever buy in a store.
October 25th, 2005 at 11:21 pm
Wow, you really know how to lead wanna be’s. My husband was a pig farmer in high school and college. He loved it. My son, 7, aches to start a home grown pork operation.
The problem is you can’t find pigs any where around here. There are factory farms and they give away rejects, but who wants them sick little things anyway. We will be on the look out soon for some good breeds of pigs. Pray for us that we will find them. We could use some help with compost, whey, milk and buttermilk disposal.
Also, it is hard to find a place to cure the meat very well. We had home grown pork early this year. It came back from the processor and tasted so bad. There was such a stale flavor and smell to the bacon. We did find a new processor hopefully this new one will work out for us. Thanks for this post. It was timely.
October 26th, 2005 at 2:41 pm
NF:
You said it! We’re waiting for our tasty pork to get done at the locker right now. We can’t wait!
Did you know that the hog industry has a new customer? Corn/Soy farmers. They are building the hog buildings around here so fast my head is spinning. This summer they built three within a mile of my place. You know why? They want the waste. If they break even on the hogs, they are still ahead.
I was hoping they were all building because pork prices were up. Then they could drive themselves into bancruptcy quickly!
No such doing. The hog factories are ruining rural life in Iowa. We’re moving out.
http://www.shadylarchfarm.com
October 26th, 2005 at 6:02 pm
KsMM,
I gotta admit,I got hog raising in my blood. I know what your saying about good and bad processors. I’ve tasted ham and bacon so bad it wasn’t fit to eat, meanwhile the next processor made it so good it was unbelievable. I used to cure some at home 25 years ago or so and will someday have to dig out my recipies and have at it again. My favorite thing is our homemade sausage. About 2/3s pork and 1/3 beef or venison, or goat for that matter. I take it over to neighbor Pete’s, he has a full sized smokehouse, the size of a small building, and smoke it lightly for a day. Wow, that stuff is good on a cold winter evening!
JC,
Them farmers are in for a nasty surprise down the road. My personal feeling is that the liquid manure is probobly more harmful to the soil than petroleum fertilizers. Wicked stuff it is.Not at all like solid manure with bedding mix,the healthy stuff.We had four farms here do the same thing in the past ten years, putting up contract barns for that reason. There’s one barn of the four left. The other three all burned down, must be the only way to get out of the contract I’m thinking. Iowa might get a little smokey in years to come.
October 28th, 2005 at 5:32 pm
I couldn’t agree with you more. Not only that but our pigs are more fun than the sheep. We have both. They graze the same fields. The sheep are standoffish, except for our ram who’s my pal, but the all of the pigs are friendly and always interested in a scratch. Doesn’t stop them from heading to market but it is more enjoyable to raise friendly animals.
October 28th, 2005 at 7:02 pm
Walter,
I do enjoy your photos of the pigs and sheep together.( And also the reminder of what winter looks like.) It brings back alot of memories of farms around here in my youth.The barnyards were more like zoos.The cows behind the barn with some sheep, and the hogs would live under the straw stack and come out cleaning up after them. Plus the chickens, ducks and geese always around too. The work horses over to the side munching on grass. Gee, I think I’m having visions of the future here!
Tom