by Diane Schivera, MAT Pigs can be valuable additions to diversified farms by providing meat and helping to clear land. Louis Bromfield wrote in his book From My Experience (1955), “To be financially successful at raising hogs primarily requires the ability to think like a hog.” This article covers the basics of keeping pigs and
Toki Oshima drawing By C.J. Walke Organic growers face numerous challenges with pest management, regardless of the crops grown, and look to crop rotation, biological controls and carefully timed applications of approved materials to target the pest at hand. Organic tree fruit are vulnerable to many insect pests over the course of the season, whether those pests
Pigs forage in the woods at the Deer Isle Hostel. Photo by Anneli Carter-Sundqvist A Tamworth pig grazes a wooded area at certified-organic Frith Farm in Scarborough, Maine. Photo courtesy of Frith Farm. By Anneli Carter-Sundqvist The end of our homesteading season has for five consecutive years been marked by the butchering of our pigs.
Grazing Pigs Vs. Plum Curculio Jim Koan, owner of the 150-acre AlMar Orchards in Clayton Township, Michigan, grazes Berkshire hogs in his organic apple orchard, obtaining almost complete control of plum curculio within a few years. Plum curculios lay eggs in fruits in the spring, and the resultant larvae later cause fruit drop. On the
These five pigs are being raised on pasture by MOFGA’s farmers-in-residence, Clayton Carter and Kendra Michaud. They turned under a lush stand of rye and hairy vetch in one week, then were moved to a spot where oats, peas and forage brassicas had been seeded several days earlier. The pigs pushed the seed into the
By Alice Percy Copyright ©2006 by the author The Problem Walk into the meat department of any natural foods store, and you’ll likely find organic beef and chicken, but rarely organic pork. Why? The conventional hog farmer – the guy with thousands of sows out in Iowa – uses some of the most noxious “agricultural”
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