He Lets Pigs Till His Garden

He Lets Pigs Till His Garden HOG EQUIPMENT & IDEAS For about three days every fall and spring Luke Eising runs a strand or two of electric fence wire around his garden and lets his pigs take over They eat leftover veggies and grub out roots and vegetation Eising gets free fertilizer and a deeply-tilled garden ready to disc and plant     “I do a lot of plowing with pigs ” says the White Cloud Mich farmer He and his wife Caitlin own Provision Family Farms and make about half their income selling pasture-raised pork with the rest coming from selling pasture-raised beef sheep and poultry     Eising first used pigs several years ago to start a new garden He needed to separate the boar from the sows so he built an 8 by 12-ft pen with green treated lumber bolted to log skids Each day the boar rooted up the entire area within the pen Each day Eising pulled the pen ahead with his 30 hp IH tractor     “It was sort of like a chicken tractor for pigs ” he says He provided water with a hose and nipple waterer and shade with a piece of tin over part of the pen The boar had plenty to eat and Eising got his garden spot cleared and fertilized     It worked well for that application Eising says noting he hasn’t used it for a few years since moving to the current farm where he and his wife raise a half-acre garden for their own use It’s big enough for about 40 pigs to till up over three days     He also uses his “pig plows” to work up small acreages he wants to plant for feed     “They work the ground and manure it thoroughly where they winter ” Eising says noting that the method of disturbance followed by several recovery years of rest works well for him One of his favorite crops to plant in the pig-tilled ground is Sudex a sorghum-sudangrass hybrid that is sweet and nutritious for the pigs to pasture on     Contact: FARM SHOW Followup Luke Eising Provision Family Farm 5274 E 6 Mile Rd White Cloud Mich 49349 ph 231 689-0457; www provisionfamilyfarms com; provisionfamilyfarms@gmail com

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