DAY 2: abundant sunshine and pig feed hunting

Weather: SUNNY as can be (everyone on campus is sporting varying degrees of pinkness) and warm, in the mid-high 80s.

Good news:

• Well, to start off with a side note, breakfast at Sterling was divine this morning: pecan banana pancakes, maple syrup and sausage. oh man.
• Got lucky, one of the local schools is willing to set aside pre-consumer waste for me! All I had to do was provide lidded buckets and a promise to come and fetch them.
• Then, picked up delicious looking baked good seconds for the piggies in Hardwick from The Magic Spoon Bakery. And was gifted a tasty peanut butter cookie.
• Later on in the day, Ephraim, a fellow student and farm hand started fixing up the tongue of the hay wagon we'll be using as pig shelter/storage location for water and possible dry feed (on days there is no whey). Hooray for helpers and delegation of tasks!
  

Not so good news:

• Price Chopper and Hannafords both have policies barring them from giving me ANY leftover food. This is why I dislike dealing with big corporations. They have no reason/capacity to care for the little guy.
  
• EVEN WORSE, the dairy I was counting on for whey has decided to feed all their whey to their ewes. This is worrisome. I'm waiting to hear back from 2 other local cheese makers.
  

To-be-determined news:

• Still waiting to hear back from: Subway, Rock Art Brewery, Dunkin' Donuts and a few local restaurants.

That was basically my day as it relates to pigs. I had no class, instead ran around to different businesses hoping that doing things in person might be more persuasive.

I'll leave you with this cute thought/image.

DAY 1: measurements, mugginess, and making calls .

Weather: sunny, azure skies, low 80s (felt like way more, as the first day in the 80s always does)

Sows: Ice Cream weighed in at 553 lbs. and Maple was quite a bit less at a mere 512. The calculation I used was (GxLxL)/400, with G standing for girth (and L for length).

Piglets: ADORABLE, as usual. Oddly enough, the auburn colored ones, who are also some of the biggest, like being pet/scratched behind the ears the most. I guess I always knew redheads were the best :)

Decisions: The piglets fate will be: 4 slaughtered on-campus in September by Dave McCoy. One of which will be given/sold at a modest price to the church in Craftsbury for their monthly community meal, another of which will be the feature in a Welcome to the Fall Semester pig roast, and the last of which will be sold to the Sterling College Kitchen. 1 will be (tentatively) traded for a heifer with Heartbeet Farm. And the remaining 3 will be slaughtered off-site in February. Their pork will be sold in one of two ways: Either directly to low-income people (if their production cost was low-enough) or, more likely, some will be sold to higher-income people at full-cost + profit, and this will subsidize the donation of some pork to nearby food shelves.

Upcoming: Fence training! The wetter outside the better, as it'll provide a good, clean shock.

Question: Dunkin' Donuts seconds, ethical pig feed, yay or nay? (almost all the other surrounding bakeries I called this afternoon are fully tapped by either pig farmers or food shelves. which makes me proud of the NE Kingdom, but running low on options...)

The Plan

This summer I am in charge of 8 piglets and 2 sows as part of my senior project. My goals are two-fold: First, to regenerate Virgina Russell Pasture (part of it), an 8-acre pasture on the Sterling College Farm by having the pigs tear up the earth, and then reseeding it with a pasture mix. Second, I aim to produce pork that is as reasonably priced as possible in order for it to be sold to low-income people. Bacon for all!

The pigs will be out on pasture shortly. The farm manager, Stuart, and I will be fence training them this week, and they should be ready for pasture by next. (As well as fully weaned).

Edit 5/30: just kidding, they won't be fully weaned anytime soon. My adviser, the farm manager and I decided to try out letting the mom's control the weaning, since the piglets have been eating "grown-up" feed for awhile anyway. So they'll still be weaning when they go out on pasture.


I'll leave you with a video I took today of one persistent piglet and its mama (and her concurrent knocking over of her water container):