July Farm and Pork Update

I haven’t posted for awhile for several reasons:  one, I have been busy farming which precluded writing, and two, I have been busy keeping up with my children and getting them back to homeschooling. 

This summer I have also explored different avenues of revenue for the farm.  I am thrilled to be following in the steps of my grandmothers and other relatives by growing flowers, although this time I am actually selling them.  Currently, I am selling my flowers to the local florist, Blythewood Gloriosa Florist, who enjoys using local flowers and supporting local businesses. 

I have enjoyed making people smile with sunflowers.  I have also written a few articles for my local paper, The Voice of Blythewood and Fairfield County .

The pigs have enjoyed a summer of rooting through 2 acres of soil for grubs, nuts, and anything tasty they can find.  They appreciate garden leftovers too.  They love a good mud bath, and sleep together in a pile of pork most evenings.  They are living their best pig life.  I enjoy having them and I will miss them when they leave us, although acquiring and feeding them 200 pounds or so of pig feed a week is getting a bit tiresome, even if it is a great workout!

I have an appointment with the slaughterhouse for next week.  I will begin feeding them in the trailer shortly to accustom them to entering it, and I hope to load them with a minimum of stress.  Then, before dawn, I will take them to Kingstree and the slaughterhouse.

The slaughterhouse will “harvest” them shortly after I leave them.  They will have had a wonderful life, and one bad day.

My children have mixed feelings about this.  My oldest child seems to understand the process completely.  My middle one has some misgivings about eating a pig she knows.  The pigs weighed 50 pounds or more when we got them, and so they were never snuggly pets, and we were always completely clear with the children and with ourselves that these pigs were going to be food, not pets.

My three-year-old seems to have the best understanding of it all.  In the way of three-year-olds, he asks endless questions, including why we had to feed the pigs every day.  I told him that we had to feed them so they could turn into bacon.

He said, with enthusiasm, “Yeah, we are going to feed them and feed them and they will get big and fat and then…”boom” they will turn into BACON!!”  I remind my middle child, who loves bacon, that every time she eats bacon from a pig that’s not from a family farm she is eating it from a pig that was just like these, only it didn’t have a good life in the woods.  She will come around, I think, especially when there is no other bacon in the house.

For more information about this pig-turned-into-bacon-via-an-explosion, please click here or on the link on the blue bar at the top of the page.

As for vegetables on the farm, I have a late crop of tomatoes in the upper field.  I am also busy seeding lettuce, spinach, Asian greens, carrots, radishes, and other goodies in preparation for the fall.  Unfortunately the rest of the garden went the way of many of us this summer and fried in the heat.

I plan to return to the Blythewood Farmers Market this month or in early September, depending on how things go at the farm.  In the interim, get more information about your pork by clicking here.