Thursday, April 2, 2009

The pigs are sinking!

The river bottom land that I farm is rock-free. It's a joy to till, and to grow things, but the pigs are showing one of its drawbacks. With a little water, and a lot of pigs, it turns into chocolate mousse. Right here the actual soil is about 70% peat moss.

I didn't put this feeder down into a mudpit. When it was placed, two or so weeks ago, this was a nice grassy area. It's in a pasture that I want to rehab, so I put the pigs into it to root it out and dig up most of the metal debris. Over time, with a little bit of rooting and a lot of rain, the ground has gradually turned into this boot-grabbing mud that's about 18" deep at this point.

To eat, the pigs actually "surf" in to the feeder, counting on the mud to support their bodies and "swimming" up to the feeder. It's pretty funny to watch.

I moved the feeder to another place a little farther down the pasture right after this picture was taken. In a week it'll look a lot like this spot.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This has got to be one of the funniest blog posts I have seen in a very long time! I couldn't see your farm from hwy 2 as I went by this afternoon, because of the rain. I feel for you, mud & hungry animals were waiting when I got home.