Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Halloween! Well, not really. After halloween!!

 Ever wonder what happens to all those pumpkins that don't get sold?  Well, here's what happens to some of them.  We recycle them.  We get truckloads of them at this time of year, maybe 30 tons of them, and feed them straight to the pigs.  If you look in the picture above, you'll notice some green squash -- those are hubbard squash.  We usually get an assortment. 
 We glean these vegetables directly from the farmers field -- whatever doesn't get picked up gets plowed back into the field, and I've always thought that was a shame.  Seems a lot better to pick them up and use them for feed.  I'll compost them, too -- I'll just put it through a pig first!
As I've mentioned before, the pigs will bite a hole through the side and then mine out all of the seeds right away.  You can see a pumpkin in the lower right hand corner that's been cleaned out,and this sow is working on another one.   Whole pumpkins are a seasonal treat for our pigs, and it's one of the reasons I look forward to fall.

2 comments:

becky3086 said...

Well, I am glad they get used some where. I have 6 of them that I have bought that were marked down at the store to make into pumpkin pie filling or just to eat (the squash ones).

SmithGang said...

Ty, I'm going to see if our farmers market Will give us some for our pigs. They had so many un-bought ones this year.