Pigs have always been such a fascination to me. Not just because they're dirty and smelly, but because they can help cycle nutrients into the land, eat food scraps, tear up the soil and mix it with rich manure.
Pigs, while smelly are pretty awesome livestock when it comes to meat on a small homestead. I'm kind of a bit obessessed with them but so is the internet.
Grinding your own field corn seems like a good way to save money but I think I would find a way to run the corn sheller mechanically as turning it seems like a lot of hard and unnecessary work. That home-made corn crib though is pretty neat and sounds like it works well for storage and drying of field corn. I'm actually very impressed by this small scale homestead operation.
Raising pigs for meat is a great idea for most homesteaders. Every year we raise pigs for our own family and to sell to our local community.
I was watching this video the other day, it has an interesting perspective on the economics of raising hogs on a homestead. Like most things relating to farming and homesteading, pigs aren't cheap but they produce a lot of delicious meat. Neighbors had hogs growing up and Cam Edwards of the NRA makes me hungry every time he talks about the heritage hogs he raises. Pigs aren't cheap but they sure are tasty even though you do want to have a fair bit of land to raise them as I can tell you they sure can smell as they root around in fermented grain.
While most of my reading and learning about pig farming has been on the small-scale side of things, it's kind of interesting to see how the bigger operations in Iowa raise and produce delicious pork.
