Hogs 📍

🗺️ Maps 🖼️ Photos 📽️ Videos

Bacon!

|

Bacon. I’ve avoided bacon over the past few years after an incident five or six years ago when a package of bacon got put in the wrong bag while shopping and didn’t get put in cooler and went rancid by the time I cooked it in the morning. I don’t know why I decided to try to cook it but I figured as a cured meat with the cooking process I would kill off any bacteria, but it still was gross. I was not sad to see the bacon in the plastic wrapper shrivel up and get burned that evening in the fire.

Since then I’ve avoided bacon like the plague. Bacon for a while was quite expensive and honestly despite the grease doesn’t have that much taste. Maybe if you raise your own heritage hogs on your land and make your own bacon like Cam Edwards but not so much the store bought stuff.

This past weekend I bought some bacon, made it up with eggs and also grilled cheese sandwiches. Came out pretty good. The grease also helped reseason my cast iron skillet which had gotten damp and had some rust. Honestly, I think I like bacon as an occasional treat.

Maybe eventually when I do own land and my off grid cabin, I’ll buy and raise a heritage hog like Cam Edwards does. Pigs are smelly dirty animals but who cares if you live in the country and have land. I’m sure I could put some very good bacon and the many pounds of lard to good use. Recycle my food waste into something quite profitable, keep it out of the burn barrel where it’s not going to burn very well. Composting is great but bacon is even better.

August 23, 1968 the Youth International Party nominates their candidate for President

|

Yes, Pigaus the Infamous was a Yorkshire, 🐷 which was and still is number one in the pork 🥩 industry although that's changing at least on small farms with the growth in popularity of the many heritage pigs that have unique characteristics like the ability to forage for a greater portion of their feed ration 🌾 or produce more lard and better tasting more fatty bacon 🥓. 

Friday August 21, 2020 — Hogs
Map: Gilman Lake

How To Butcher An Entire Pig (AT HOME!!)

|

In this video, we show you how we butchered two entire pigs, at home! You don't need any special equipment or tools. Everything we used is easily accessible to most homesteads/farms.

Map: Severence Hill Trail

Not picky

|

View this post on Instagram

Hogs are really the garbage disposals of the livestock world. We accidentally ran out of their feed (miscalculation on my part, combined with their increasing food needs!) so they are currently filling their bellies with lots of food that would otherwise be composted. Buckets of tomatoes and other produce that couldn’t be sold. Bread from the @auntmilliesbread outlet. Cracked corn and sunflower seeds we had on hand. And hay that the ruminants weren’t big fans of. Later in the day, they’ll get some eggs that the birds broke, more produce, and more bread. They also have their acre of pasture to find yummy snacks in! We feed a species appropriate diet to each of our animals, but sometimes we just miscalculate their needs, and run out. A couple days of this alternate diet won’t harm them in the slightest, and is good enrichment for their brains! Thank you @danarandall69 for supporting us through @patreon and helping to make all this happen! . . . #farmlife #piglife #pasturedpigs #pasturedpork #regenerativeagriculture #regenerativefarming

A post shared by Nicole & Robert Goetz (@frontierefarmhouse) on

TRUTH VS MYTH… Idaho Pastured Pigs

|

Homesteady: TRUTH VS MYTH… Idaho Pastured Pigs

7/16/2020 by Austin Martin, Squash Hollow Farm

Web player: https://podplayer.net/?id=109802435
Episode: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/WPCM2016906615.mp3

The IPP… the IDAHO PASTURED PIG. It has made quite a lot of noise in the homesteading world.

There are a lot of big claims surrounding it. What is fact and what is myth?

Today we share an interview on the channel with Mouse Creek Farm who has been raising these pigs for years.

Kirstin answers lots of our IPP questions including do you have to supplement their diet or can they live off pasture alone? Do they ever root? And how is their meat production and quality?

The Farm and Hammer YouTube channel I often watch recently got some of those pasture pigs. While no pig is a ruminatent – you can’t stick them on grass exclusively and be they be healthy, pasture pigs can cut your feed bill by fifty percent, and eat some of the noxious plants that cows won’t touch.

Apparently the key to pasture pigs is making sure they have plenty of mineral including salt and rotate pastures frequently. Then they won’t destroy the pasture rooting it up in search of minerals.

Pigs as livestock interest me a lot when I eventually own my own homestead. Good bacon, good pork chops and other cuts. Not to mention a good way to recycle food waste and recycle all that paper trash I get in the mail as bedding.

My neighbors growing up had pigs on their homesteads. And it seems like a lot of people I follow on the internet raise hogs for meat as a hobby. They’re really quite fascinating animals. I should get some more books out of the library about raising pigs.