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TRUTH VS MYTH… Idaho Pastured Pigs

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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.

Social distancing in a community of 76 people per square mile 🏡🐮🏡🐷🌲🌳

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I grew up in the Town of Westerlo which some time ago I figured out had a population density of something like 75 people per square mile. 🌆 That’s actually about the average population density of America – some places are much more dense, others more rural. That said, I grew up in a hamlet of Dormansville – the outskirts of the hamlet so I’m sure the population density was somewhat greater. 👪 My parents had like 5 acres of land and neighbors on three sides and city reservoir property behind it. I always thought that the neighbors were a bit too close.

The other day I was driving through Font Grove and the wind was blowing just the right way with the windows open in my truck and pungent smell of buck goat 🐐 rolled through the window. Definitely pungent. 👃 I was taken back to my childhood home, with my homesteading neighbors with their goats, pigs, cows, chicken and other livestock. And their very noisy donkey.🏇 The endless hours of them riding up and down the street with their four-wheelers and their noisy trucks that backfire all of the time.

All of which was fine, but I always though they were a little too close for comfort. When I own land, I would like to be a lot farther away from all neighbors. They say good fences make good neighbors, but so do distance too. If you are farther away, it keeps noisy neighbors from being bothered and keeps you from being bothered too. If they can’t smell or see your smoke, or livestock, everybody is just a lot happier.