No, this isn’t a riddle.
A warm, dry, clean place to sleep, good food to eat, and something for entertainment.
The same as me.
So several years back we built an open-ended hoop barn for winter pig housing.
That checks one box...it keeps them dry.
Contrary to what Milo is taught from kids’ books, pigs actually prefer to be clean (Milo, of course, knows this). They only roll in mud because they can't sweat, so it cools them off. The challenge with keeping pigs' housing clean for any length of time is what comes out their back end.
In the conventional pig world this is dealt with by housing the pigs on slatted floors where their excrement falls through the floor and gets washed out with water into a manure lagoon.
There are multiple problems with this.
1) The valuable nitrogen from the excrement is very volatile when left exposed to the air, particularly when mixed with water. So a large portion of it off-gases as nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas.
2) An enormous amount of water is used to wash it all out of the barns.
3) As you have probably read in the news, these manure lagoons overflow when there are heavy rainstorms, and they wreak havoc (pun intended).
So OUR SOLUTION actually checks all of the other boxes.
We give them fresh bedding hay every day, all winter.
A) The fresh hay covers up yesterday’s manure, and absorbs today’s urine. (Clean)
B) The hay, manure, and urine make the perfect mixture for composting to take place. During the composting process, these raw materials can rise to over 140 degrees, so the pigs literally live with radiant floor heating. (Warm)
C) The hay is a great supplement to their organic grain. It’s like the salad next to their main course. (Good food to eat)
D) Because pigs are so curious, they have fun digging through the new hay that they get every day. They carry it around, build nests, and burrow into it for their naps. (Something for entertainment)
The added bonus is that when the pigs move back out to pasture in the spring, we pile up the bedding to help it finish composting, and then we spread it back out on our fields as an incredibly rich, organic fertilizer that was able to capture and utilize all of the nitrogen rather than having it escape into the atmosphere.
The challenge for us is that because the pigs eat some of the hay, it must be certified organic hay. There is only one certified organic hay producer in Rhode Island, and most years she doesn’t have enough to sell any.
We have traveled to MA, CT, VT, NY, and ME to get organic hay in past years.
So we are thrilled to announce our newest partnership with the Westerly Land Trust. Their Avondale Farm Preserve has been managed organically for a long time, but never officially certified.
With their help, and collaboration with the hay producers of Everbreeze Farm, we have been able to certify their fields and the hay produced from it.
This benefits the Westerly Land Trust by ensuring chemical-free management of their land, and keeping it mowed for the enjoyment of the public.
This benefits Everbreeze Farm by guaranteeing that all of the hay they produce from that farm will be sold right out of the field every year, rather than transported back to their farm and stored to hopefully sell later.
It benefits our local economy by keeping the sales dollars local and recirculating between small businesses.
And this benefits Wild Harmony Farm by giving us access to a large supply of certified organic hay in much closer proximity than any other options that we have found (which further reduces the carbon footprint of our bacon 😃).
The only thing better than Win-Win, is Win-Win-Win-Win.
- Farmer Ben
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