Pigs

The last 6 months or so we have been raising pigs, or should I say the kids have been raising them. Their names were pork chop, ham and sausage.  This is to avoid the awkward moment at the dinner table when the kids ask what we are eating.  The hubs took the pigs to the butcher today.  While I think about the cost and the time, I'm not sure we come out ahead.  When I mentioned that to the hubs he said, that's not the point, we just needed to teach the kids."  We love bacon, sausage, pork roasts etc, but mostly we got pigs so the kids would learn.  That old quote, "I'm not raising pigs (inserted your item here), I'm raising children" applies here.

Our pigs were not as cute as the ones pictured.  I can't believe I didn't take any pictures of them.  I gotta work on that.  Maybe some point I will get a smart phone and will have my camera with me all the time, right?

I learned a few things while we were raising these pigs.  First, you can't just raise 1 pig at a time.  They like to have pals.  Can't we relate?  Who likes to be alone in life?  That being the case, we had 3.  We had neighbors who wanted one and we got 2 figuring we could sell one.  Even as little piglets they were surrounded by a lot of flies.  I also learned that they love water.  Their snouts are super strong.  The blue clay that we live on was not a challenge for them.  The used their noses and created all kinds of holes, especially around the fence line.  These critters will eat anything...I mean anything.  I kept an empty ice cream bucket on my counter and any time we had left over food or scraps from peeling and cutting veggies, we filled the bucket and sent it out for the pigs.  A few times the boys forgot to take the bucket and some green stuff may have started growing.  Ya know what?  The pigs didn't even care, not even a bit.  I guess they can't tell the difference of mold or the dirt they are eating it off of.   My boys, especially Stetson, would get in the pen with them from the time we got them.  He played with them and chased them and spent hours in the pen.  As they got bigger he spent less time with them, but they were still nice to him.  One other thing we learned is not to feed them meat.  Our friend's family owned a butcher shop and would feed the meat trimmings to their pigs.  The boy disappeared and they thought he drowned nearby, but later found his shoe in the pig pen and figured the pig ate him.  Morbid yes, but we took that to heart and kept meat out of their slop bucket.  Better safe than sorry.

I haven't figured out if the whole process saves us money.  Between us and our friends we figured the price for food per pig was $240.00 and the cost of the pig was $70.00.  We will probably have another $200.00 or so to have it cut and wrapped.  But when bacon is $7.00 a package, it might just be worth it.  I do love the fact that we know exactly what they have been fed, and even more, that we appreciate the meat because of the work that was put in, whether by us or the kids.

Moral of the story, in a month we will be having a yummy breakfast, maybe 3 times a day. Don't be jealous.  Eat Bacon.

Fun fact:  I have a pig collection that I started in high school.  Anything from salt and pepper shakers, dish towels, ice cream scoop that oinks, pillows, stuffed animals, figurines.  Even after raising them, I still think they are cute.