Broken Ground Farm

The pigs were a good push in the right direction. Excitement and motivation. These sweet piggos have been residing in our garden area. The hope is that they would work it for it us. They would eat the plants and weeds that were in overgrowth. Nope. They don’t care at all to forage those plants. If we scatter food among the weeds they will mow down the weeds by sheer force, but they aren’t eating them.

That means the work is up to us. We had made four raised beds. Each child had a bed and C.N.R. and I had a shared bed at the end. I decided that it needed to be cleaned out.

Looking at the picture the space in between the tarp and the electric pole on the left, those are our 4 dedicated beds. It was bad.

With a small amount of help from a couple kids, I got the bed cleaned out. How do the pigs reward the clean space? Oreo promptly pees in the space between beds and poops in the cleaned out bed. Congratulations! I created a clean space and she fertilized it! Not that we left it. That mess needs composted.

Look at all that space waiting for a fall crop of veggies!

More progress is made when we all work together. All 5 of us came together and cleaned out the other 3 beds and started a compost pile! And yes, Sunshine Girl is wearing green goggles. She has her Momma’s sense of style!

Worth noting here, we scooted the pigs out of these beds. Also, their new shelter arrived. I ordered it from Walmart. It is Shelter Logic 8x10x5 and it required assembly. It took 2 adults, extra tools, and some help from the kiddos.

Left to right: C.B., Hankers, Oreo

We put the compost pile near the raised beds. We keep it covered to help the nutrients from leeching out in the rain. Right now it is full of what came from the garden beds. We will add pig manure to it, turn it, and cover it back up.

Check out that huge mess. All that straw at the bottom of the pile was where the pig shelter was initially. When we moved the shelter we scooped up the bulk of straw and put it back under the shelter. Pigs, given the choice, aren’t going to use the restroom where they sleep or eat. This straw was clean. However, the remains of it made a good place to start the pile. I felt a small glimmer of victory know that those weeds that cause so much trouble had been pulled up, piled up, and were going to be turned into something useful for our farm; compost.

Butterfly enjoying a short rest on the compost tarp.