Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

market-farming - Re: market-farming Pig Tillers

market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Market Farming

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "Dori Green" <dorigreen00 AT hotmail.com>
  • To: market-farming AT franklin.oit.unc.edu
  • Subject: Re: market-farming Pig Tillers
  • Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 08:06:06 -0500


When pigs stirrup compost and dig up the garden they also leave behind fresh poop, and we wonder why organic foods contain e coli???.
Sunny Meadow Farm
Bridgeton, NJ.

Somebody was in a hurry and didn't read my whole post <G>.

1. Pigs are used to open new ground (1-2 weeks in a confined area),

2. Buckwheat and millet follow the pigs (4-6 weeks),

3. Chickens follow the buckwheat and millet (2 weeks),

4. Field peas follow the chickens (90 days to maturity), sometimes cut in for biomass and sometimes left on as a winter cover.

5. Overwintered crops such as garlic and spring flower bulbs (non-edible) are planted that autumn.

Not much likelihood of any e-coli contamination in this rotation. There's more than a year between the raw poop and the harvested crop, with aeration and healthy soil action in between.

I would definitely not recommend following the pigs or the chickens with mesclun! <G>

Two more hints about pig tillers -- the critters are very sensitive to electric wire, so an inexpensive pet fence charger will work to hold them where one wants them. My own biggest reason for the closer and sturdier confinement is to keep the neighbors' dogs away from my pigs.

I buy pigs as soon as they're weaned from known small-scale producers in the neighborhood. Their mothers are passed by my vet, they are passed by my vet, before they come home. All of my animals have regular veterinary care when they live here. They have warm clean shelter in the winter with good ventilation and entertainment (public radio) and company (one or two friends). I'm an herbalist but not a fanatic; when an animal needs medicine, it gets it. But I don't routinely feed antibiotics or hormones to make an animal "grow better", so when they _are_ used, they're effective.

Dori Green
certified organic 1993
former VP, NOFA-NY
former farm certification board member, NOFA-NY

Ash Grove Community Farm & Center for Sustainable Living
Corning, NY

http://www.ic.org/agrove/index.htm


_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com




  • Re: market-farming Pig Tillers, Dori Green, 03/22/2001

Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page