Our first employee of the month goes to drum roll please!… Boris! Our big handsome boar!

While the farm is still in slow motion till the spring season kicks off, Boris is the first one to get started on some of our big 2024 plans. Boris lives a pretty care free lifestyle without too much expectations, but not in February! Boris has one job around here, reigning in the next generation of piglets at the farm. An early star in February means we’ll have piglets coming mid to late spring when the weather is warm, the ground is dry, and fresh nutritious grasses are coming up in the fields. It’s a perfect time for little pasture pigs! This season the hogs will be clearing some of our most weedy spots of the pasture, they’ll clear the land down to the dirt and adding vital nutrients and fertility to the soil so we can plant fresh pasture seed to improve the grazing quality of the grass.

Why this is important to us

It’s our hope that reseeding the pasture in this way will leave the long growing perennial plants which have colonized our field well in tact. This technique will maintain the biological diversity our field has grown through years of no tilling and general farming neglect. These plants are important to pollinators and the wildlife which lives in or passing through our field. The deep roots build the soil, move nutrients deeper into the soil, reduce erosion, enhance water retention, and offer diverse grazing which is beneficial to the gut health of ruminate grazers (the yakies!).

Managed ground disturbance from hogs kick starts long living seeds in the ground, loosens the soil and evens the odds where individual plant species have taken over and will be our first step in restoring life and fertility to our soil.

Thanks for reading our story, we hope you enjoyed! We’d love to hear from you if you have any questions or comments so please feel free to reach out by email or stop by the farm and have a chat with us! 😊