The Post-Apocalyptic Permaculture Pig

@Mick Fisch: "It doesn't bother me to shoot a "stranger" (meaning a wild animal). I theorize I need to maintain a critical emotional distance between myself and my meat animals."

Yeah, clearly throughout time, especially when rote survival came down to it, one had to bite the bullet and off livestock. To nurture something and then kill it for your survival naturally raises concerns within one's cosmology. Philosophically, I like to start from the point of hunting and gathering: When living that life-style, life is more a game of chance. If your arrow takes down the deer, you and yours eat.....if not, you may starve, and that's part of the gamble. Irrespective of whether or not it's hunting (emotional distance from target) or killing your own stock (since the dawn of domestication/agriculture), if I know that my "missed deer" can be replaced by going down to the store and buying meat in the freezer, there is imbalance in that equation. That's one of the ethical/moral/philosophical conundrums of agriculture.

I still eat meat, even meat I don't kill, and even though I do it I'm not comfortable with doing so....it's "buying" the distance you refer to by relegating the unpleasantries of the kill-floor to the industry. I'm more comfortable with eating our roosters that we kill, but you can get pretty attached to them as well. I won't speculate on where the livestock industry will eventually end up, but it is noteworthy on a microscale that my parents, who grew up on depression era farms, can't see the problem with whacking a bunch of "dumb animals" for meat. None of their offspring feel that way and collectively that may hallmark a slow change in attitude. Although I'm not descended from aboriginal or indigenous peoples (unless you go back far enough and try to decide when to stop), ultimately their generalized take on animals as well as other entities as being "relatives" is worth considering. It brings a reverence back to what you are eating and is part of reversing the notion of plants and animals as 'commodities'. A work in progress.....on a personal as well as planetary scale.

For reading of similar thinking, I like Paul Shepard's "Nature and Madness", (the most relevant chapter being "The Domesticators") in which he references many others regarding these issues.

Real good post. I am raising 3 feeder pigs, they are almost ready to take to slaughter. They are a "get my feet wet" introduction to pigs. I want to raise pigs, but don't want a 700 to 1,000 pound slab of army tank meat hog deciding to snack on the grand kids. I researched like mad and have decided on Idaho Pasture Pigs. They stay smaller, boars top out at 450 pounds, and reach market weight 250 pounds in about 9 months. The down side is, the closest ones are 3 states away and they are expensive. But I don't mind a road trip...... The 3 I am raising now are half Berkshire and half Large Black. I can't wait for my first taste.

I am looking forward to more posts. You bring out some good points, especially about 300 million people all hunting the same game animals. We used to live 75 miles from Houston Texas. Remember hurricane Katrina that wiped out New Orleans? Three weeks later hurricane Rita headed for Houston, and Houston evacuated. Our town was over run by thousands of scared desperate people. A 2 hour trip took 24-28 hours, in 105 degree heat, cars over heated and people ran out of gas, in our town and towns surrounding Houston. As a town, we sheltered people in our churches and schools. It got real critical, there was NO gas, NO electricity and NO grocery stores open (they were wiped empty anyway). Fortunately, "normal" returned in a week and people went home. We moved.

Got a little off track there, but you said you are a survivalist........LOL I am waiting on piglet pictures!

Mick Fisch wrote:I had a problem with putting my goats down. Thought it wouldn't bother me, but when it came time to do the deed I found they were individuals I knew, usually liked and enjoyed watching. Maybe I should have waited until they really ticked me off by getting out of their pen again and ignoring the weed trees and killing another $30 dollar fruit tree that was just getting ready to produce fruit. I also found I didn't want to put down my egg chickens for meat when the time came, but I didn't mind putting down the cross rocks my sun-in-law and daughter raised for meat. I guess it was because I didn't waste any extra attention on them and viewed them as "the meat flock" instead of noticing them individually.

It's an issue for me as well. I actually teared up when I had to butcher my 3 roosters when I moved into town. I'd had them for a couple of years and they protected the flock against coyotes and hawks, though they didn't fare well against the bald eagle. You do get attached, even to chickens that don't give a damned about you. The next roo was a lot easier. I don't think it'll be hard to pot my hens when the time comes, and my daughter feels the same way. We look at it as giving them the best possible life from start to finish. You also have to understand that, if you didn't raise them for meat, they wouldn't have lived at all.

It's easier with my quail as there are a lot of them and the meat ones are only around for 8 weeks, so you don't get to know them personally. I've also started with rabbits and that's going to be brutal, to the point that my first litter is probably going to be for sale as pets as they're so friendly. I'll feel better about selling some of them if possible, but I'll butcher them if I have to. I think that the second litter will be easier to deal with, but bunnies are probably the hardest to kill. I wouldn't change how I raise and handle them, though, as that will make it completely stress-free for them when the time comes. They want to be held, which is what makes it so hard.

I do raise all my animals in the best way I possibly can, and I know that they are raised far better than anything I can buy in a store. I feel that, as an omnivore, I have a responsibility to eat animals raised in the best environment possible, which means raising them myself. It's not easy, but I don't think it should be. That said, they're here for a purpose and not sticking to that means I'd be buying meat that wasn't raised in a good environment. It's hard, but it does get easier. I do think that I'd like to find someone to dispatch mine while I dispatch theirs, but I think I owe it to my animals to do it myself to make sure it's done right and as easy on them as possible.

Good luck with it.

My father should have had a son. He got me. That said, he took the time to teach me a lot of things.

How to hunt, how to fish. I could enjoy the sport, but. I ate what I took. You kill it you clean it you cook it you eat it. Was enforced. You took it you ate it. I didn't like fish much but I loved to sport fish. I ate it if I caught it.

On the farm we raised what we ate. There were food animals and there were pets. You never named the steer that was going in the freezer. It was given proper care but you spent as little time as possible so it didn't become a pet. The neighbors had the same issue, the mothers would make pets of the food animals. So we would take turns loading up steer and going to other's place and with those that shouldn't know out of sight, kill, bleed, hang, dress, and skin the steers and tell those that had issues we traded. Once the skin was off one carcass looked like another. I was nine when they learned I had a good hand with the skinning knife and could slip that right off. And sworn to the secret. Every other year we would raise about 350 chickens to butcher and split between three families. I hated doing pinfeathers and always got to do them, so one day I asked my mom what could I do INSTEAD of pinfeathers. She said chop heads. So I went to ask my dad how to, I was ten. He realized I was serious so he showed me how to sharpen the hatchet right, do a good stroke into the tree chunk we used for that. My first time it took two strokes and I still regret that one. That was also the last time it took two. Dad said he'd wanted chicken for supper so those two got prepped and ate (he did one, I did one). A few weeks later the group decided to start butchering and set up to do at least 30. Mom went to find dad and I took my younger cousin to catch chickens. She came past in the yard and there were chickens fluttering in the tall grass, and she had a fit to find out it was me. Dad had showed me how. I never did another pinfeather, SHE did them.

I was taught this was natural, and I took life to eat. It came into this world because it would be food and I would take it out of it, because I wanted to eat. How to do it correctly, humanely as possible, and with respect. By mid teens I probably delivered that calf in March, fed it all year, and put it in the freezer the end of October.

Pets, I learned that too. Sometimes it was time, sometimes it just had to be done. Doesn't mean I liked it. But I still had to do it. Sometimes it went in the freezer for quite a while, if it was the pet chicken or the runt bottlefed hog.

Varmits were another matter. Gophers, rats... target practice.

It'll never be easy but at least I know how. I can thank my father for that.

Then you hear I'm vegan? Yes, medical. I only eat the diet. I can prepare my other half (the omnivore) a lovely grilled bacon double cheese burger on a toasted wheat bun. I will clean the grill because of possible cholesterol contamination, not that it held meat recently, then cook my stuff.

The pig on your feet, maybe a trade with the neighbor, sort of like we did with the steers... Someone I farmsit for on occasion, had a flock. She couldn't do it so I would make a trip out while she was 'in town' with her permission, and cull the bird or birds she needed, and get them dressed out while she wasn't there. She'd return to them tucked into the fridge. She would pay me off in eggs for my hubby's morning omelettes.


The chapters about Mr. Wu are GREAT. Got any more?

         "The chapters about Mr. Wu are GREAT. Got any more?"

Why, Yes. There is plenty more to this story....but I am waiting to get back to Canada untill I rework it all into One post on my own web site. We are doing vollenteer work in South America in a mega city of 10 million all this year. I started my own site to document Survival Adaptations from down here that north amerikans need to see.

What is pertinant to this post....is in the farming communities...ALL the pigs we see are Tethered. It's not an anomaly. That got me thinking about this post.

My new site where you can find me... and several well known Doomer guest writers... is The Dark Green Mountain Survival Research Centre.

Posts there most pertinant to be shared here at Permies would be...


Powering Your Doomstead On Apocalyptic Guinea Pigs. No Shit. Maybe Some Shit    https://darkgreenmountainsurvivalresearchcentre.wordpress.com/2017/04/24/running-your-doomstead-on-apocalypse-guinea-pigs-no-shit-maybe-shit/
and
C5 Presents- The Ultimate Cargo Bike- Redux – The Shareable Version    https://darkgreenmountainsurvivalresearchcentre.wordpress.com/2017/07/04/c5-presents-the-ultimate-cargo-bike-redux-the-shareable-version/

The reason its the "Sharable" version... is because my original posts are punk rock, rude, crude and confrontational. Not acording to the rules of Permies. I beleive, because of the dark nature of our future, its best if we acnowledge we are in a Street Fight for survival...and act acordingly.

Others have writen about the site... “…if you brave the sometimes eye popping ‘did he really just write that’  without ending in a head shake or starting to laugh”. and "definitely not for family audience” and ” He is normally PG-14 and at times Rated R” and “What a wonderful Rabbit Hole this blog is”.

Be warned, My original post sums it up,  "Expect foul language, deplorable English, un researched opinions presented as facts, deeply inappropriate sexual innuendo and a general Truthiness that makes people uncomfortable around the dinner table....Also expect plenty of survival advice and adaptive strategies. It wont be the usual crap you get from ridiculous survival experts."

https://darkgreenmountainsurvivalresearchcentre.wordpress.com/

Stay tuned for a future article on "Permaculture Terracing- From the Inkas- For Survival Junk Land" in the months to come.

As promised, my article, "C5 on Terracing Junk Land- Survival Advice From Pre Inca South America- Permaculture=Permanent Culture"  is now up and I think You folks will like.
https://darkgreenmountainsurvivalresearchcentre.wordpress.com/2017/09/14/c5-on-terracing-junk-land-survival-advice-from-pre-inca-south-america-part-13-permaculturepermanent-culture/

Tomorrow, we leave for the Amazon Jungle. I'll do my best to return with new survival advice. Stay tuned.

As promised, The Redux version of this post is now up at DGM SRC, where you will get the rest of the story in all its embarrassing, messy, rude and probably Too Much for Permies, glory. New and Bigger photos. Updates from the common Peru version of tethering.

https://darkgreenmountainsurvivalresearchcentre.wordpress.com/2017/12/02/c5-and-the-post-apocalyptic-permaculture-pig-redux/

C5 and The Post Apocalyptic Permaculture Pig, REDUX.