Dj Tog

Our friends raised meishans. And everything you've said about them is true. BUT they were horrible pasture pigs: just laid around all day waiting to be fed. Our friends butchered their stock last year and are sticking with GOS.

We've raised kunekune and similarly found the grow out to be a bit lengthy. We're looking into an IPP boar, but no experience yet to share.

Thank you for sharing. Youve shown a lot of courage.. Homesteading is an incredibly humbling endeavor.

Thanks for asking, Anne!

Here are a couple of videos I just took while moving our pigs to a new paddock for the week.




All pigs are 3/4 Kunekune & 1/4 potbelly, born on our neighbor's farm. Franz & Mirabelle were born appox 8 Oct 2020, with Lucy & Lily being born approx 15 April 2021. All are brothers and sisters.

Our food forest is laid out in a keyline, silvopasture system. A friend of ours was kind enough to take some drone photos for us. The picture below is from October 2020.



Due to high deer pressure, trees and shrubs were all transplanted as 1 year old whips and put into 5' tree tubes.



Trees are currently planted at 5' spacing with a 30' alley way. Within each row, species are planted according to a modified "NAP" system (think Permaculture Orchard or Versaland) in order to maintain inter-row diversity even as plants mature, die, are moved, etc.

Our property slopes between 6% - 12%, so back in 2018 we cut irrigation ditches (not swales in a traditional sense) along keylines using a rented trencher.



That's just a spitball of stuff we've been up to for the past few years. Let me know what interests you, and I can elaborate more!

Thanks

DJ

Hey All -- DJ from Harmony Homestead here. My wife and I live on a 1.75-acre homestead in the rolling hills of the Driftless region of Wisconsin, where our Kunekune pigs are savanna-raised in our 3-year-old food forest, which consists primarily of apples, hazelnuts, chestnuts, elderberries, honeylocust, currants, and grapes. Elsewhere on the property we specialize in cut-flowers for weddings and design.

We recently launched a live webcam so folks who can't visit us in person can still enjoy the thrills of permaculture pigs. Check it out below! Hope you enjoy. Also I'm happy to talk about any and all things we do here at Harmony Homestead.



With the weather turning, we are currently rotating in a "hub-and-spoke" style system. 3 gilts & 1 barrow. Hoping to make 1 or more gilts into a sow next spring. Camera is presently in barnyard and in the background you can see a gate open to a 1/6th acre paddock. Paddocks are shifted weekly with 3-4 weeks of rest. Poultry netting (to eventually integrate hens as well) & a solar charger are used. Pasture was neglected horse pasture when we purchased the property in 2017, and we have been frost seeding clover, especially white, with moderate success.

Great looking garlic, Angela. I believe they'll cure fine like that as long as there's airflow. Plant your cured cloves again this fall.

Lew Johnson wrote:So I guess I should find out what kind of temperatures my greenhouse experiences throughout the year... do you all just manually check with a thermometer? Or do you have some fancy monitoring device?

I do have a raspberry pi I could repurpose... but I'd need to order some sensors and run extension cables... I also don't have power in the greenhouse.

I monitor my greenhouse with a Temp Stick (no affiliation). It has been game changing.