Notes From Zone 4

I’ve been calling around to various places, looking for stuff to feed the pigs. Left over stuff, stale bread, etc. We’ve been getting left over bagels from Bagel Works a couple of times a week, and boy do the pigs and chickens like that! But with feed prices as high as they are, we needed more. All sorts of places told me that they sent all of their stuff to our local food bank, and I had a rush of brains to the head and called them. They said they had a farmer who they gave stuff to, but put me on the list. Today, they called me and said the farmer they were using was in the hospital and might not be able to farm when he got out, so would we come pick up the stuff? We weren’t sure how much stuff there was, and wow. That’s a lot of slop!

The pigs and chickens sure enjoyed dinner time today! There was mostly vegetables and pasta type of stuff, very little meat. But there is more than our two pigs and 20 chickens can handle. The pigs are going to have piglets in less than a month, though, so we will figure out what to do with all this stuff. It’s a 20 minute drive each way, so probably $6 worth of gas, but that beat what we are paying for grain, and it’s a more varied diet, so better for them. We won’t be able to feed it to pigs that we will slaughter and sell to the public, but for our own use, it’s okay.

Even the sheep and horses enjoyed the windfall. Sue in particular loves loves loves melons and bananas, not to mention apples and pears. We are careful to not give them too many grain products, because they will overload on bread, but all those fruits and veggies are good replacements for hay, which is in really short supply this year, and quite expensive.