I've just got our first pigs -- pair of sisters, wessex saddleback with a dash of berkshire from the boar's side -- and thought it might be valuable for me to bounce my ideas off y'all since there are a few past and present hog-keepers on board...
I want to plant out or back acre with walnuts and compatible trees, but it's dense black former floodplain with a water table a couple inches below the soil in winter, and no moisture anywhere in summer.
Yesterday I used a ripper on my little old david brown 880 to rough in a contour swale with 4 more parallel to it as in keyline. A dash of lime, and planted with soaked dun peas, turnips, red clover and sub clover. Once they've established, I'll move our two young pigs onto the area, vaguely resembling an intense managed rotation. Keeping with permaculture's "small, slow solutions" principle, I've just prepared these 5 lines for now to see how they perform.
The girls have already demonstrated they have good digger genes; they moved out of their training pen yesterday and I've seeded it with squash and forage for their later enjoyment. Here's a pic from ~10 days ago. They've put on substantial bulk since then.
Any tips warmly welcomed