This year saw us complete a massive, multi-year project. I've written about it at length already but did so piecemeal as the vision was coming together. So, this is a summation of what we've done towards attempting to establish a sustainable environment in which we intend to raise pigs.
The project started with me learning about the potential productivity of chestnut trees. The first year (2010-2011) saw Youngblood and I plant 10 Dunstan chestnuts on a hillside in a ten acre field that had been denuded of trees by Hurricaine Katrina.
Planting those first chestnuts got the wheels turning. Then I learned of permaculture and subsequently read Tree Crops by J. Russell Smith, and we took off like a rocket. I asked Youngblood if he would be amenable to me reforesting this 10-acre plot with fruit and nut bearing trees. He said, "Fill'er up."
Since that time, we've planted the following:
•11 figs
• 9 plums
• 9 peaches
• 26 pears
• 34 apples
• 2 Fuyu persimmons
• 2 mulberries
• 3 shag bark hickories
• 2 swamp chestnut oaks
• ~ 10 live oaks
• ~ 30 sawtooth oaks
• 57 American chestnuts
• 1 pecan
These are in addition to a few trees that were already there including but not limited to:
• 18 live oaks
• ~ 15 pecans
• 3 white oaks
• 1 hickory
• 5 beeches
• several water oaks
• oodles of native persimmons
The principle that guided the selection was the later a tree drops its crop, the greater the representation in the system.
The goal is to put the boar and sows together in late December/early January, farrow along about April, and wean in May. At weaning, the pigs will be thrown into this pasture where they will glean their sustenance as the trees drop starting their crop in roughly this order:
- mulberries
- peaches/plums
- figs
- pears
- apples
- chestnuts
- acorns/hickories/persimmons
Once the pigs reach a marketable weight and/or the last acorn is eaten, we will load them up and take them to the processor.
Assuming a substantial number of trees survive and come into full production, the only questions that remain are:
1. Will such a system work? And if so,
2. For how many hogs?