Plowing with Pigs

Plowing With Pigs. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Line On Agriculture.

“Plowing with Pigs” is all about creative and low budget ideas for homesteading according to Hank Will, co-author and editor of Grit magazine.

WILL: If you let these animals kind of do what they kind of do naturally you can find some advantage in it. One of the reasons I love using hogs to prepare ground is that if you leave them there long enough they’ll sort out the root fragments and eat them.

That will keep whatever it is from coming up again and again. Another very beneficial animal in your yard is a chicken.

WILL: One of the things that chickens love to do is scratch and they do. They scratch the ground trying to stir up insects or find seeds or whatnot. And out in the yard their scratching helps to break down the thatch and again they’ll find grubs and whatnot. Things that would munch on your lawn and they’ll also eat grass and the clover and help keep it somewhat trimmed.

Of course we have talked in the past about how goats love to eat thorny plants and do a great job of clearing land of nuisance plants. The new book also has some great suggestions for other parts of your homestead.

WILL: One of the things that crops up in the conversations often is how do you afford all the machinery or the things that you need to do it and we’re trying to encourage folks to say here are some ways that you can look at that overgrown hedgerow along your fence line as a resource. You could cut material out of it that you could make gates with; perfectly functional gates with that will last for a long time.

More tomorrow on the book, Plowing with Pigs.

That’s today’s Line On Agriculture. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.