This time of year, the summer pig pastures are pretty well used, and it’s time to start using a 2.5-acre field in south Delta Farm that was planted with Jerusalem artichokes (or sunchokes) last spring just so they could feast on them all winter. The piggies below had to be enclosed in a corralled area for awhile in order to be trained to an electric fence so that they could be released into that field with plenty of respect for hot wires. They are now about four months old.
The training evidently worked, because it took them about 15 minutes before even one pig would cross the line where the wires had been to enter an alleyway that Andrea and Nathan had set up to guide them down to the pasture. But once the first brave one made the crossing, the others got a little courage, and pretty soon they all cantered down the alleyway and disappeared into the sunchokes where they will spend the next three or four months rooting up the little tubers and chowing down. Andrea has moved their shelters there and filled them with dry straw so they will be warm and cozy, and they continue to be fed their daily rations of whey-soaked Nash’s barley.
