Piggy Tillers

The soil here, where we are, is not nice.

It is sticky, yucky clay. Not fun for gardening.

And even with a huge, commercial tiller it took days of back-breaking labor to prepare the soil for planting.

Last year was our first year here so with what little soil amending we could do, our yields were pretty sad.

So we decided to implement an age old practice to work & improve our soil.

We fenced in the garden & put the pigs on it.

Pigs root & burrow & dig with their snouts. Effectively "tilling' the ground.

After a week or so of this all of the grass, weeds & everything else is gone & you have fresh tilled ground.

Any & all straw, hay, soiled bedding & compost that you throw in there gets tilled in with the lovely addition of free fertilizer (i.e. pig poop).


We first put the pigs on the garden in early November.

While they were little we moved their panels around every week or so giving them fresh ground to break.

Once they were big enough to lift up their panels & escape (uh huh)  we had to permanently anchor the panels to t-posts so they couldn't um, let themselves out in the middle of the night (Mmmm, hmmm).

So we fenced them into the 'corn field' section of the garden maybe 2 months ago?

All the corn stalks still standing & tons of weeds.

This what that area looks like today:

We want to get that spot tilled the rest of the way & planted so today we moved the pigs onto the rest of the garden.

They have been over this section once already but quite a bit of grass has grown back. And we have been dumping chicken bedding & old hay there to be tilled back in.

So this is their new pen:

In another month this area will be grass/weed free, pre-tilled & ready to be planted. And about that time our hogs will be ready for the butcher.

A win/win situation all the way around.

Except maybe for the hogs...

Blessings.