Tag Archives: natural pork

Sustainable farming: Spring forage planting by the birds

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One of the strategies we use at Singing Prairie Farm to produce the most nutritious and sustainable pork on the market today is to grow some of our own feed.

We aren’t just talking about corn here. On our home farm, we have four separate planting seasons. Every spring, I mark March 21st on the calendar as the first planting date. This seeding is done when the land is just barely returning after the long winter.

The grass is still brown. The trees are black-barked and leafless. The only notice we have that spring is coming back is the birds.

I don’t know where they all go for the winter, but one species at a time they come back.

First, come the cardinals, then the robins, then killdeer, then western meadowlarks, then redwing blackbirds and finally eastern bluebirds and purple martins. Several new bird species arrive every week until on the first sunny day in April; then the mornings are a sweet and raucous circus of birdsong.

It is with the arrival of the western meadowlark that we typically plant our spring crops.

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Some Native Americans groups are said to have planted a “three sisters” garden every year. It was comprised of: corn, a tall, vertically growing member of grass family; squash, a horizontally growing vine with leaves broad enough to shade out weed competition; and beans, a legume which can take nitrogen out of the air and deposit it in the ground. When grown together, these three sisters offer a variety of nutrition and amino acids which aid human health. Their growth habits are also complimentary from a farming perspective.

Drawing heavily on that traditional inspiration — and on forage techniques used by dairy farmers — we came up with our own three sisters for pork production.

Our mix is a combination of organically grown forage oats, the vertically growing member of the grass family in this system; turnips, the broadleaf species to help us shade out weed pressure; and field peas, the legume helping us to fix nitrogen in the soil.

Since we eschew commercial fertilizer, our planting mix is somewhat heavy on the peas. The nitrogen the peas deposit in the soil will remain for the next time this field will be planted in the fall.

Just like the traditional Native American three sisters gardens, our spring forage trio offers a mix of nutrition and amino acids.

While most of our farming at Singing Prairie Farm is done with teams of Belgian draft horses, pulling a 3,000-pound no-till drill with horses is something that we haven’t learned how to do yet. This year we borrowed a neighbor’s John Deere tractor and another neighbor’s modern no-till drill.

It has been a fairly wet spring so far, so when four sunny days in a row showed up, I knew the window of planting was open, but only for a moment. The day we picked to plant, the weather forecast was predicting four inches of rain starting at 9:00 pm and continuing on and off all week. If we were going to plant a spring mix, we had to do it then.

The sun set about halfway through the planting session. I turned on the headlights and finished well after dark as raindrops speckling the windshield.  That night, lying in bed and listening to the wind howl and the rain pour down, I felt very satisfied with the day’s labors. Not only were all those cover crop seeds safely waking up in the ground, but also the rain officially closed out the spring planting season at Singing Prairie Farm.

John Arbuckle this spring on Singing Prairie Farm sustainable farming
John Arbuckle this spring on Singing Prairie Farms.

Spring planting is just one of many planting seasons we engage in over the span of the growing season. The pigs that graze this impenetrable jungle of peas, turnips, and oats; in June will go on to graze several other mixes before the season ends in November. We have begun this year’s circle of life on Singing Prairie Farm…a holistic web that includes pigs, turnips, cows, peas, clover, farmers, apples, pumpkins, families in faraway cities, and the cheerful springtime song of the western meadowlark.

The simple and sacred beauty of raising pigs naturally

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I’ve just walked back in from tending to our pastured pigs. Rotating them to new pasture is quite a process and usually takes about 30 minutes.

But that work time allowed me to watch purple martins dip and roll through the sky. I listened to red-winged blackbirds and western meadowlarks sing, and I heard woodpeckers tap, tap, tapping their way through the woods.

Singing Prairie Farm is brimming with life these days. We hear wild turkeys and coyotes daily, and consider each one a blessing — yes, even the howling wild canines. A hundred kinds of birds fill the air with their song.

The Prairie here, quite literally, sings.

Our family farm is in the northeast corner of Missouri. The land here is an ocean of small rolling hills and creeks interspersed equally with cattle pasture and timber. There is not a truly flat spot of ground within walking distance of my kitchen table.

Our pigs run over about 50 acres of ground. Each year we raise about 250 pigs on pasture in a way that is careful of existing wildlife, sequesters carbon, enriches our grassland ecosystem, and offers a level of respect and caring to the pigs that we would want if we were them.  

We raise our pigs in groups of 35 to 50; currently, a single strand of electrified poly-wire, hung about 18 inches off the ground is enough to keep them in the correct paddock. We rotate them when they have eaten all the grass and fertilized the run sufficiently for the year. That grazing process typically takes about a week. In the cool of spring and fall, we keep them moving about the prairie. When the heat of summer descends upon us, they move into the woods where the breezes are cool, and there is plenty of shade.

singing prairie farms naturally raised pigs

Moving them isn’t a very cumbersome process. I simply move the pigs’ feeders, waterer, and rain shelters into the new fenced run. Then, I lift up one of the tread-in fence posts that hold the electric wire so they can easily run beneath. The moment the wire goes up, they usually hesitate briefly, remembering that just a second ago there had been an electric wire in place. Then the “alpha” animal usually leads the “run,” as they wander over to the feeders which are full of about 8 pounds of 100% non-GMO grain. Quite often there are trees in the run for them to scratch their backs on. There are always acorns, worms, grubs, grass, roots, and clover to eat during the short transition.

Raising pigs this way allows the pigs to live happily, while also letting them get plenty of exercise. It allows pigs to experience life naturally and happily in a mostly stress-free environment. They spend their ample free-time mostly eating grass. This consumption of grass is what is so good for us, the humans.

One day we will harvest these special, sacred animals and consume them. In the roundabout mechanics of our digestion, we will replace the old, worn out cells of our bodies with the new fresh cells of their bodies. The realization that one day their flesh will be my flesh and that their blood in some small way will become my blood creates a unique bond. One that can never be dismissed or taken for granted.

At times like this, I think of the Lakota Sioux people. As Native Americans of the Northern Plains, their lives revolved around the buffalo. Its hide, its bones, and its meat were their mainstays. Their culture would not have thrived in that arid and cold habitat if not for their relationship to the buffalo. The fact that they required the buffalo to survive made them approach the species with sacred reverence.  

Today, it’s important to pause to recognize the sacredness of all the food we depend upon to build and fuel our bodies. Let’s all take responsibility to care for both plants and animals in a tender and respectful way.

There is a simple beauty each day in raising pigs naturally here on Singing Prairie Farms.