When Joe brought up the idea of raising pigs on pasture, my initial response was more of a grimace. We had never raised pigs, especially not on pasture and I was hesitant to take on something new so soon.

But what we’ve found in our planning and dreaming is that nothing is ever truly a “No”. We’re always willing to try something once. Most times, the answer turns into more of a “not right now.”

So 10,000 questions later, I agreed to try raising a couple of pigs this year. Initially we were only going to raise enough for ourselves and a couple family members, just to try it out with minimal risk. But after a few other friends and customers expressed an interest, two to three pigs max turned into six.

We started researching a ton about pigs in general, but more specifically about pigs on pasture. The only thing I’d ever heard about pigs was that if they got loose, they were REALLY hard to catch. The idea of having them out on pasture, with freedom to run around sounds great in practice but scary when you’re afraid of them getting out.

Most pigs raised for pork are raised in some amount of confinement, in close proximity in a barn. And while this wasn’t the path we wanted to follow when raising our own pigs, there did seem to be a certain amount of security that the pigs wouldn’t get out.

In our pasture system of raising animals, we rely on energized electric fencing to keep the animals in. The animals learn quickly to respect the fence because they don’t want to get shocked. This holds true for us humans on the farm as well. All of us have gotten shocked one time or another. It’s not something you forget quickly!

All our research said to get piglets and put them in a temporary structure to begin and use the electric fence for about two weeks before putting them out on the open pasture. Let me be honest, we had our doubts about how successful this would be. But it only took one shock for each pig for them to learn really quickly.

After they moved out to the pasture, we never had any issues. Except for the usual pig antics of digging up everything in sight and being naturally curious. They toppled their feeder every single day, dug up under the fence and shorted it out, lost one of the water nipples in their mud hole on day one.

But the pigs became our favorite chores to do. They were excited to see us and would run out to greet us (ok, more so the food we were bringing them, but still). And the pigs were a great way to introduce our two-year-old daughter to doing chores. The pigs became her favorite chores. She would laugh at them, help Joe feed them their non-GMO feed, and make it her personal job to go pick apples off some trees on the farm to give them a treat.

Our first batch of pigs is officially gone and eight families now have pork to fill their freezers. We learned so much this first year and are already making plans for changes to our set-up for next year’s pigs. Because of course we’re doing them again next year.