If you’ve been missing or looking for Homestead Farms’ all-natural humanly raised pork, your wait is almost over!  In the first years of farming we kept a hog or two around to be  garbage disposals for spoiled produce and milk, but as our goat herd has increased, we have ran out of space for our garbage disposals.  We’ve not only had space limitations lately, but all along Farmer Michael has had a plan in his head and was never quite happy with our minimal pork production.

This spring we heard about a grant through Green Fellows Inc. that would support sustainable and green practices of all kinds in the North Texas area.  Here are some excerpts of the grant we sent in, and a summary of how the master planed hog/composting facility works!

“Our hog/composting facility will not only provide a comfortable and natural living space for the hogs but will also double as composting facility.

The focus at Homestead Farms is a goat dairy and a produce market, which both create substantial amount of waste.  The hog/composting facility will include six composting pens that will be layered with manure, straw, spoiled produce and grain.  The hogs will then be let in to the pens in a rotation to turn the compost with the use of their natural plow (their snout.).  Not only will this help decompose the compost faster and save Homestead Farms labor, but the hogs will be happy doing what nature intended them to do; rooting in the earth, and getting fat on grubs, worms and spoiled produce. “

“Our hog/composting facilities will be able to provide healthy pork and produce to the local community with little or no carbon foot print and will promote green agricultural education to the community.  While most swine facilities in America create huge amounts of a waste, are bad for the earth, and are a hindrance to the community, our project will enhance the land without polluting surrounding air and water.”

We are super excited that a portion of the project was funded by Green Fellows Inc. and the hog/composting barn is almost finished.  We hope to have young hogs in the barn by the end of August and hopefully pork will be ready for sale by the holiday season.  Look forward to that pork freezer finally being filled again as Homestead Farms adventures into adding hogs to our new barn.

Read more about Southlake Green Day and Green Fellows Inc. at www.southlakegreenday.com

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 26th, 2011 at 11:54 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.