The above picture shows what the garden looks like after two years of our being away from the farm. Tired of hand digging in the heat we decided to put our pigs to good use, now that they are large enough to keep inside cattle panels.
After 7 days locked into a patch of the garden, the above picture demonstrates the thoroughness and efficiency of the pig as a tractor. The large clumps of grass still standing have actually been rooted up so they are easily lifted out of the ground. They are simply waiting to wither up and die. Most of the grass was eaten by the hogs but that which remained was collected and tossed into the walk way as seen below.
Now we have a bare patch of garden to set rows in and a mulched walkway. By simply flip-flopping the fence, we easily created a new section of garden for them to work in. They were turned out into this new patch this morning and wasted no time in eating down the tall grass and digging the clumps out by the roots.
This next patch is a bit larger and more overgrown than the previous one, but I suspect in about two weeks we will have another bare patch ready to plant. We will then repeat the process further down the garden. By mid summer we should have a weeded, tilled, and fertilized garden plot.
Tonight we will be planting cow-peas in this first patch, tomorrow we will plant tomatoes. In the next patch, once it is ready, we may plant our fall crops such as butternut squash and pumpkins.
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