Mooomooomoo, cluck cluck cluck!

As you know, I’m interested in folklife and farming, heritage and heirloom, and perhaps interested in spending some time researching and writing about it! So, while visiting Maypop these past few days, I’ve been hitting up all the family  friends and locals who have hobby farms or serious farms. Today we went to visit some friends down the way who raise cattle and chickens…..

These folks do their thing mostly for fun, but they do send beef to market and they gather more eggs from their chickens than they can eat. We sat around and talked about all kinds of thing, played with their puppies, and drank beer.  Dave talked about how he’d had trouble with wild hogs rooting up all his pastureland and making away with his landscaping and the adventures he had trying to trap them.

It was funny to hear about that since pigs aren’t native to the United States! Once upon a time, immigrants brought German and Russian boars over to the New World for food and game, and that’s how they got here.  This is a wild Russian boar:

And this is a contemporary domestic pig:

There aren’t too many of that pure Russian boar stock left, but there are some up in the mountains and then way down in the swampland, and they breed with domestic pigs that escape the pig farms, creating a unique population of spotted semi-wild bore. They can get quite big— more than 150 lbs— and can be both very aggressive and very destructive.

I’ve only seen one in my lifetime. I was camping with my brother in an area of the Chattahoochee National Forest known as Swallow’s Creek and we were driving down out of the mountains when something that at first  looked like a black bear waddled into the middle of the road. We stopped the car and stared in disbelief. It had bristly black hair and a few pinkish spots, enormous tusks… and little pink piglets all about!  It moved on and we didn’t think too much of it.

To remedy his wild pig problem, Dave ended up setting a 32 sq/ft trap in one of his fields and baiting it with sour corn. Sour corn is field corn mixed with sugar, yeast, and flour, and diesel fuel. Yup, that’s right! Diesel fuel!!! It keeps out the coons and squirrels, but the pigs don’t mind it!  He caught three pigs that weighted between 125 and 200 lbs, shot ‘em in the trap, and then brought friends over to clean them up and split ‘em up.

He offered to teach me how to shoot and said I’d be welcome to borrow anything from his gun collection to take deer (or pig) from his property.  Maybe when I’m back here in the Fall?  We all agree that there’s something wrong when we see whole herds of deer passing through our lands here— things are out of balance. There simply isn’t enough food in our local ecosystem to support them. Furthermore, they’re such a nuisance, so over-populated, and a wonderful potential food source……   but I’ll cross that bridge at some other point in time. I’m not ready to run out and go hunting yet.

After some more good chatting, we visited their chickens— they have Black Cochins, Buff Orpingtons, and Barred Rocks (the stripey ones).

We were given three dozen eggs to take home with us! Very very exciting!  In the pic below you can see the black cochin rooster— he’s got feathers on his feet! The chickens LOVE to eat spaghetti and collard greens, as well as any other table scrap, but when you feed them garlic or onions… their eggs taste and smell as such!

After playing with the chickens and the barn cats, we headed out to visit the cows. They had the heifers and prize bull separated form the calves that would be prepped for market. Here are some of the calves…. I don’t remember what breed they are (I’m kicking myself angrily!!!) but I do know that they’re the more gourmet version of Jersey cows. Dave is hoping to reduce this herd to a manageable size and then upgrade with some organic Kobe beef. Pretty shmancy stuff! He’s also hoping to find someone to help him slaughter the beef and process it right there on the property.

And this is PEBBLES!!!! She’s a young donkey, and she guards the cows from coyote and fox! Would you believe it? Donkeys are incredibly territorial and they bond well with whatever they’re pastured with, and, most importantly, they fight with their front feed and teeth— unlike horses or other livestock, who naively turn their vulnerable backs to the prey in order to kick.

Even with Pebbles The Guard Donkey, Dave has to sit out in the pasture to scare away the coyotes if he’s got a wounded heifer or a calf that he’s concerned about.

This is a  picture of a storm coming in over the pastureland. Unfortunately, it didn’t bring much rain. Pasture-quality is so poor this year that there simply won’t be a second harvest of hay, which means anyone with hay will be able to charge a steep price, and beef prices will jump a bit.

The afternoon was wonderful. Dave, in addition to offering me hunting rights to his property, oferred me a chicken and a cow!!! I only wish I could take them with me back to DC.