Frozen Farm

All year, we have an eye toward Winter. We start seeds and grow chicks in the Spring. In Summer and early Fall, during our relatively short but wildly productive season of abundance in Wisconsin, we grow piglets into pigs and calves into steers and heifers, we turn grass into milk, the flowers bloom, the honey flows. In late Fall we harvest our crops and butcher our animals, and we preserve and store the harvest. There are myriad activities on the farm through the seasons, but all the while we have an eye on Winter. We need to calve in Spring so that the cattle are robust come the Winter winds. We harvest or buy hay during Summer and Fall so that we have something for the cattle to eat come the Winter snows. We fill the cellar with potatoes so that the family has something to eat come the cessation of milking at the end of the grazing season. We build the hoop shelters, repair the buildings, bury the water pipelines so that the animals can be comfortable and we can have an easy time caring for them come deep Winter. That’s where we are now. Deep Winter. If you didn’t keep an eye toward Winter in Spring, Summer and Fall, now you’re paying for it with uncomfortable work days, long hours on projects that would be 10x easier in Summer, and animals or crops that aren’t thriving. On the other hand, if good planning, good preparation and good fortune all combine, Deep Winter might come close to the idyllic vision of bygone days where things were simpler and slower - Winter days of tending the wood stove, watching the cows chew cud, tossing the pigs some grain, reading through a stack of books, eating hearty fare from the larder and sleeping through the long nights of midwinter. Fortunately, and with gratitude, the latter is how this Winter has been at Farmcraft. The animals are thriving and the farmers are taking it relatively easy.

Pigs:

Getting the pig enterprise ready for winter started years ago with selecting a pig breed that is winter hardy. We selected Idaho Pasture Pigs and bought ours from a breeder in northern Wisconsin. This breeder (White Bison Farm) very successfully raises hundreds of pigs each year in a climate 10F colder than ours at Farmcraft. Idaho Pasture Pigs are short, round, carry a fair bit of fat, and sport a thick furry hair coat. They have no trouble at all with cold and they will plow through snow 3 feet deep (put to the test and passed with flying colors in waist deep snow January 2023).

For shelters, we give the pigs A-Frame wood huts and bales of straw, hay or cattails. The pigs will lounge and sleep outside on the hay above about 10F, and below that they pile in to a A-frame to get toasty warm. In the morning steam will be rolling out of the front opening on the A-frame.

Managing water is difficult for pigs in all seasons. During the winter we find it easiest to use rubber bowls that we fill twice a day, morning and afternoon. The bowl of water will freeze solid overnight, but in the morning the bowl can be flipped upside down and the ice stomped out of these almost indestructible rubber dishes. We installed frost-free water hydrants with 6’ deep buried water lines right adjacent to our winter pig paddocks. We simply carry water in buckets from the hydrant to the pigs’ water bowls. It’s some labor, but it gets us exercise 2x a day in winter and the system’s simplicity makes it robust during sub-zero winter and robust around destructive piggies.

During Summer we feed pigs once per day – about 2 pounds of organic grains per pig each morning. They forage on grasses, clovers, forbs, vegetables, nuts, grubs, and roots the rest of the day. During winter they can’t forage on much of anything, so we feed them twice as much – 2 pounds of organic grains in the morning and 2 pounds of organic grains in the evening – and also feed super high quality alfalfa hay to provide the vital nutrients of leafy summer forage.

This year we, to trial the idea, we grew sorghum-sudan grass and sunflowers in the pigs winter paddock. All summer the sorghum-sudan grass and sunflowers grew ever higher, until it was an impenetrable green jungle of stalks, grains, flowers and weeds 8 feet tall. The idea was to grow a huge mass of vegetation in order to provide forage during the winter, and to provide carbonaceous stalks for grown-in-place winter bedding. The experiment has largely succeeded. The pigs are enjoying eating the sorgum grains, sunflower seeds and flower heads, and even the dry leaves of the plants and weeds, and the huge quantity of dry vegetative matter allows the pigs to lay down in comfort anywhere in the paddock. We divide the paddock into sections with electric fence wire, and we move the wire every few weeks to give the pigs access to a new section. By controlling access with the electric fence wire, we are able to slowly dole out the winter paddock so that the pigs will have "fresh forage" all winter. Below are the pigs in the sorghum-sudan grass and sunflowers around Thanksgiving.

To trial another idea this Winter, we built a hoop house adjacent to the sorghum-sunflower winter paddock, so that the pigs have free access to be inside the hay-bedded hoop house or to be outside in the paddock. They love it. Well, I think they love it. Pigs always look happy. It’s hard to tell for sure that the hoop house group is happier than the groups with the A-frames. Regardless, happy cozy pigs. Below is the new hoop house when we moved the pigs to their winter paddock, around Thanksgiving.

As part of winter prep and planning, we try not to have piglets on the farm in deep winter. We didn't get that quite right this year - this beautiful pile of piggies was born on pasture in an A-frame on December 10 - but they are doing just fine, due to the warmth, milk and attention from their gentle giant mama Goldie.

--

That’s good for now. Soon, I’ll talk about this season at Farmcraft with cattle, hens, humans and everything else Frozen Farm.

Thanks for reading! Rock on.