A little over 13 years ago we travelled to a small farm about an hour away that had a listing online for piglets for sale. We had no clue what we were getting ourselves into, but knew that pigs needed to be a vital part of our homesteading/farming effort here in West Virginia. The ride home with 3 6 week old piglets inside Kelly’s SUV made for a great (by great I mean loud and smelly) experience that we all still talk about today.

This winter, as I drove off the property with my breeders Mongo, Noel, and Pepper in the livestock trailer, I realized it was the first time in 13 years that we didn’t have any pigs on the farm. Those several winter months I didn’t know what to do with myself. I found myself saying, “I need to get up and go take care of the pigs.” While it was nice not having to slog in the winter mud each morning (actually, this winter was more ice and snow than mud), it really felt like the farm had lost much of its identity without pigs around.

Fortunately, that dry spell of no pigs didn’t last long. Earlier this spring, dad and I traveled four hours away to the Shenandoah Valley to Revercomb Farms where we purchased 6 piglets from Mindy Lipinski, owner of the farm. These lively piglets were a cross between Berkshire and Blue Butt. We received 4 barrows and 2 gilts. 

At the time of writing this post, the piglets are hanging out in the 16×32 training paddock that I built in our main garden space in the valley. As they get acclimated to the farm and the electric fence, I have been working on cleaning up the fence line on the northern pastures since it has been well over a year since any pigs have been on that side. The plan will be to release them into the first northern paddock next week. 

My plan, currently, is to not breed either of the gilts. All 6 of these pigs are just going to be grown out for processing this fall. At that time I will consider the next steps to see if we want to get back into farrowing or just stick with raising feeders for a while. 

We did a video featuring the trip to VA as well as a quick tour of Mindy’s farm. You can see that video via the link below.