freemotion
Self Sufficient Queen
It depends on what your goals are and what you have available to you. I jumped right in because knowing what is in my food is very important to me and commercial pork is one of the....if not THE...."dirtiest" animal foods out there, with all the antibiotics and overcrowding and such. Pastured pork is amazingly healthy and so is the lard from it, which is fantastic for cooking.
I managed to raise mine for a fraction of the cost of buying by being creative and doing a bit of extra work. I finish them for free by gleaning from local farms and getting leftovers from local restaurants. I've also fed hundreds of pounds of acorns picked up in suburban neighborhoods via a craigslist ad. And the lawn clippings from two rather large untreated lawns. Mine are raised on pasture, so they do a bit of foraging, especially in the beginning. They tear up the pasture quite a bit, though. But also improving it by plowing in enormous amounts of organic material in the form of corn cobs and husks (free corn from fall decorating stalks), acorn shells, grass, leaves, and anything they don't eat.
I managed to raise mine for a fraction of the cost of buying by being creative and doing a bit of extra work. I finish them for free by gleaning from local farms and getting leftovers from local restaurants. I've also fed hundreds of pounds of acorns picked up in suburban neighborhoods via a craigslist ad. And the lawn clippings from two rather large untreated lawns. Mine are raised on pasture, so they do a bit of foraging, especially in the beginning. They tear up the pasture quite a bit, though. But also improving it by plowing in enormous amounts of organic material in the form of corn cobs and husks (free corn from fall decorating stalks), acorn shells, grass, leaves, and anything they don't eat.
