Who needs Facebook, Wimp, Dump or Hulu when you can watch pigs newly on pasture. Big Mama, Porkpie and Gumdrop cautiously headed out between electric fence strands that led to the new pasture. One of them hit the fence and they all made a bee-line back to the covered pig pen. The sound of ears of corn hitting the ground brought Porkpie, the boar back out. His crunching brought the others out slowly. They scanned carefully for the hot tape, ready to head back at the slightest sound of a snap. Gumdrop, the gilt (a female pig who hasn't had a litter) decided she had enough and went back to safety but Big Mama and Porkpie made it all the way out.

The new pasture is ground that had plastic for melons and tomatoes last year. The plastic is gone but the hay mulch is still there. Pigs eat a fair amount of grass and weeds and they will enjoy eating the regrowth of winter rye and dandelions. Its good to see them out roaming around plowing sample furrows with their snouts as if to sample the local flavors. Do they eat night crawlers? The pigs can stay in this field for a while but soon I will need to seed it down to cover crops for the next years vegetables. I will move them then to another field where I am going to experiment to see if they will eat the noxious weed nutbrown sedge.