Man claims Pigs will clear forest, then proves it

We're going to get pigs.

Yes!

But it's actually more than that. I'll tell you about that in a second, but first I train my farm sitter. Good morning, sunshine. You ready for this? The icy's been— the first thing you want to do is actually get our solar and our water while the fence is still up and put it inside the coop. Next you roll up this fence, we'll strap it on top, and then move it. The beloved sea monsters— the boys have done it, and they've done a spectacular job. You make sure the feeds are full, the water has enough to get you through noon. That's half full, that will definitely get you to noon. You make sure the heat lamps are on— or not the heat lamps, the hovers. You can see the little lights, so they're good. You check them again at after lunch.

How many scoops of pellets did you give her?

I give her one scoop when she first comes in just to occupy her. I'm brushing her off, I'm cleaning her up. And then a little over halfway into the milking, before she gets antsy— but you might not pick up on that— but if she starts walking a little bit, or I'll show you where we get it into the bucket where we've gotten a certain amount of milk, then you want to Go and give her 4 more scoops, and then she sits still for the rest of the milking. About this pig trip, we're going to actually spend a day and a half there with one of my pig mentors, Cliff Davis, from Spiral Ridge Permaculture. What's so great about Cliff? Well, you'll see by the end of this video. You'll see his pig operation. It's amazing.

I love you guys. I love you. Bye-bye. You guys have fun.

I'm not just learning from Cliff for myself. I'll be shooting for my next big film project. Yes, I'm gonna start working on it. Ready for it? Wait for it, wait for it. You guys remember I did Permaculture Chickens? That was my first film/course. Guess what my next one's gonna be? Permaculture Pigs! What's Permaculture Pigs going to be about? Well, one, it's going to be a feature film documentary about our 2-year experience growing pigs. You guys have already seen our first year. We're going into our second. We're gonna have our second season this year. It's gonna be exciting. But there's also going to be a Permaculture Pigs course option, which is pretty much everything you need to know for raising pigs from piglet to the plate. All we got to do now is get to clips. We are 5 minutes away and our check engine light has come on and the car is acting really funny.

Yeah.

And the drive is blinking and it's not accelerating as fast as you're putting on the pedal.

Yeah, it's kind of being weird. It's almost transmission-y too.

There's a smell.

Yeah, we're just trying to make it.

We're just trying to make it to our friends. We have about drove this car into the ground. We're there. There is liquid everywhere in there. It's smoking. It smells like sulfur. Smells like burnt rubber. We're here at our host. They do not know a mechanic that's gonna be able to diagnose this tomorrow morning. So we're gonna just have to think more about what we can do. This is probably totaled, so— We could rent a car and get home. We could rent a truck. Get home, but then what do we do with this? So it's kind of like, ah, we could trade it in, be done with it. I don't know, we'll see. So we just realized talking in there, we can't really just go and get a different car. Look how we got this cage in here. We took out all the seats. Well, we're gonna leave for Cliffs here in about 3 minutes, so maybe we'll figure something out. Well, we made it to Cliff's just fine. Cliff would have been a little car bomb. Yeah, we all did. We made it thanks to Ashley. Thank you, Ashley. We all did. You don't know anything about that, do you?

Oh, every day.

Your car is always working nice. Right here, Cliff, your forest right there.

Yep.

So I have a forest similar. Yeah, it's maybe a bit thinner. There's maybe a bit— few bigger trees, but mostly small trees just like that, and a mess underneath. Yeah, and so I was thinking about trying to run the pigs in there.

Oh yeah, here's an example of a place that, that when I first bought pigs, okay, they cleared this area out, and now there's pecans in there, chestnut, apples, cranberry, cherries.

This over here looks more cleared and actually has productive fruit. Yep. Trees that you desire. And this is what it looked like.

That's right. They go in there, they hit it really hard.

Okay.

And then I go in, I can walk— like, I can't even hardly walk in there.

No.

So then I can walk in there, and then I start chopping and dropping.

Okay.

And, um, and then making biochar. Okay, yeah, taking stuff out that might be useful, leaving stuff that I want to keep.

So Ashley and I are just walking around, hanging out, getting sniffed by the dog. The dog's really, really loving us a lot. We're just having fun.

This is the most advanced, um, pig orchard that we have right here.

Is that cover crop in there or is that native grass?

That's both. Rye and vetch. Okay, there's probably some clover in there, chickweed.

So what kind of maintenance goes on in here then?

Not much.

Do you—

when the grass gets high, I put up a fence and I bring them in. Uh-oh, I just got these pigs today, so—

oh snap. And they're not supposed to be where they are.

They're supposed to be in that fence over there. The key to this is just stay calm and don't have a dog that keeps biting. I'm gonna go get some feed.

Okay.

The pigs are out. I don't know, we're buying 5 pigs.

Oh my gosh. Yeah.

5 pigs for us, 4 pigs for us, and then I think we're gonna sell some different.

Yeah, but these are new, new pigs to use.

They don't know this yet, same genetics that I run, but my mentor brought them over and I asked them if they were used to— big pig!

One of them's finding it. I'm just gonna keep them in there. Well, we'll see. You said our pigs are in this trailer? Yeah. You've already set them aside?

Yeah, I just put them in here the other day. They just got weaned, so I wean them and this is like a weaning pen, and then I just do a deep mulch system in there.

What if I wanted to turn this into pasture?

Every time I introduce pigs in, I go in and clear more out. I don't do it all at once because that's just too much work.

What do you mean?

So I'll go in and flag, like, uh, let's see, the— all the poplars go out. Because they'll coppice. I want them, but they'll coppice, and the pigs love the, love the leaf. So you'll cut them down at their height, cut them down at the base, okay, take those out as pole wood or for firewood or for whatever, and then I leave all the branches for them to eat, and then I pull it all out again after it's coppiced. Yep, the pigs will eat the black gum leaf, they'll eat the tulip poplar leaf. They'll eat all the— they'll eat blueberry leaves, they'll eat oak leaves, they'll eat every leaf. Every leaf. Yeah.

So these are just not tall enough, or they're too tall for them?

Um, well, these right here, he'd probably eat them, but he's lazy, so he just wants you to feed him, and he wants the girls that are down there.

How many pounds a day does he eat?

I don't feed him a lot at all. 3 pounds?

That's it.

I've been trying to get him down on weight.

3 pounds.

He's on a diet.

He's on a diet.

You probably eat more than 3 pounds.

I know.

I feed a day, 3 pounds, and he's doing all right. That's amazing.

Well, before that, he, he was allowed to run with the girls, and then he just beat them up.

And so even at eating 3 pounds of grain, he's still not— he's still not hungry enough to go and eat these leaves. So then how do you end up getting that stump out?

You don't. You just work around it, let it rot. Let it rot or let it coppice.

So after it's coppiced, it's done, cut it off the base and just let it rot?

It depends.

Like, just keep cutting it if you want to get some stuff out.

You can just keep feeding them right there.

People have told me, can you drill a hole in that, put feed down in there?

Who has time to drill holes? I know, look how many holes in it.

Look how many holes you're gonna have to drill down.

You're gonna do like this, like a Pez dispenser or something. I don't know about that.

A chainsaw works a lot.

Chainsaw works great.

Cliff, thank you so much for the tour. Cliff Davis, if people want more of you, where do they find it?

Uh, spire ridge permaculture.com. And then we also have our farm operation, pigandleaf.com.

Do you offer anything for folks abroad, far away?

On Pig and Leaf?

Yeah, well, not Pig and Leaf, but your—

well, we offer courses and design work.

Okay.

We have a series of courses, a permaculture design course, regenerative earthworks, um, agroforestry.

Nice.

And a mushrooms course with Charlie Potter. And I do design work. I design farms.

Okay. So I'm gonna put the link to your website then in the description.

That sounds great.

Okay. All right, that was good. What do you think, Rebecca?

I think it was really great.

What are you looking up?

I'm trying to see if maybe we can rent a vehicle from U-Haul. Ah. And then we would tow our van back to Asheville.

So do they sell those packages?

They do. I looked up, so we'd have to get a 10-foot box truck, which we don't need, like, because we're not putting anything in the truck.

Are you?

No, because we would put— We put the pigs in the van with the windows down a little bit. Yeah, smart. And so then we would up— hot in the box truck, they would, they would be—

so smart.

No ventilation. Um, yeah, so I wouldn't have to smell the pigs, but I'm also looking up a possible maybe, um, uh, cargo van option.