Esther’s A Mommy!

Amanda helping Esther with her first litter last night.

Esther was the first piglet on our Farm over 2 years ago and came from Oreo’s 1st litter. We bought both Oreo and Esther to begin our own mission to provide Homesteaders with safe, quality, humanely raised Berkshire pigs. We discovered ourselves after several years of either driving hundreds of miles to get piglets or once we got them, they were not raised in an environment we would be proud of, that we would learn this process on our own. Since that time, we learned about artifical insemination (we do it ourselves), winter housing (not fun), medical needs, traveled to Pittsburg to learn piglet shots/castration (really Not Fun) and have constantly adjusted our fields and farrowing process to make it as easy as possible on both sow and human. Oreo has had 3 litters for us and this year, Esther had her first litter! We also have made the decision to add a 3rd sow for next year as we simply cannot keep up with the requests we get each year for piglets. Esther came from Oreo’s 1st litter and in keeping with tradition, we will keep one of Esther’s 1st gilts to join them in farrowing in 2024! Our sows spend 8 months of the year in pastures enjoying the outdoors as we only bred them once a year. That is not how the factory farms do it but we feel they deserve the break and sunshine. The process, when done on a small scale is not easy to say the least, which is why many folks do not do it. We made the decision to do it for 2 reasons: 1) The piglets we get come from sows that we know are treated well and spend most of their time enjoying the great outdoors. 2) We feel that we can play a small role in other homestead farms and ensure this “art” and way of life is not left to the “big farms”. There are countless other Homesteaders that do this as well across the country and we hope to do our part in this amazing country.