{"id":59965,"date":"2021-10-18T06:30:23","date_gmt":"2021-10-18T11:30:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=59965"},"modified":"2021-10-18T06:30:23","modified_gmt":"2021-10-18T11:30:23","slug":"pig-apples-or-why-small-farmsteads-are-efficient-and-effective","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=59965","title":{"rendered":"Pig apples: or, why small farmsteads are efficient and effective"},"content":{"rendered":"<header class=\"entry-header\">\n<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/stories\/2021-10-18\/pig-apples-or-why-small-farmsteads-are-efficient-and-effective\/\">Pig apples: or, why small farmsteads are efficient and effective<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<p>Nearly twenty years ago, we planted seven acres of woodland on our holding with help from a government grant that stipulated the trees must be native woodland varieties. Among the ones we chose were crab apples, which we planted along the rides and woodland edges because of their growth habit, sourcing the saplings from a nursery specializing in native woodland trees.<\/p>\n<p>As the trees developed, it became clear they weren\u2019t just ordinary crabs \u2013 I guess they\u2019d crossed with cultivated varieties to produce large, juicy, dessert-apple type fruits. The fruits were still pretty unappealing to the human palate but not so, I discovered, to the porcine one. Over the years, our pigs have been happy to chow down on them without limit. In the last month or two of their lives, the two pigs I raised this year ate little else.<\/p>\n<p>But since the apple trees are spread around the holding along the rides and it\u2019s not really practicable to let the pigs range at large, this bounty involves us picking or collecting most of the apples for them. Recently, I\u2019ve been going out at least a couple of times every day with a large trug, filling it with the not-quite-crabs, and taking it to the pig enclosure. After a while, a distinctive apple browse line developed on the trees at my 5\u201910\u201d plus an arm length height. From then on, I contrived various tricks \u2013 jumping for apples, shaking them off the high boughs or pulling the branches down with my shepherd\u2019s crook. When my son and his girlfriend visited, she sat on his shoulders and threw apples down from on high, one at a time into the trug.<\/p>\n<p>\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pig apples: or, why small farmsteads are efficient and effective Nearly twenty years ago, we planted seven acres of woodland on our holding with help from a government grant that stipulated the trees must be native woodland varieties. Among the ones we chose were crab apples, which we planted along the rides and woodland edges [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[15683,1912,9738],"class_list":["post-59965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-survival-2","tag-chris-smaje","tag-food-production","tag-small-farm-future"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=59965"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59965\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59966,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59965\/revisions\/59966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=59965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=59965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=59965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}