Pig 'n Grapes

This past summer we made an arrangement with a local vineyard that helps us both.  After they harvest grapes for their wine, they're left with spent grape skins.  They used to throw these into their compost pile, but they decompose very slow and it was more trouble than it was worth.

Here's where our farm comes in.

We met the folks that own the vineyard at a dinner at the end of August.  They found out we have pigs at our farm and immediately a light bulb went on.  The owner, Steve, grabbed Dan and took him to their processing area and showed him giant tubs of grape skins.  He asked if we thought our pigs would like to eat them.  Not only would the pigs enjoy the grape skins, we've read that if you feed pigs fruit shortly before processing their meat will take on the sweetness from the fruit.  To say we were excited is an understatement.

For the last 3 months, our pigs have been dining on vineyard quality grapes every couple of weeks.  Here's a picture of them chowing down...



Our pigs will be going to butcher in about two weeks... we're really excited to taste the results!