our newest neighbors

These two lovely Tamworth hogs
will be spending about a month on our front pasture.

They have only been here about two days,
but they have already overturned almost their entire pen.
The whole pasture used to look like this:

We're all about cheap labor here.
They will freshen up the pasture, kill the weeds,
and get it ready for us to plant cover crops
before we extend the garden up a few feet next year.
And they look so darn cute doing it!

I kind of laugh at how we get to play "rent-an-animal."
We needed something to eat the pasture down,
my brother-in-law dropped off 9 sheep for a few weeks.
We wanted to start prepping the same pasture for garden,
so he picked up the sheep and dropped off the hogs.
Pretty handy guy to have around.


And I thought this was pretty exciting:

We grew our own dry beans this year!
I still have a LOT of shelling to do,
but I am excited to try cooking with them.
I hear fresh dry beans are oh-so-much tastier
then their bagged, grocery store counterparts.
And the best part is they took almost NO work to grow.
Seriously, we planted, watered, and barely weeded.

Our first pot of beans will determine if we were successful.

Now, if only we could get the cooler weather to creep back
so I can think about simmering beans...