One summer, I think it was 1966, I raised a crop of pigs. In the back of my mind I still thought of myself as a farmer and got the inclination to do something like this. Allen Wall from Owego Township and I had gone to high school for a year, and I knew him fairly well. He advertised bred sows for sale so I drove down to the sandhills to look at them.
He had no barn for them, and they ran foraging for acorns or whatever else they could find in the woods around his farmyard. Some of the sows had started farrowing, and I remember him saying, "They're just full of pigs." He had a truck to haul them, so I picked out 15 of them at $100 apiece.
I had no experience with this but was full of the energy of youth. Dad let me use a 5 acre patch of fenced ground, and, after unloading them, I had become a hog farmer. I let the sows roam freely, too, in that patch, but I did buy some black plastic from Newton's Feed Store and set up a shaded shelter.
It did not take many days before they started in giving birth to their litters. I soon had pigs all over the place. Allen told it like it was, they were full of pigs. Because conditions weren't the best, some of the little pigs didn't survive, but when finished they still averaged eight per litter. They nursed well and the sows quickly brought their litters to weaning weight. I sold the sows and then had to buy commercial feed for the young ones. I needed to feed them until they could be sold as feeder pigs, about 35 pounds. The summer passed by and each night I listened through the open window to the growing sounds of pigs grunting and squealing. It took many sacks of feed before I could sell them, but when I did, I made a few hundred dollars for my effort. Thus ended my experience with hogs.
