My husband and I were both born and raised in Maine, and I have lived in Washington, Maine my entire life, just outside the village. My husband moved here when he was 8. It’s a great community-oriented town. And we are very involved with the community. Everyone knows everyone here. Family keeps us here for now.
Lots of older generation families still live here. As older farmers have passed on, so have their farms. There are still a couple farms still running that have been here for years. There is a newer dairy farm in Washington which seems to do well and there are several homestead farms like ours. Our generation of people have gone towards raising their own animals and food. Amish have moved into neighboring towns and are fixing up older farmhouses and bringing the land back to what it used to be. Lots of new people have moved in from out of state too, especially during and since covid.
We had raised meat birds and laying hens for years. But we decided to go all-in when Covid hit in 2020, and started to raise bigger animals. We bought two dairy bottle calves and reached out to friends about raising pigs. That is how our farming journey started. Small acre farming is what we do. We make every part of our property work in order to raise the animals.
Pigs are super intelligent; they have to learn at a young age with the electric fence. Once they know it’s there, they usually stay in. We never had any issues with pig escapes until last year. One pig would bury the bottom fence line and walk out. A few others followed, but my daughter and neighbor always got them back in. We’ve never had a mean pig.
We grow our pigs from spring to fall and have raised them four years now, until this year we took a year off to care for my grandparents. My grandparents have all enjoyed watching the animals. We will be back at it next year. We’ve had as many as a dozen pigs at once. We had talked to a few different farmers regarding the cattle and pigs, asked questions about what we needed to know, and have on hand before we started. Everyone does it differently, so we did what we thought was best.
We buy piglets from a farmer up in Lee, and one from Jefferson. My husband builds a wooden box with a lid, with hay and shavings inside, so they are warm for transport. Specific farms we recommend are Katahdin Ridge Farm in Lee Maine, owned by Chuck Fox, who has been a pig farmer for many years. We have bought pigs from him for a few years now. We have also bought pigs from Littlefoot Farm in Jefferson Maine owned by Kym & Chris Lane.
We raise pink pigs, “feeder pigs” usually a cross of Yorkshire Landrace. They grow the best and the fastest, all while still giving lots of great meat. Our biggest pig last year was a Berkshire cross. Our average pigs right now are around 350-380 pound hanging weight. Our biggest pig as of date, weighed in at 450 pound hanging weight. This is at nine-months-old when we take them to a local Maine butcher for processing, Castonguay in Livermore, and our cattle we take to Herring Bros in Guilford. Both top quality butchers, both of which we highly recommended.
We do plan one day to sell on the market, along with our beef, but will continue to raise them for ourselves, family and friends. The meat is superior compared to commercial pork and our animals are all friendly and happy. Our farm motto is “Happy Animals Taste Better” and that is true in all forms.
We feel like the amount of feed you’d need to keep a sow it’s cheaper for us to buy from the pig farmer. Also, it supports the farmer. We enjoy the rhythm of work that goes into raising happy, healthy animals through the cycle from birth ‘til freezer. It’s important for use to know what we are eating and, in turn, what we are feeding them.
We’ve learned how to care for sick pigs and cattle on our own out of necessity. Most our friends call us now when they have a sick animal. I’m always a phone call away and have learned from the vets how to properly tend to them and if I can’t do it, I make the vet phone call. There is no pig vet near us. Our very first year, I had called several vets as we had a pig get very sick with pneumonia. A kind vet from out near Etna talked me through the process for the pig. He owns a small veterinary office for dogs and cats, but has a farm himself so he knew exactly what to tell me to do. Since then, we’ve been taking care of them ourselves. Thankfully the last few seasons we’ve not had sick pigs as we contribute the good feed and proper care to their healthy life.
We raise pedigree Holland lops for pets. We do own a pedigree Flemish giant which we had for meat breeding, currently we do not raise meat rabbits at this time but did previously. We also butchered the rabbits ourselves. Ducks and layer hens act as natural bug and tick control.
We are now up to a dozen beef cattle, with two bottle babies birthed for the first time on our farm last fall. Most people call us nuts but we make it work, although we do have to buy hay year-round for our cattle herd. We are a morally-focused farm. We treat all our animals with respect, and thank them for providing food for us and others. We do all this on only two acres.
