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My featured Merit Badge Awardee of the Week is … Sharon Demers!!!
Sharon Demers (Calicogirl, #5392) has received a certificate of achievement in Garden Gate for earning an Intermediate Level Backyard Farmer Merit Badge!
“A friend that raises La Mancha Goats taught me how to milk. It is not as easy as it may appear. I know it is alot of hard work and I can only imagine how much milking it take to milk a cow.
My husband and I started raising hogs this past July. We did alot of research through the internet and books and finally decided on a breed we would like to raise. We chose Large Black Hogs originally from Cornwall, England. This breed is considered critically endangered. We chose the Large Blacks because of the critical rating but also because of their docile temperament, great mothering skills and their dark color. We live at a higher elevation and were concerned about sunburn.
We LOVE raising hogs and I never knew how much fun they would be! Endeavour is our boar and his girl is Trudy. We plan on breeding to keep the breed going but also for meat. Just today after feeding them I asked who wanted to cuddle and Endeavour came over and started rubbing his face against me 🙂 (The photo is from an earlier cuddle time.)”
Pigs are very smart , indeed. Our neighbor had a pot belly pig that lived in a pen beside our driveway. His name was Barnie and he would “sing” along the fence line each morning waiting for me to bring him a bowl of veggie scraps and give him a good scratch behind his ears! I think when they are raised with human contact, they become very tame.
When we raised pigs oh so many years ago, they became way too tame and when we sent them to be butchered, we couldnt bear to eat them. I couldn’t eat pork for years, although I do now. They used to like to have us scratch their backs with a rake and when we tried to stop they backed us into the electric fence. They are very smart.