“Pigger! Pigger! Pigger! Piggers!”
A quiet paddock full of deep, green grass begins to tremble, and then bursts into life. Suddenly, pigs are popping up everywhere and running in from all different directions: Red ones, grey ones, brown ones with little black spots, grey ones with big black blotches; all held back by two thin ropes of electrified wire.
“These spotted ones, we call them dairy pigs. They make good pictures,” said Steve Kenyon as he and his wife, Amber approach the fence.
The pigs are snorting, blowing and grunting with excitement, inspecting boots and pant legs as their human visitors join them in a 15-acre Pig Paradise.
“There’s nothing happier than a pasture pig. If you’re ever having a bad day, you just come out here and sit down and it just cheers you right up,” said Steve.
Grass ranchers currently operating about 3,300 acres of leased land in the Busby region, the Kenyon’s started raising their own pigs six years ago because Steve loves Bacon. A nice synergy has developed since then, with the cows turned into the pig paddock twice a year to manage the grass. The pigs are then rotated through the paddock, rooting up whatever delicacies they can find and cooling off as needed in a plastic pig pool at the central watering site.
Steve says their family ranch – Greener Pastures Ranching Ltd. – is based on regenerative agriculture; the business of building soil.
“My job is to raise my kids with the morals and values and life skills that they need. I just finance that with ranching. We use animals to build the soil and we manage the grass to do that. Our definition of what we do, is modern agriculture grows plants from the soil. Regenerative agriculture grows the soil from the plants. It’s a big difference.”
He and Amber buy their pigs in spring as weanlings, starting them out in a cage at a high point in the centre of the paddock. As they grow, they are released into a larger pen, confined and protected behind a fence of netting. Their final growth stages are spent rotating through the pasture, already grazed once by the cows and sectioned off with two strands of electric fence as well as a perimeter fence in case of escape.
In the six years since they purchased their first pigs, the Kenyon’s have never had issues with predators.
“When we start out in the spring, they’re just in the cage – they’re little. So we just move that around, and then they graduate into the netting which also not only keeps them in, but keeps predators out,” he said.

“The neighbours across the highway, last year had a cougar attack one of their steers. The neighbor across here has lost lambs and goats for two or three years. We’ve never lost a pig.
“Now they’ve graduated up to the two-wire – it’s a lot easier to move, and we’re basically just doing a big pie all the way around.”
Any predator big enough to tackle a pig is also big enough to be safely deterred by the electric fence. Once they get some size on them, the pigs are pretty good at protecting themselves. Most other animals are afraid of pigs, said Amber. They have a kind of gangster mentality that serves them well. Steve demonstrates by grabbing one of his critters by its hind leg. Its loud squeals bring the whole crew at a gallop, huffing and grunting as they cluster around the alleged victim. Whether they’re interested in protecting their frightened friend or just looking to share in the spoils is in question, says Steve.
He and Amber know better than to get emotionally attached to their pigs, although their daughter once broke a pig to ride. It became quite accustomed to having her sit on its back while it rooted around the pasture.

“They’re little and cute when they get here. They’re adorable. And then they get bigger, and then they’re not as cute anymore and they don’t know their own strength. They’re sweet. They love you. But if you fell down in here, they would eat you,” said Steve.
The pigs are fed a diet of oats, peas, barley and garlic (for internal parasites). Apple cider vinegar is added to the drinking water and the pool water, and they are fed diatomaceous earth for additional protection against internal parasites. The pigs round out their diet in the pasture.
“They love the forage – the dandelions, the clovers, everything else. The grasses, they prefer to eat the roots,” said Steve.
The spot they’re in on the day of this visit is an extra special, because it includes a low area with a natural pond that is especially wet this year after unusually heavy rains through the summer. The swimming pool up on the hill is great, but the natural area has something the pool can’t offer: oodles and oodles of nice, sticky mud.
It’s the sort of environment that would probably be unhealthy for barn-raised pigs that lack the hardiness and immunity to thrive in nature, said Amber.
“We try to find local farmers that are already raising them out on grass so they’re not barn raised, because if we buy them from people that have raised them up in barns, they don’t do as well,” she said. The weaners were started in barns to protect them from winter weather, but they come from sows that had thrived on pasture during the warmer months and are not brought in until it the weather becomes too harsh to keep them outside.
The Kenyon’s purchased eight weaners in the first year, but later expanded the annual herd to 50 as a means of introducing their four kids to the business of farming. They’ve cut back in the last two years, however, because of a weakened economy. They’ve also changed some of their marketing strategy to protect their investment. Amber explains that they had originally taken orders for pork packages, and then met customers at an agreed location in Edmonton. Unfortunately, some of the customers would fail to show and the frozen pork prepared for them would have to be taken back. The window for keeping frozen pork out is roughly two hours, so that meat would have to be used at home.

The Kenyon’s now deliver directly to their customers’ homes, leaving the package at the house if it’s cold enough to keep the meat from thawing.
”Honestly, some people wouldn’t show up,” said Amber.
“When we have their address, it’s pretty hard to say, ‘No, we don’t want this.’”
This year, they purchased two litters for a total of 21 pigs to be processed as they reach market weight.
Asked what they would like fellow farmers to know about their pigs, Steve and Amber focused on attributes of the pork.
“It’s the quality of the meat, the flavor,” he said.
“The pork steaks are bright red like a beef steak; they’re not that pale tan colour you get from a grocery store. You won’t find this product in a grocery store.”
Amber stresses the nutritional value, saying that meat from grass-fed animals is higher in Omega 3 fatty acids and CLAs than meat from conventionally raised livestock.
Parents of four children ranging in age from 10 to 19, the Kenyon’s arrived where they are today from completely different paths in life. Steve was raised on a farm in Saskatchewan, just a few miles south of Lloydminster. Amber grew up in Vancouver.
“When Steve and I met, he was farming,” she said.
“Everything he did for work, I did for fun – so I loved going snowshoeing, hiking, everything. So he’s like, “Yeah, you can go hiking, here’s a tool belt, go do some fencing.”
Steve just grins: “She won’t fall for that anymore.” •
— By Brenda Kossowan