A while back, I decided that a daily can of Mountain Dew consumed along with Mounds candy bars was not good for my health.

I go deep, don’t I?

So I’ve been exploring healthy eating. Everything from grass-fed beef to eggs from pasture-raised chickens. I planted a small vegetable garden and may even try composting.

So all these healthy choices could only lead to one thing, right?

Yep.

Pigs.

I never know how I stumble onto these articles, but this one introduced me to pasture-fed pigs.

American Guinea Hogs.

I guess they were the rage in the 1800s and then nearly went extinct before homesteaders revived the breed. But they had three things I wanted: they eat grass (because I have a nice pasture and it’s healthier meat), they stay smaller (commercial pigs can grow to become hippopotamus), and they are friendly.

I like friendly animals on my hobby farm.

So I found some baby Guinea Hogs.

I brought them home, and they settled in. We named them Bacon One, Two, and Three because I had plans for their futures.

I knew nothing about raising pigs when the Bacons arrived, but I quickly learned that they take mealtime seriously. And when is mealtime? Whenever I feed them. They’d have gone for the Mountain Dew and Mounds bars if I offered those.

The Bacons plowed over each other to get to the closest corner of their pen when I walked to the barn. Claiming to be delirious with hunger. The literature I read advised not to believe them.

When they’re not hurdling one another in their race to the feed trough, they scream. Friendly screaming, of course.

They are happy to let me pet them and offer them animal crackers. In fact, to feed them everything except chili peppers. They declined a second bite of those.

Yeah, we tried peppers just to see if there are limits to pig chowing.

Truly, all I wanted was for the Bacons to eat grass. All they wanted was to eat what I eat. Maybe eating my food for me.

One day, my sister called. “I have some food for your piggies.” She had cooked five pounds of potatoes, stirred in all the salad parts, and then added some mayonnaise, which had a sour flavor. Nobody in her family would eat the potato salad. Would my pigs?

Well, let’s find out.

I dumped the entire load of salad into a rubber pan in their pen. That was the happiest minute of their day. They turned a blind eye to the grass for twenty-four hours after that, waiting for more of my sister’s potato salad.

I asked, but she said it was a onetime deal. I hope her family appreciated her next potato salad as much as the Bacons would have.

As soon as my pastures greened up, I opened the gate to let the Bacons out. They found the grass quickly, and I figured my summer was set. Let them graze all they wanted.

But the next day, they were running around the barnyard. Outside the fence.

As soon as they spotted a human, they raced to us. Probably looking for potato salad.

We got them back in their pen.

“Pigs like to root,” my sister said. So we speculated the Bacons had lifted a gate off its hinges. We didn’t see a gate off its hinges, but this was our best guess. We strapped down the hinges so a rhinoceros couldn’t lift that gate.

The pigs were out the next day.

In their latest prison escape, they found the stored alfalfa in the lean-to. They explored the orchard. They grazed their way to the middle of the neighbor’s alfalfa field.

We lured them back to their pen with a big jar of animal crackers. Food is food, after all.

But the mystery continued. How were they getting out?

Aha. We finally spotted a broken crosspiece in the woven wire fence.

“Let’s laminate a panel over that hole in the fence,” I said. So we grabbed a wire panel and began lashing it to the woven wire.

“There are only two pigs in there,” my sister said as we worked.

“Yeah, the other one’s behind us.”

And so he was, watching us fix the fence. As soon as I spotted Bacon 3, the other two rammed their shoulders against the fence and pushed through the wire links. Easy peasy.

So that’s how they were getting out.

I locked them in a stout pen that closely resembled solitary confinement cells in the penitentiary. They didn’t escape.

Now what to feed? The Bacons got alfalfa until I realized I didn’t want to pay for expensive alfalfa all summer. The whole idea was healthy – and cheap – pasture-fed pork.

One of the side effects of carving your farmstead out of an alfalfa field is that alfalfa never dies. It’s like mint that way.

We have bunches of volunteer alfalfa still popping up in odd places, so I took the lawnmower out, catching the shredded alfalfa and dumping that in their pen.

It was almost as good as the potato salad. Based on their snarfing sounds.

And it kept me mowing the place.

Then came a magical day when I realized the Bacons were growing.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained. I opened the gate to the pasture.

They started grazing the grass immediately. No more ramming the fence and no more escape.

Now they eat nonstop in the pasture now. All-day cafeteria.

They still scream when I approach, to signal that they are starving to death and potato salad is required.

I don’t believe them, but I do have a rough idea why they almost went extinct once.