Getting up close and personal with pigs

Published 10:42 am Monday, April 27, 2009

By By JOHN EBY / Niles Daily Star
CASSOPOLIS – Miss Edwardsburg Courtney Davis earned the nickname "the Pig Whisperer" Saturday for her uncanny ability to calm squealing newborn swine.
Courtney is a member of the festival court as second runner-up to Miss Blossomtime Jessica Lenardson of St. Joseph, who is also Miss Congeniality, and First Runner-up Tiffany Coffing of Bridgman.
They dodged rain drops Saturday afternoon as the 26th annual Farm Bureau Queens' Farm Tour bus brought them to Nate Robinson's farm on Decatur Road, just north of Dutch Settlement, as part of the showcase of southwest Michigan's diverse agriculture production.
The event, sponsored by the Berrien, Cass and Van Buren County Farm Bureaus, is designed to make participants in the Blossomtime Festival aware of the impact agriculture has on their area and, more importantly, on their daily lives.
Miss Blossomtime and queens from 24 communities, along with Mr. Blossomtime Zack Devereaux of Buchanan and his court began their day with breakfast, followed by stops to farms in each of the three sponsoring counties, with a break for lunch.
In addition, each participant is given a basket overflowing with donated items from area ag-related businesses.
After enjoying a continental breakfast and receiving the gift baskets at Tree-Mendus Fruit Farm in Eau Claire, the group traveled to Andrews University Dairy Parlor in Berrien Springs.
The bus then carried participants to Dickerson's Greenhouse in Gobles, followed by lunch at the Van Buren County Farm Bureau office in Paw Paw.
Robinson Farms was the final stop before returning to Tree-Mendus, home of July's international cherry pit spit.
Nate and LouAnn's daughter, Jamie, greeted the Blossomtime bus.
She dispensed with the traditional hay ride in favor of a walk to a nearby farrowing field where the mothers have their babies, but rain cut that short and moved her talk into a barn.
"Males are castrated when they are a day old," she explains. "There are a lot of chores involved. I personally love my job. If you're a female and you love animals and being outside, find a farmer. For me it's really good. My dad's my boss, which can be good and bad, by I get to have (her son Parker) with me. I really enjoy that," even though pigs frighten the 2-year-old.
"it's a lot of hard work, I'm not going to lie," Jamie, a seventh-generation farmer who has been working for her parents for four years, told the beauty queens. "You fight with the weather and we do have little pigs year-round. We farm 300 to 400 sows a year. That's a lot of sows. When it's 20 below zero, we're trying to make sure they stay warm. This winter was really hard for us. We had snow drifts up over my head, so it gets challenging, but I enjoy it. We struggle a lot with coyotes and predators. Ear-notching our hogs is something we cannot do. We also are not allowed to cut tails. Once they're gone from their mothers they go to nursery areas where they're allowed to roam outside. Sometimes the pigs get bored and they tend to want to bite. Ear notching people do to keep track if a sow had a big litter. I've never ear notched."
They raise their animals naturally, free of antibiotics or artificial insemination, and market their meat at a small country store, Jake's. "Everything's vacuum-packed and USDA-inspected," she said. "My mom and dad are at market right now. We do markets in Chicago and also in Michigan at Niles on Thursdays and South Haven, Texas Corners and Oshtemo on Saturdays."