Dancing Pigs

What do you do with the food left on your plate? Scrape it into the garbage, right? It's food, it will easily decompose in a landfill. Well, that's not entirely accurate. What if I told you that it takes 50-100 years for food scraps to decompose in a landfill? For food to decompose, it needs good air flow and micro organisms; however, in a land fill there really isn't either of those things.

I really don't ever have a problem with food scraps because I am a member of the clean plate club. I like food, it likes me, which is an all around good relationship. However, my toddlers don't have that kind of relationship yet, so we are throwing a lot of food away. I have to stop myself from eating the food off of their plates just to keep it from the garbage. So what do we do with our food scraps, we started feeding them to the pigs on my parent's farm. 

If I can recycle our food at home, why can't I do it on a bigger scale? This led me to the local grocery store. I asked if I could pick up their produce scraps for the pigs. The first day I was there to pick it up, they had two 55 gallon containers full. I was shocked by the amount. Afterall, this was not a big grocery store with a huge produce department. As I was loading it up, my 5-year old could see watermelon rinds in the sacks. His response was, "The pigs are gonna love that watermelon." He was right the pigs did love that watermelon. 

The fun came when the boys fed the pigs. They loved to just watch them sort through the fruit and do a little happy dance around the pen. The pigs did actually run around, which qualified as their happy dance.

Note: these pigs are only being fed vegetables, fruits, and some stale bread scraps. They also have a full feed ration to choose from. This is in full compliance with the swine health protection regulations, so USDA stay off my back.

Anyone can have worms to eat food scraps.
Kids love them, even high schoolers.