Pigs are voracious omnivores and rooters. When we started raising them, it was in large part for their help in clearing the land. Goats are great at suppressing the regeneration of trees after they are felled, but pigs are the livestock equivalent of rototillers. We initially fed them bagged feed from local stores to supplement foraging, much like with the goats. Eventually, though, we found sweet potatoes! Eastern North Carolina provides the country with the majority of it's sweet potatoes, and we've found a few farms selling cull sweet potatoes, also known as deer potatoes at a fraction of the cost of bagged feeds. Sweet potatoes are seasonal and low in protein, however, so supplementing the pigs' diet is necessary. Our first idea was to give them wheat which is much higher in protein than sweet potatoes, but it appears that the digestibility of whole wheat is not that great (as evidenced by the contents of their manure and the patches of wheat grass growing around the place). Soybean meal is high in lysine, an essential amino acid, and we currently are going to Mule City Specialty Feeds in Benson, NC for that. The folks there have been very friendly and the pigs seem to love the meal. We mix the soybean meal with a bit of water and corn, which comes from John Ferrell, whose farm in located in Kenly. (John is great and if you need corn, you can reach him at 919-631-5242.) We feed the pigs once a day, and leave them free to forage and eat whatever they find, whether it's bugs, roots, grass or weeds. So far, based on the feedback we've gotten from customers, this combination has been effective in producing quality flavor.