kathymason

Surprisingly, the neighbors like it , from the Medform Tribune, August, 15, 2000

Kathy Mason
Mail Tribune / Jim Craven

Kathy Mason holds a 10-day-old piglet on her farm, which runs in the middle of Shady Cove much as it has for a century, with no conflicts with neighbors or the city’s tourist-driven economy.

Shady Cove pigs make for a model farm

By Melissa Martin

SHADY COVE — For more than 40 years, Kathleen Mason has been raising pigs on a three-acre farm two blocks from city hall and just down the road from the steady stream of tourists who now fuel this city’s economy.

The land has been in agricultural use since Shady Cove’s first settlers built a home here in 1888.

"This is the original part of town," says Mason, who purchased the farm in 1959 from a descendent of Shady Cove pioneers. "This land has always been in agriculture."

A Highway 62 traveler heading to Crater Lake probably wouldn’t notice Mason’s pig farm. There’s a small farm house, a few pig barns built by Mason’s late husband, Fendon Mason, and an exercise corral to yield the lean pork that modern consumers demand.

But the small farm inside the city limits is home for 15 sows and one boar. And this summer, the barns are filled with about 50 piglets that will soon be weaned and sold to 4-H students or farmers wanting to raise pork for show and consumption.

Mason says she doesn’t hear too many complaints from neighbors about her farm in the city limits. A new Canadian product that’s similar to cat litter called Stall Dry helps keep barnyard smells to a minimum.

"She’s a good neighbor and the animals are good neighbors," says Les Weaver, a retired engineer who moved to Shady Cove three months ago knowing he would be living next door to a pig farm.

"There’s no garbage in the yard, no odors, no noise. We actually enjoy seeing the 4-H kids walking their hogs with a little switch around the corral," he says. "My wife likes to go over and cuddle the piglets. They are cute as they can be."

"We hope Kathy Mason stays here as long as we’re living here." goto Mr. Les Weaver Addresses the Shady Cove City Council, Sept. 21, 2000, at: http://www.rogueforum.com/LesWeaver

Mason spends her days taking care of the piglets, notching their ears to keep them with the right mother and letting them play together in the afternoons.

"When they are playing and squealing, it gets to sounding like a herd of elephants," Mason says.

For the sows, Mason takes ice to the barn to cool them off on hot, summer afternoons, runs fans to blow flies away and plays country music so the pigs can get used to the human voice. Twice a day she gives them a break from the piglets, who, when they are not gulping milk every half hour, badger their mother until she relinquishes a fresh supply.

"Sometimes, when we bring her back to the stall after an exercise time, she looks in the door like she’s thinking, ‘They’re doing all right on their own; I don’t know if I want to go back in there,’ " Mason says, grinning at Bell, a Japanese Duroc Berkshire whose job is to nurse 12 piglets for the next eight weeks.

Mason feeds the sows grain, not table scraps. She keeps the pens clean, carefully records illnesses and medications and requires guests to wear shoe covers to protect her herd from bacteria. Her farm practices have earned her the highest rating given by the Des Moines-based National Pork Producers Council.

"We have people call and ask if I want the leftovers from their garden and we won’t accept them," Mason says. "Our pigs eat grain, alfalfa and hay, and sometimes we give them an apple for a treat. But what you put in an animal, that’s what you get out. If you feed a pig garbage, that’s what you’ll eat."

Mason plans to keep her pigs in the city as long as she has help from her daughter, Iva Mason, who supplements the farm income by working for the U.S. Forest Service. Before that, her husband’s job at a mill kept food on the table.

"You can’t just be a farmer nowadays," Mason says. "You need a second income."