Today a sty for stately suburbs, Sussex County was once a bastion for swine. Roughly 30,000 pigs – four for every three people – lived in the county in 1850, U.S. Census records show. Sussex County farmers that year claimed to have shepherded 8,300 sheep, harvested 21,000 pounds of beeswax and produced 1.8 million pounds of butter on 245,000 acres of farmland. While milk cows and the grain to feed them once reigned supreme, Sussex County is now home to a wide variety of farming — from llamas and rabbits to sweet potatoes and sunflower seeds. The total farmed acres nonetheless total less than 60,000. The hogs number fewer than 550.