Horses were long my favorite farm animals, but recently I’ve been smitten by pigs. There’s just something about their quivering heart-shaped noses, their doglike intelligent eyes, and their curvaceous butts that really gets me. These days, I also like to eat them, nose to tail — someday Miss Steak and Corn Maven and I must get around to writing about the Whole Hog Dinner we enjoyed at Oliveto’s last month.
As much as I love bacon and all things porklike, watching a hog killing will likely fill me with nausea and a numb horror. The experience may make meat off-limits again forever. I’ll be finding out quite soon. It’s important to me to open this door that the food industry would prefer to keep closed.
They’re afraid if we look, we won’t eat. They may be right.
One farmer who’s not afraid to shine a light on his own practices is Walter Jeffries of Sugar Mountain Farm in Vermont. You may have seen his name in our comments section, but if you haven’t yet checked out his blog, you’re in for a treat — or perhaps a bracing smack.
Walter manages to write unsentimentally yet jovially about life and death on his small farm. He talks about piglets who die right after they’re born, and how his dog Kita — whose job it is to guard the young — gets to eat the dead ones as her reward. He explains why he doesn’t castrate his males, yet has never had a problem with “boar taint.” Some of his pigs have had their tails docked — by each other, mistaking a tail for a teat. His sense of humor can be scathing. He posts great photos. In addition to the pigs and the chickens, he writes about building an addition with his own two hands, and about home schooling his kids. How he finds the time to run his other website and blog, NoNAIS.org, I have no idea.
I’ve only explored a fraction of Walter’s posts, but his blog is where I head when I happen to have a few moments. Enjoy!
Food, Farming, & Food Politics events calendar
Humor:
March 14th, 2007 at 6:57 pm
Walter rocks! I wish I was closer to his awesome farm.