A baby pig.

I wasn't in a very creative mood tonight.

One of Matt and Angie's other pigs (not the mulefoots) just gave birth to two piglets. One didn't make it. Mother Nature--and mothers themselves, in this case--can be cruel.

Now this little guy will have to be bottle-fed every four hours, because the mom has proven that she's incapable of caring for him. Quite the contrary, actually. She has supremely malevolent intentions. Pigs are into murder, it seems.

Who knew?

Although, since all of these creatures are destined for the dinner plate at some point, you could say that we're into murder too. Hrmm.

Letter from a farmer

Hey guys,

We got home from New England over the weekend, and the mulefoots are doing fine! They are big enough that we can let them out into their pasture now, and not worry about them getting through the fence. So far, they are curious about our gilts (soon to be sows!), and the feeling is mutual, as Roxy loves to walk along the fence and observe them quietly.

We just call them by their tag colors - Green and Red. Red is still smaller than Green, so he must have been the runt of the litter. He's not tiny or anything, just about 1/3 smaller, so he'll be developing more slowly. Maybe that's a good thing? Gives us a sort of experiment in the meat. :)

Any-hoo, they have moved up to their new round self feeder, which we may still have to agitate for them if they are too small to move it to allow more food to come down. But, this way, they are more active, having to walk to the other enclosed stall to eat. They are still wary of us, but more curious. I'll attach some pics so you can see them, and how small they are compared to our gilts! Enjoy!

The pigs have arrived

Remember how I referred to "our pig" in my last post? We actually ended up buying two on the recommendation of Mulefoot breeder Mark Sponsler. Apparently pigs get lonely, and although the farm already has two resident sows, they can't all be combined in one pen. Violence might ensue. The sows are both pregnant, so the plan is to slip the mulefoots into the pen after they give birth, and hope the sows don't notice and pitch a fit. Or feel inspired to murder the interlopers.

Matt picked up the pigs and drove them back to Pinehill Farms last week. Here they are:

When I first saw the photo, I sucked in my breath for a moment. I have a weakness for cute. I had to force myself to look away and avoid dwelling on it. It's much easier to dissociate when your pork takes the form of a chop wrapped in butcher paper instead of a baby animal, round of snout and perky of tail. That's one reason why we're not naming them.

Right now they're about eight weeks old, both purebred mulefoots (mulefeet?). We couldn't work out organic feed, since the existing pigs are fed conventionally and soon they'll all be sharing the same trough. Randy and I would have to pay for all of the pigs to switch to organic feed, and since organic is about double the cost of conventional, it just didn't add up this time around. It's a disappointment but this first year is a grand experiment, and the fact that Matt and Angie are raising them on their own land with love and daily commitment to their well-being is definitely the most important part.

The farmers meet their charges.

Meanwhile, we seem to be forming a small pork CSA in spite of ourselves. Since I'm a nervous Nellie, I was skittish about signing up people to buy our meat when, like I said, it's all a grand experiment this first year. What if it comes out dry and tough? What if we can't figure out the shipping situation? But there is the small matter of approximately 400 pounds of pork that must be dealt with, and everybody thinks I'm crazy for being so neurotic. The People Want Pork! If you live in Chicago, San Francisco, or somewhere in the vicinity of Grand Rapids and want to get in on the action, let me know.

Our pig

Pretty soon, one of these little guys is going to be ours. And then, late next fall, he will become dinner. Many dinners, actually. Not just for us, but for our friends and family too. I'm not sure even Randy could get through 200 pounds of pork, as hard as he might try.

How did this come to pass? Randy's little brother Matt has a small farm outside Grand Rapids with his wife Angie, a vet student. Shortly before we went to visit them last fall, I got an email announcing a "whole-hog" mulefoot dinner at Blackbird in Chicago. Mulefoot is the name of this particular breed (they're the black ones in the photo). It stuck in my head, mainly because the idea of a pig with mules' hooves sounded a little odd! Then I read some of the Chicago Reader articles about the pigs.

A couple of weeks later when we were on the farm, visiting with Matt's chickens, ducks, and conventional pigs, I kept babbling about the mulefoot. Gradually, a plan emerged: if we paid for its housing and feeding, Matt would raise and process the pig for us. Maybe we'd get a couple of subscriptions from our friends in Chicago, a mini meat CSA. And somehow we'd get a large portion of the meat back to California with us. (We still haven't quite worked that part out yet.)

Over the winter, we had the privilege of meeting Jude Becker and tasting his incredible pork. If you're in San Francisco, you can pick some up at Bi-Rite. Sometimes Pizzaiolo serves it too. We peppered him with pig questions and he didn't tell us we were crazy. And we went to Japan and tasted some pork that blew our minds ...miles away from the rubbery, lean pork chops we grew up with.

After some months of discussion, research, and a couple of craigslist ads, Matt found a man in the area who's willing to sell us a mulefoot feeder pig ($50). A feeder pig is purchased after it's been weaned so that you can "finish" and slaughter it. We're investigating sources for organic feed, trying to get that lined up before the pig arrives. And there may well be two pigs joining Matt's farm, since solitary swine tend to get lonely.

We know the scheme is not ideal. Ideal would, of course, be local. But Matt and Angie are in the family and have the passion and the land to make this happen. We are excited at the Midwestern provenance of the mulefoot, since that's where we're both from too. This year it's just a feeder pig. But maybe next year we can invest in a couple of animals for breeding. If we can help Matt develop a business selling humanely-raised heritage meat and eggs from happy chickens in one of the most downtrodden states in this blasted nation, we want to do that. Since we head back and forth to Michigan and Chicago from the Bay Area anyway, this is a chance to know the animal that we're going to eat ...and to know what that animal has been eating, too.

So, last week Randy, Matt and Angie meet with the mulefoot man. We don't get to choose our pig, because he wants to sell the top six for breeding. We'll get the one that's left over. Leftover pork! We expect the pig to arrive in early May. And after that, we'll see what happens...