When I was a kid, I always bought three weaner pigs from a neighbour in the spring, put a ton of hog grower from the Co-op through them and paid the abattoir 25 dollars apiece to have them cut and wrapped. By the time they went into our freezer each pig had a cost price of about a hundred bucks or 60 cents a pound.
That was fifty years ago. This summer, I did it once again, with two pigs. But this time, with bagged feed and over $200 in processing fees, each pig now costs me $450. As my friend at the feed store says, “You know you’re paying too much for feed when there’s a diagram on the bag telling you how to open it.”
Back in 1969 there were pigs on nearly every farm and we had a choice of eight abattoirs within 15 miles. Today there is only one old guy left with six sows and I have to remind him at Christmas that I am still in the game. We’re down to two abattoirs now and they are so booked up you have to reserve a date at least a year in advance. I must also register for a producer number, a stakeholder number, a tattoo number and a premises ID number. It would make far more sense to just go to Costco and buy a foot long pork loin roast for $10.00 rather than wrestle these pigs through an increasingly expensive and complicated system.
So why do I keep doing it?
For one reason, my pork is not ‘the other white meat’ advertised by the Pork Council. My pigs wander the farm all summer, snoozing under apple trees or lying in mudholes. They spend a lot of time snooting up the barnyard and they often escape and lead me on a leisurely chase to a neighbour I wouldn’t otherwise get to see that much of. The result of all this wandering and snooting in the sun gives the meat a darker colour and a very distinctive taste and texture. Pork and chicken from the supermarket don’t taste like anything much until you sauce it with something sweet or sour or spicy. I have a medieval history friend who insists the average peasant of the Middle Ages had a much sharper sense of smell and taste because he couldn’t drench everything in salt and sugar the way we do.
But the main reason I keep pigs every year is because I like them. I admire their zest for life and their boisterous fellowship. I like to think of them as pig lottery winners because they managed to land here and have the run of a small farm, just as I did when I was young. The poet Dylan Thomas captured it brilliantly when he wrote:
. . . as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green, . . .
I watch the pigs running through the house high hay and it reminds me of a report of a Swedish study that claimed a pig needs several hours of daily snooting to retain its mental health. My pigs are far better adjusted than I am because they do more snooting. One year, my local fair board dumped two pigs on me that had been part of a pork demonstration at the fair. They were out of a big hog barn and they were nuts. They fought and screamed and spooked whenever a door opened. But a funny thing happened when they got out into the barnyard. They snooted up a storm and soon quieted down and when the snow blew in they built themselves snug nests under piles of straw. On frosty mornings they would burst out of their straw houses and come woofing cheerfully to the trough for breakfast. By the time it came to ship them in January, I was just as sorry to see them go as any of my summer pigs.
My wife says that October is always a difficult month for me. After all the tension of market day — tricking the pigs into a large crate, winching them up in the air and backing the truck under them — the barn feels suddenly terribly empty. For a couple of weeks, I mope about the farm until she finally orders me up to Keady Livestock Market to buy two steers to feed for the winter. The economics of steers are every bit as dismal as pigs. But I like them . . . and to maintain my mental health I must feed something.
— Dan Needles