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Entries associated with the tag "Hillspring Eco-Farm":June 20th - 9:22 a.m.
It's been about three months since I met our mulefoot stewards Linda Derrickson and Mark Kessenich, but I have yet to give them a proper introduction. It's a bit of lengthy tale, so I'll do it in parts. Linda grew up on a 200 acre farm in Grant County Wisconsin, not far from Prairie du Chien, where her family raised pigs, chickens, and two dozen Guernsey milking cows. The story of her family's farm is emblematic of family farming in general. As Linda and her siblings grew up and went off to college it became less and less economically viable to to operate a small farm without farmhands. As the years went by her father auctioned off the animals until finally it was time to say goodbye to the cows. "I can count on two fingers the number of times I saw my dad cry and that was one," she says. He spent the last 20 years of his life selling cars. The land now belongs to a woman from Kansas who uses it as a hobby farm. Linda studied teaching at the UW-Madison then joined the Peace Corps and went off to Saint Lucia, where she worked in health care and disease prevention. Upon her return she married, had a Kessenich grew up in Madison and starting working at the tender age of 13 as an assistant in the university's labs, doing work with DNA recombination and extraction, the sort of work that has led to the development of genetically modified organisms, technology he now abhors. By the time he was 20 he was managing his own lab, but became disillusioned with his work in the midst of the social unrest of 60s and 70s. "The whole Vietnam war stuff just ripped the cultural guts out of universities," he says. "Before that you would go to the University Union and sit on the lake shore and there were professors and everybody was there having constant discussion. It was just one eternal dialogue of something going on, people talking about everything under the sun. By the mid-70s corporate money had really come in. So everybody was funded by some other outside source, and so they weren't discussing the research anymore." At 30 he "retired" from lab work and began volunteering at Madison's Mifflin St. Co-op. It was there that he met Linda, who came in one day with her father while he was cleaning out the bulk bins. Linda's father, a skilled carpenter, was scoping out Mifflin St.'s bins to help him design Linda's. "That's how we met," says Linda. "Over the beans. I was there talking with the Mifflin Co-op people [and] they said, 'Oh you've gotta meet this Mark Kessenich. He volunteers here and he lives in your neighborhood.' I said, 'So you live in my neighborhood? How come you're not volunteering at my store?" A week later Kessenich did just that. Next: Linda makes a big splash in the Madison restaurant scene. June 8th - 9:19 a.m.
Crystal and Cherry's piglets are now a little more than three and two weeks old respectively and the paddock at Hillspring Eco-Farm has begun to resemble a "pig rodeo," says farmer Linda Derrickson. The piglets whirl and jump in the air and engage in a kind of sumo-style tussle in which they brace up against each other shoulder-to-butt and shove. The rambunctiousness has been so infectious that the sows get into it. "The mothers were whirling around and jumping in the air," says Linda. "With these big bodies you don't know how they can levitate like that. I think its that the little ones are so playful. I mean mothers play with children. If you've got a child you get down on the floor and you play with it." While the piglets have begun chowing on grass and weeds and even attacking the (organic) house slop (as Mark Kessenich's attached photos demonstrate), they're still weaning. They're big enough now to suckle standing up while the sows are grazing, and they've become less discriminate, with Crystal's piglets suckling Cherry and vice versa. One big happy family--but alas, it can't last. The piglets need to be weaned from their mothers at six weeks and put onto pasture. Prior to that, a necessary rite of passage takes place, perhaps the first significant trauma of their little piggy lives. Linda is worried that soon it might become difficult to tell which piglets belong to which litter. So in a few more weeks they'll get plastic ear tags and names. Every year Linda and Mark choose a theme to name the animals that arrive on the farm. This helps them keep track of which was born when. Two years ago it was state capitals. Last year it was rivers--hence Crystal, Cherry, Churchill, and, less literally, Cong. This year they've chosen singers, a fairly wide open field, until you consider that the National Mulefoot Hog Association and Registry asks that owners name their pigs with a specific letter for the same reason. Two years ago it was "B." Last year it was "C." This year, of course, it's "D." There are eight piglets to be named and registered--four males and four females. Linda and Mark had already come up with a few possibilities when I met them-Dylan, Dionne. I came up with a few--Dino, Desmond, Diamanda. Those few choices seemed woefully insufficient so I enlisted Reader music writers Peter Margasak and Monica Kendrick who came up with a bunch more. Now, here's where you come in. Linda and Mark are offering the chance for readers to "sponsor" the piglets' registration with the Mulefoot Association. As I've written before, registration is important for the future of these rare heritage breeds whether the pigs are to be raised for breeding, feeding, or even as pets. For $10--to cover the registration fee and postage--Linda and Mark will allow readers to name a piglet, and in return they'll be issued a copy of the certificate issued by the Mulefoot Association. Here's a list of what we and a few readers have come up with so far. Feel free to suggest more. As you can see there's a minority of female names. Extra points if your singers have Chicago connections, and a gold star for any castrati. Boars:
Gilts:
I'm on the fence about this but I think it might be bad luck to name a pig after anyone who died of a drug overdose. If you care to name a piglet and sponsor its registration with the National Mulefoot Hog Association send Linda an email at hillspring@tds.net. Type "Name that piglet" in the subject line. May 22nd - 11:57 a.m.
I know I promised a post on the mulefoot tasting but there's breaking news in Blanchardville. As I mentioned in last week's story, Hillspring Farm's two female pigs share a fenced paddock on a grassy pasture, but each has her own tin hutch. New mother Crystal lives in the "Crystal Palace," and Cherry is in the "Cherry Pit." Farmer Linda Derrickson reported early Sunday morning that Cherry was getting a little cranky, perhaps a sign of piglets on the way: "I was nearby and saw one of the piglets come out and start wandering around--all on its own. Cherry was close by eating some 'house slop' that Crystal hadn't finished. I think the piglet mistook Cherry for her mother and it went right up to Cherry. Now Cherry seems more and more like she's ready to birth and getting a little cantankerous and she certainly didn't want any little piglet eating some of that slop. So she picked the piglet up in her mouth and flung it a few feet. Piglet started squealing like it had been mortally wounded and faster than you could blink, Crystal came roaring and snorting out of the Palace to the rescue. Cherry instantly realized she had done something wrong and did not want to meet the wrath of Crystal and so she made a hasty retreat for the Cherry Pit. All this happened in a matter of seconds and the piglet ran back into the Palace, squealing and making distress noises. Crystal went back inside and I waited for it all to calm down and then went in to check and make sure that there was no serious injury. I'm happy to report that all is well and the piglet seems none the worse for its frightening (and confusing?) experience. "We are seeing a pattern in 'prefarrowing behavior.' Remember Crystal had a limp for a while before farrowing? The limp disappeared after she farrowed. Guess what? Cherry started limping today! And judging from the engorgement of her nipples, I think it will be soon. A farm visitor today commented that perhaps the weight and size of the babies starts restricting blood flow to the legs. This from a woman who had experienced this same 'side effect' toward the end of her pregnancies." Then, less than 24 hours later later Linda wrote again: "Cherry farrowed her piglets--we figure in the wee hours of this morning. They were already dry and suckling when Mark checked in with her about 9 AM. Guess how many? Yup ... FOUR! A little trauma with one. Will write more later. Crystal's brood is now running around and playing. They are like kittens -- chasing, jumping, biting, rolling, etc, and running around Crystal. It's a circus!" That's May 18th - 10:42 a.m.
It's a boar! And three gilts! My story this week about the endangered American mulefoot hog and the people trying to save it ended unresolved with Linda Derrickson and Mark Kessenich's very pregnant pig Crystal, who shares a grass paddock with another gilt named Cherry, ready to give birth to her first litter any day. I'm proud to say that Crystal farrowed (gave birth to) her first four piglets right on schedule Monday afternoon--one day after Mother's Day (more pics attached below). At present Crystal and Cherry each have separate hutches in the paddock. Shortly before the birth Linda said she noticed Cherry building a hay nest in Crystal's hutch, which made her suspect that she might be the one ready for piglets. Turns out Cherry was just helping out. Kessenich says Crystal farrowed fast, easy, and without human intervention, which is typical of mulefoots. "I checked them about 11:30," he says. "I've been mowing grass and throwing that in there and Cherry was begging for that. So I came down about 3 and mowed and threw it in and when Crystal didn't show up I said, 'Oh, I'd better look.' I stuck my head in there and she still had her head buried in a whole pile of hay, but I could see three or four heads." The little things are impossibly cute: black, shiny, silky, about the size of guinea pigs, and though they're sticking close to mama, or burying themselves deep in hay to keep warm these first few days, they're already distinguishing themselves--the boar has tiny white feet, a deviation from solid black allowable under the breed standard. We at the Food Chain have been scheming for months for a way to make our own bacon, and our own contribution to the burgeoning pig lit genre. So we've put a deposit down on one of the Hillspring Eco-Farm mulefoot piglets, and in the next few weeks, as they start to grow, we're going to pick one out, name it, and raise it. Well, farmers are going to raise it. It'll take anywhere from 10 months to a year to bring our piglet up to slaughter weight. During that time we're going to check in on a regular basis and examine every aspect of what it takes to raise your own food--the ups, the downs, the tears, the laughter, the squeals, the meals. When the time comes we--and a very talented chef to be named later--are going to prepare every part of the pig possible. No piece will be butchered in vain. And we're going to give you--the reader--a chance to partake of a feast in honor of what we hope will be a magnificent animal. So keep checking in. Next week, to whet your appetite I'll blog the results of a mulefoot vs. factory-farmed pork chop-sausage-ham steak-bacon throwdown. |
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