Entries associated with the tag "Mark Kessenich":

I know, I know. We make a big production out of buying a mulefoot, we track her progress for a year and half, and now we're eating some other pigs. Believe me, it's complicated.

Dee Dee, you may recall, got herself pregnant last winter. So that delayed any thought of harvesting her through her three-month, three-week, three-day (average) gestation. And then her piglets needed weaning for six weeks or so, and we wanted her to have a long happy summer out on the grass. By then she was getting pretty big. Really big. I worried that she'd be too fat--as in too much fat, not enough meat.

I wanted some insight on what we could expect from Dee Dee at her size, so I tried to call Arie McFarlen, South Dakota steward of the largest herd of mulefoots in existence. After repeated attempts I got her husband on the horn, who seemed angry--outraged even--that Dee Dee had gotten herself "with pig," as the discreet say. Once she's pregnant the meat is "ruined!" he declared. It was a short conversation. Further attempts to reach McFarlen have been unsuccessful, but I was a bit skeptical about the assertion. See, Linda Derrickson and Mark Kessenich, the original Whole Hog Project farmers, have been eating a sow since December. Remember Cherry? They froze her meat after butchering.

"It's an amazing culinary experience: juicy, flavorful, plenty of texture while still being tender," Linda told me. "And the fat! Oh my gosh, a gastronomic delight."

I contacted Heath Putnam in Washington State--he raises Mangalitsas, aka Wooly Pigs, an unimproved lard-type breed. I asked him what motherhood does to a sow's meat.   

"A sow's condition changes when she's got pigs," he wrote. "If you eat her belly when she's lactating, it won't taste the same as when she's dry. After she nurses pigs, she'll have smaller reserves of fat. By the time she's had a few litters, she's a few years old, at which point she'll be tough." But . . . "As long as you finished the sow properly after weaning, I'd eat her."

By the time we met with Paul Kahan to start planning October 19th's dinner, we worried Dee Dee was too big. Kahan's more comfortable working with smaller animals, and in the end, Valerie Weihman-Rock offered to switch Dee Dee for three younger pigs, and to slaughter Dee Dee herself in September. But then, Dee Dee got herself pregnant again. So she has another few months at least.

I still have high hopes for her, and I'll be following her story until Valerie decides it's her time. Meanwhile, October 19th approaches.

The collected Whole Hog Project.

Part three: the Meat

Last December, after Mark Kessenich and I escorted his mulefoots Cong and Cherry to the slaughterhouse, there was a quite a delay before he could actually pick up the meat. First, the pigs weren't scheduled to be cut up until the after the weekend, and then there was a snowstorm that kept him from making the pickup. And then another. And another.

When he finally made the return trip, Cong -- all 145.5 pounds of him -- had been cut up into his primal parts and frozen. He has a date with the sausage maker in April -- yes, they're that backed up.

Cherry, at 175.5 pounds, had been broken down into smaller cuts -- pork chops, hams, shoulder roasts, Boston butts, hocks, shanks, big slabs of belly that will eventually be cured for bacon, and big slabs of back fat that will be rendered into lard. 

Here's Linda Derrickson's e-mailed account of their first few meals:

"Our first pork chop meal (a few days ago) was the true reward we have been anticipating for our 16 months of hands-on hog raising adventures. . . . It's an amazing culinary experience: juicy, flavorful, plenty of texture while still being tender.  And the fat! Oh my gosh, a gastronomic delight. Mark and I relished every little piece of fat, especially the little cracklings left in the saute pan.

"Following the chops, our next pork meal was a shoulder roast. I rubbed it with our garden rosemary and garlic; then roasted it on a rack in the oven. The 4-lb. roast took a little over two hours. Superb! It was tender and succulent. Leftovers were sliced for terrific cold lunch sandwiches. And we boiled the bones and scraps and made a pork-cabbage-noodle soup."

It cost a total of $147.25 to process Cherry. Cong, who weighed significantly less, was more costly at $128.49 -- and he's going to cost more when he's made into sausage. Linda and Mark decided to raise their mulefoots, not just to help save the breed, but because they wanted a natural source of fat in their diets. I asked her whether it was worth it economically, given all the the difficulties they faced--pig breakouts, high feed costs, labor, hassles at the slaughterhouse.

"I think in the end you can say it was worth it for the experience," she said. "It certainly wasn't a financial success for us. I think we're getting the message from beyond us that we're not supposed to be raising pigs."  

Up until she said good-bye to the pigs, Linda spent a little bit of time each day scratching Cherry behind the ears. I asked her how it felt to be eating an animal she'd been so close to. 

"It's gratitude," she said. "It's not like 'I'm glad you're gone -- ha, ha, ha.' It isn't any different than eating a carrot. My philosophy allows me to eat a carrot, which is a living thing too, and I jerked it out of the ground before it even got a chance to bear young. Cherry got to bear her young. She got to fulfill her life cycle and produce progeny that can go on with her genetics." 

Thus ends the mulefoot residency at Hillspring Farm. Now we'll turn our full attention to our pig, Dee Dee, and the rest of the mulefoots at Valerie Weihman-Rock's spread in Argyle.

Part two: the Killing Floor 

Mark Kessenich is a regular customer at the small slaughterhouse where we brought his mulefoot hogs Cong and Cherry earlier this month. They're the first swine he's raised to slaughter, but he's brought plenty of sheep and a few Highland cattle there before. He's on friendly terms with with the USDA inspector that normally works on the killing floor, looking for signs of disease in the organs and carcasses of the animals that pass through, and purple-stamping her approval if they're healthy. Mark makes it a practice to watch the inspection and butchery of his animals, because it gives him a measure of how well his husbandry techniques are working. And as his wife Linda Derrickson puts it, it's part of their "spiritual journey" with the animals. "We have given them a good life which includes our love and respect," she says. "They are not just hunks of meat being processed. They are individually valued, and we thank and bless them for sustaining us and our farm with their meat."

Mark and I entered the killing floor, where four workers were methodically working on three enormous cows hanging from pulleys in various states of completion. They labored under the watch of two new inspectors, one training the other.

Just before we'd arrived they'd dispatched Cong and Cherry with a pneumatic bolt, after which the hogs were hung up to bleed out. Cong was laid out on his back, and a pair of workers opened his hide from his breast to his belly, slowly separating it from his fat, which was relatively scant, as is typical of boars. He was hauled into the air by a pulley, and another chain was attached to the back of his thick, black-haired hide to pull it away from the carcass. The hide, along with his hooves, was then discarded.

I hadn't realized this slaughterhouse wasn't equipped with a scalder, which removes the hair from the skin, and would have allowed Mark to leave it on and keep the hooves. According to the inspector, these are rare in small Wisconsin slaughterhouses. In fact, this one wasn't equipped to process many internal organs, such as the intestines and tripe. We're going to have to find a different slaughterhouse for our pig, Dee Dee.

The workers then opened Cong with a power saw and removed the liver and heart, proffering them to the inspectors to check for parasites. In a few areas there were milky white spots on Cong's otherwise dark brown liver. This is indicative of roundworms. For farmers like Kessenich who allow their animals to range freely on grass and don't use chemical dewormers, roundworms, or Ascaris suum, are a fact of life.

If roundworm eggs are ingested by an animal, they hatch in the intestines and migrate to the liver, where the damage they cause is evidenced by those spots. From there they can enter the bloodstream, and then the heart, lungs, and digestive tract. That's when a heavily infected pig starts to show respiratory problems, loss of appetite, and vomiting; the parasite can be fatal. None of the mulefoots had any of these symptoms. 

If the spots show up in one or two areas in the liver, they can be cut out, and the liver will pass inspection. But three or more and the inspectors will condemn the organ. That's what happened this time, though Kessenich felt it should have passed. Cong's heart passed with flying colors.

Then it was Cherry's turn. Her carcass was covered with a thick layer of back fat, and compared to Cong, she had almost twice as much leaf lard, the precious deposit of fat located around the kidneys. Like Cong, Cherry's liver showed signs of infection and was discarded, but her heart passed as well.

Her seven fetuses were also thrown away. "We did not know for certain that Cherry was pregnant," Linda explained later. "It apparently occurred when the boars broke through fencing to be with the sows in late fall. Most farms use artificial insemination or keep their boars in  jail-like paddocks. We chose, instead, to give our boars a large 20-acre free-range pasture . . . which proved not to be boar-proof."

The inspector-in-training stamped his approval on the carcasses, though they, along with the other animals killed that day, weren't scheduled to be cut up until after the weekend. But Mark took home the hearts, the leaf lard, and a piece of hanging tender from Cong. He wanted to to check the meat for boar taint, an unpleasant barnyard aroma that sometimes results when an uncastrated male is kept in the proximity of females.

Cong's finished carcass weighed 145.5 pounds, and most of it was destined to be sausage. Cherry's was 175.5 and would be cut up into its primal parts. Mark planned to return to pick everything up in a few days.

Next: the Meat 

Earlier this month I headed up to Blanchardville, WI, for a grave and momentous occasion. Our old friends Mark Kessenich and Linda Derrickson decided it was time to haul their mulefoots Cong and Cherry to a small, organically certified slaughterhouse some 35 miles north. A large part of this decision was economically motivated--they simply couldn't afford to carry the pigs through the winter (where have I heard that before?). This in no way made it an easy thing to do, and the pain of the sacrifice was compounded by the fact that about three months earlier the boars Cong and Churchill had broken out of their pasture, and now Cherry was pregnant and pretty close to farrowing. Her unborn piglets would be lost.

The morning was bright but painfully cold. Mark had already cleared the snow from the long driveway. Denise Benoit and Rob Steinhofer, the farm's other residents, were on hand to help with the tricky business of separating Cong and Cherry from Churchill and Crystal, who would be soon moving to Valerie Weihman-Rock's farm in Argyle, where our pig, Dee Dee, is.

First we lured Cherry into a cage from her bedding in the barn. We had to do this with a bucket of grain even though the animals aren't supposed to eat much before slaughter. Mark drove her up the driveway to the trailer. Meanwhile, Denise and I were supposed to be watching Cong to make sure he didn't break out of the little enclosure we'd lured him into, and of course the minute we turned our backs on him he busted out and began fraternizing with the rams and ewes on the other side of the fence. Mark, by this time driving back into the barn, was the first to notice this, and it was the first time I'd ever heard him yell. Still, it was a minor crisis, and we loaded up Cong and hit the road.

When we arrived at the slaughterhouse Cong and Cherry were standing quietly and motionlessly in their respective trailer compartments. If they sensed any danger, they didn't appeared to be stressed. Nevertheless I couldn't help but project my own hangups a little. I thought they looked sad and a little resigned.

Mark backed the trailer up to a short metal chute that led to a door in the back of the building. Two workers emerged and helped usher the pigs one by one into a steamy holding area occupied by a cow and two other groups of hogs lounging atop each other in separated pens. Cong and Cherry had about an hour and a half before it was their turn, which would give them some time to calm down if in fact they were stressed. Mark and I headed up the street to wait in a cafe.

Ever since we started The Whole Hog Project, I've found myself the recipient of tons of pig gifts--T-shirts, a pooping pig key chain, gummi bacon, bacon mints, gum, and Band-Aids, cans of scary potted pork, a very nice hog and balloon painting by local artist Derek Erdman, and stuffed talking pigs--two in the last month alone. One sings the theme from the Addams Family.

All are pretty goofy, and most possess the absurd kitschy anthropomorphism that defangs the idea of slaughter and helps make the idea of eating animals palatable. Well, I like this collection, but I don't need it to feel OK about my bacon.

Meanwhile, I've been alerted to a more realistic kind of pig representation that I wouldn't mind hanging on the wall. The original caretakers of our mulefoot, Mark Kessenich and Linda Derrickson at Hillspring Farm, sent notice about a friend, Wisconsin "barnyard artist" Susan Medaris, who has a show opening Friday at the Madison Public Library. Appropriately titled The Whole Hog, it features a number of porcine images and objets, including an oil painting of either Crystal or Cherry and one of the piglets in their very early days (pictured). If you find yourself in Madison, the show runs until the 30th.

Not long after my last trip to the farm I received some shocking news from Linda Derrickson. She and Mark Kessenich had decided to part with their mulefoots, selling seven of the piglets and two of the adults to a homesteader couple down the road in Argyle. She said they didn't make the decision lightly--it was something they'd been mulling for a while. Now that the piglets have reached weaning age they need to be separated from their mothers, who continue to be separated from the boars, Cong and Churchill (lest they create more piglets). That requires more land to be set aside and fenced off. And the mulefoots need the kind of daily care that their cattle, goats, and sheep don't. That's a lot of work for a couple who just wanted a source of quality fat in their diets.

Not long ago a woman named Valerie Weihman-Rock wandered into the Blanchardville co-op where Linda volunteers on Wednesdays, looking to give away a surplus of green beans she'd grown. Linda immediately volunteered the mulefoots to take care of them, and the two women got talking. Valerie, an artist and welding instructor, and her husband Mike, a metal- and woodworker, live on 151 acres about ten miles south of Blanchardville in Argyle. They have have the capability to grind their own organic corn and grains, and once the Rocks heard about the mulefoots they decided they wanted some of their own. An initial deal to buy two piglets from each litter to start a new breeding herd expanded to the whole group and two adults (Cherry and Churchill) after the Rocks got excited about propagating the breed.

As for the Reader's piglet, the Rocks have agreed to raise her for us. We've picked her out--she's the second largest female in the group, born of Cong and Crystal (more on her later).

Here's Linda's report on the big move, which happened about a week and a half ago: "Capturing and loading the piggies proved to be a bit more challenging than tagging them, mostly because they have been gorging on acorns that have begun to fall by the bushel-full and they weren't very hungry. In the thrill and excitement of pig roundup, Mike grabbed one, who let out a bloodcurdling squeal and then a couple of his buddies bolted out the door. From then on, it was a circus. . . . Once we got the piglets and their moms in the barn, we . . .  closed the door and leaned against it to keep the pigs from pushing out. Inside, Mike and Mark got the piglets loaded into a crate, while Cherry and Crystal roamed around the barn. From our side of the door, the squeals, bumps and thumps had us wagering on who would emerge alive--the pigs or the fellas. All survived, and with the piglets in a crate, the door was opened to let Cherry and Crystal outside. We gave them grain and green beans to distract them from the piglets who were confined in the barn. Mark used our tractor to lift and transport the eight crated piglets out to our pickup truck and we drove to the Rock's Farm.

"Have to relate an incident that Mark observed in the barn involving Crystal. During the noisy chaos of getting the piglets into the crate, Crystal defecated on her own tail and then flipped it up on her back. Mark thinks this was a 'defensive' behavior, perhaps to protect herself from danger that she perceived due to all the squealing and pig-wrangling. Neither Mark nor I had ever seen or heard of this, but it was was done very purposely and skillfully."

Interesting.

Despite the disruption, things seem to have calmed considerably and the piglets have reportedly taken quite well to the Rocks and their new digs, contentedly chowing down on tomatoes, swiss chard, green beans, and organic rolled oats soaked in goat milk. "This afternoon I spent some time sitting and watching after they ate," wrote Valerie the day after they moved in. "When I walked away towards the middle of the pen, three little ones ran after me and one started squealing. Then all of them were there clustered around my feet squealing and talking. I talked to them in an excited happy tone and we all encouraged each other to be rather silly. Then I ducked into their round wooden house which they have looked at but not used yet. It has a front and a side opening so I went through it and they all followed. I ran around the outside and went back in. A piggie fire drill. Did it a few times and I was as excited as them."

After the pigs have completely lost their taste for mother's milk Cherry and Churchill will make the move from Hillspring Farm, probably in October. Thanks to Mark and Linda for everything so far, but we haven't seen the last of them. This fall they're planning to send Cong and perhaps Crystal to the butcher, and they've invited us to come along. Meantime we have a piglet and new farmers to meet. Who said the farming life was boring?

Stay tuned. . . 

I received an alert early Saturday morning from Linda Derrickson at Hillspring Farm, saying some neighbors had decided to purchase four mulefoot piglets--two from Crystal's litter and two from Cherry's--and were planning to pick them up soon. All eight piglets needed to have their ears pierced with numbered plastic ear tags, stat--it's how you keep track of an animal's age and ancestry, among other things. So I headed back to Wisconsin.

To tag a pig, two circular plastic disks stamped with the animal's assigned number are fitted onto an applicator, which looks like a chunky pair of pliers with a pointed tip on one side. The "male" side of the tag has a pointed protrusion on the back, perhaps a half-inch long, that fits over the pointed side of the applicator; the "female" tag has a hole to receive the male end when the cartilaginous part of the ear is placed between either side of the applicator. The human holding it gives a hard, quick squeeze until the ear is pierced and the two disks snap together. That's the easy part.

Sunday afternoon Mark Kessenich passed around a box of ear plugs to the half-dozen of us that had assembled outside the barn--piglets don't like to be picked up, and when it happens their protests are pitched as highly as possible. Mark headed into the pasture with a pair of slop buckets to rustle up the piglets, hollering--you guessed it--"Soooey! Soooey!" Meanwhile Hillspring resident Denise Benoit positioned four of us inside a pen in the barn--three to wrangle the piglets and the fourth to tag them. One person stood just outside the pen, responsible for fitting the tags onto the applicator and handing it over to the tagger when each piglet was immobilized.  

It took some time but Mark eventually lured Crystal into the barn, where he'd dumped some slop into a trough. Hot on her heels were all eight piglets; they streamed into the pen and dove into the slop while we shut the gate behind them. After Crystal had her fill we guided her back through the gate, using a large board to block the piglets from following. As soon as Crystal disappeared the piglets started complaining, running back and forth in the pen, squealing unhappily, but gradually they calmed down and returned to the trough.

We started with Cherry's piglets, which, being a week younger, were smaller. One person would grab the piglet by the hind legs and hoist it into the air, whereupon the squealing, kicking, and bucking would start. Someone else had to get a hold of the front legs, while a third wrapped arms around the midsection and held onto the snout to prevent nipping. One brisk snap on the applicator--left ear for females, right ear for males--and it was all over. Once placed outside the pen the piglet stopped squealing and returned to the pasture. Catch all the action below.

There was a remarkable difference when we moved onto Crystal's pigs, which were noticeably larger and incredibly strong, but altogether the job only took about 15 minutes. If you doubt just how little this process disturbed the piglets' otherwise peaceful Sunday afternoon, check out the attached post-piercing photographs of Doris Day, the best-looking and friendliest of the female pigs, who can probably look forward to a long life farrowing her own piglets.

Regarding the gorgeous and sweet-tempered Doris: 28-year-old project manager Debbie McKinnie of New Zealand took up Linda's offer to name that piglet, proffering $10 to cover postage and the piglet's registration fee with the American Mulefoot Hog Association. That's right--these pigs have Kiwi fans. McKinnie, who bought the naming rights for a "girlfriend who is mad about little piglets!" also named a male after New Zealand pop star Dave Dobbyn. Naming rights on a few piglets may still be available. For info contact Linda at hillspring@tds.net. 

Coming soon: the debut of the Reader's pig, which has no name as of yet.

When we left Mark Kessenich and Linda Derrickson at the end of part one, it was 1981 and he had just volunteered at her co-op in Madison. Even with Mark's help the little store was a lot of work, so after two years Linda started looking for a business partner. After an article appeared about the co-op appeared in the Isthmus titled "Holistic Twinkies," a friend of the author's expressed interest. Rena Gelman worked in the store for a month before deciding it wasn't for her, but meanwhile she'd noticed a little cafe for sale in downtown Madison and asked Linda if she'd be interested in going in on that. Linda wasn't looking to get into the restaurant business, but when she got a look the place she fell in love.

"Edith Piaf was playing in the background and there were all these professors and grad students sitting at tables," she says. "And I heard like three different foreign languages. I said, 'Oh my gosh yes. I want to do this.'"

Linda sold the co-op, and under the women's ownership the Sunprint Cafe served desserts, salads and pita sandwiches made from scratch, and coffee drinks made on what she thinks was Madison's first espresso machine. "Our hummus recipe is still famous in Madison," she says. The year before they took over, the place had posted a $10,000 profit. After their first year, the figure was $60,000. "In 1984 that was handsome for two women," Linda says. She and Gelman became business sensations, making the covers of several magazines and winning business awards. In 1987 they opened a second place in a larger space in a strip mall on the edge of campus, planning to host art shows, live music, and fund raisers for politicians and causes. "On opening day there were lines out the door and on day two we knew it was too small," she says.

By 1990 Mark and Linda were a couple, divorced from their respective spouses. Linda and Gelman, meanwhile, had begun to grow apart, and in early 1992 they dissolved their partnership. Linda took over over sole ownership of the new restaurant, renaming it Sunporch, and Gelman took the cafe.

Inspired by Alice Waters, Linda had taken an keen interest in growing food for the restaurant, and would "garden by lamplight" when she got home from work. In 1994 she and Mark expanded their growing operation, selling their Madison home and buying a place in the country near Mt. Horeb with a “rambling farmhouse” and an operating restaurant. "The idea was that we were going to grow food out there for that restaurant and also for Sunporch in Madison," Linda says. "We didn't have animals at that time." 

Sunporch continued to thrive. "I would haul in boatloads of fresh produce and flowers to put on all the tables," Linda says. "Every entree and dessert that went out had fresh flowers on it." But she had trouble keeping the new place staffed, and its local following of old folks didn't like the changes they made, like replacing the premade frozen lasagna with things like elk steaks, wild boar, and pheasant. “They called us the Roadkill Cafe. They were very disappointed we weren't opening the same cans of soups that were there before.”

They took another step toward full-time farming in 1995, purchasing their first heritage chickens. Jacob sheep followed in '97 and Scottish Highland cattle in '98. Linda says they chose heritage breeds because they didn't have a barn and needed animals that could survive outside with minimal shelter. 

In 2000 some adjoining property came up for sale, a Prairie-style limestone house. They sold Sunporch, bought the house, and opened a B & B they called the Othala Valley Inn (still in operation under different owners), which they ran for two and half years before realizing their hearts were more with their crops and animals than with the doctors, lawyers, and professionals they were hosting. “We said running a B & B and farming at the same time is too much for two people and we'd rather be farmers,” says Linda.  

Next: Linda and Mark go all the way back to the land.

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 daughter son, adopted a daughter, and moved back to Madison. There she took over a small neighborhood grocery, turning it into a co-op she called Linda's Lakeside Market, catering to both the "beans and barley crowd" and the regular neighborhood folks. In her words: "I said, 'I'm not gonna legislate what people eat. I'm gonna have what my neighborhood wants.' I sold cigarettes, candy bars, and tofu and bean sprouts. I got a lot of press for that."

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. 

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:

• D. Boon
• D, Mike
• Damien Rice
• Damon Locks
• Danzig, Glenn
• Darby Crash
  
• Darryl Hall
• Dave Grohl
  
• David (Bowie, Gilmour, Grubbs, Lee Roth, Yow)
  
• Davis Jr., Sammy
  
• Davy Jones
• Dee Snider 
• Dee Dee Ramone
• Delbert McClinton    
• Dennis De Young
• Desmond Dekker
  
• Devendra Banhardt
• Dino (Dean Martin)
• Dion
• Dio, Ronnie James
• Dizzy Gillespie  
  
• Doe, John
• Don Ho
• Dock Boggs
• Donovan
  
• Donny Osmond
• Dr. Dre
  
• Duke Ellington
  
• Durante, Jimmy
  
• Dwight Yoakam
• Dylan

Gilts:

• Debbie Harry
  
• Dee Dee Bridgewater
• Della Reese
• Des'ree
• Diamanda Galas
  
• Diana Ross
• Dinah Shore
• Dinah Washington
• Dionne Warwick
• Donna Summer
  
• Dolly Parton    
• Duff, Hilary
• Dusty Springfield

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.

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.