Entries associated with the tag "Mulefoot":

A new crop of spring food books is piling up around here, and for partly egotistical reasons I was particularly excited about Renewing America's Food Traditions: Saving and Savoring the Continent's Most Endangered Foods, a coffee-table menagerie of heritage animal breeds and heirloom plant varieties that features a short chapter on our favorite critter, the American mulefoot hog. A few months ago the book designer asked permission to use a couple photos I shot for the Whole Hog Project--one a closeup of a fused hoof, and another of a very pregnant Crystal during her days at Hillspring Farm. The book arrived a couple weeks ago, and there she was on page 148. Nice. Then I read the text authored by editor Gary Paul Nabhan, in which he confidently states that the mulefoot is "a breed with fewer than 150 purebred individuals being cared for today."

Whah?

That wasn't even remotely close last year. Further, the chapter gives short shrift to the genetic research and promotional efforts of Arie McFarlen of Maveric Heritage Ranch, who has the largest mulefoot herd in existence. Writes McFarlen: "There is no possible way that there are only 150 breeding animals. Last year alone, Maveric Heritage Ranch registered 97 mulefoots. This added to the 150+ we have registered since 2005, added to the 110 we have on our farm, clearly indicates that there are more than 100 breeding mulefoots. Also, we have started over 25 breeders in the past two years, including the ones in Canada, who each started with a minimum of a breeding trio. That is another 75+ pigs."

The folks at the mulefoot registry in Michigan, who likely have the most up-to-date figures, haven't gotten back to me yet, but they've also started new breeders since I last checked in with them last year. So while I don't imagine the population is anywhere near solid, things aren't as dire as Nabhan portrays them to be. Given that, how should we look at the book's estimations for things like Meech's Prolific Quince, the Cui-ui sucker, or the (hilarious) Tennessee fainting goat?

As promised, here's video of the new spring mulefoots (and Dee Dee).

 
Apologies to . . .

When last we heard from Valerie Weihman-Rock and the Wisconsin mulefoots, all five female pigs (four gilts and a sow)--including the Reader's Dee Dee--were getting ready to have their piglets. A little over a week ago two of them farrowed--Demetria gave birth to six, and Diana four. Valerie reported that Diana wasn't taking to motherhood so well--she didn't like having the little ones around her and Valerie was convinced she'd hurt them. Ergo, Demetria is nursing all 10 little ones--8 females, and two males.

So Diana ID'd herself as a good candidate for slaughter. Writes Valerie: "Diana will be ham, bacon, lard, etc. as the first one harvested soon. It is important when raising the heritage breeds to not continue genetics of unfavorable traits (such as being angry, snapping, and not accepting piglets)." 

Then, last Tuesday, our Dee Dee had four piglets, two of which are female (Valerie couldn't tell the sex of the others yet). One of these piglets Friend of the Food Chain David Hammond has arranged to buy--an anniversary gift for his wife, Caroline. He's named it Ermine--after his grandmother. "One of the girls has white hooves and white-around feet," wrote Valerie. "Just like Dee Dee. So this one will be Dave Hammond's 'Ermine.'"

Aww. Nothing says I love you like the gift of meat.

"All the pigs and their piglets are snugly ensconced in partitions covered with artists' canvas tarp," writes Valerie. "And a heat lamp for piglet bunk area. Moms can come and go as they wish and the 'partitions' are to keep piglets from running off in the relative cold of the barn. Their tents are ~70 degrees F inside. And the piglet area under heat lamp is 85-90 degrees F. Rest of barn was 45 [last] weekend. 40 [next] morning. And the boy pigs are happy digging in the mud and pasture."

That's 14 new mulefoots, folks. Stay tuned for photos.

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.

It's been a while since we checked in on the mulefoots at their new digs at the farm of Valerie Weihman-Rock and her husband Mike in Argyle, Wisconsin. The Rocks built a round house ten feet in diameter for the pigs' shelter and Valerie says they're planning to use the Swedish deep bedding method this winter--laying down three feet of hay or straw, whose hollow tubes hold air and insulate the structure. The Rocks, who are also starting up a grain-milling operation, plan to use organic barley straw, since pigs like to nibble on their bedding. I would too if I could sleep on bacon.

Valerie's been boiling organic barley for the pigs twice a day and letting it soak for their morning and evening meals. She recently she missed a day due to business in Madison, so she picked up a bag of pot-belly pig food to fill in the gap--thinking it would be more nutritious than standard commercial feed.

"Put it in their food dishes," she writes. "They would NOT TOUCH IT! Sniffed and walked over to eat grass. One of the larger male pigs ("Detlef--German for strength of ten") used his snout to shovel all of the food out of one of the dishes in hopes that I had buried some other type of food below. After snouting it out, he left it. No eating.

"Everyone skipped supper and ate plain old grass instead. The next day, I had to dump and rinse the food dishes  as well as scoop up the food that had gotten on the ground. It was only attracting flies at this point--a dry food, but apparently quite 'odoriferous' to everyone involved (unless it was wetted, I could not smell it)." She gave it to the chickens who apparently didn't think much of it either, but managed to finish it off after a few days.

So the mulefoots, reared on organic grains and good Wisconsin grass, have become quite the epicures.

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.

On Saturday Mark and Linda threw their annual summer solstice festival at Hillspring Farm, a laid-back and delightful celebration featuring music, storytelling, and a ceremony called a "rolling sun" in which a wheel made from evergreen branches was lit up and rolled down from the sheep pasture into the tiny tributary of the Pecatonica River that runs through the farm. If the wheel makes it into the drink it assures a plentiful harvest (it did).

The potluck dinner was terrific, highlighted by the farm's own products like Denise Benoit's chevre and a crisp cherry-wheat home brew made by her husband, Rob Steinhofer. Denise and Rob are the farm's other two residents (more on them later). Linda brought out some of her excellent sauerkraut to go with the farm's plump, juicy lamb brats made from heritage Jacob and Tunis sheep.

I hadn't been to the farm since late last month and it is amazing what a few weeks of spring can do. The three major gardens were exploding with growth, as were the eight mulefoot piglets--who didn't seem to stop eating the entire time.

I'm not sure if that's Crystal or Cherry the piglets are latched onto but you can't deny the expression on her face is the very definition of gratification. At the same time I can't help but recall seeing stuff like that projected behind the Butthole Surfers. 

The piglets attacked the house slop just as voraciously. When they weren't doing that they were lined up at the fence competing with the sows for handfuls of grass and clover fed to them by visitors. If you offered your fingers they'd nibble on them.

They're showing differences already, which isn't atypical of these old breeds--they haven't had all the individuality selected out of them. Some are still tiny, while others seem to be bulking up pretty fast. I still haven't picked one out yet, but I have my eye on a female with white feet who looks a bit longer than the rest.

More pics and video to come.

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.

So what does mulefoot taste like and where can you get some, you ask? Well it's wonderful, but it ain't easy to come by. Of the breeders I spoke with over the last few months, most seemed to have plumb sold out or consumed their own stash and didn't expect to finish any more pigs for slaughter for quite a while. Then I spoke to Tommy Clair of Crystal Creek Farm in Ash Grove, Missouri. Clair, who owns a mulefoot boar and three sows, is perhaps the most enthusiastic booster of mulefoot meat I've come across--his family doesn't eat any other pigs. "It's got a lot more marbling in it," he says. "The hams and the shoulders are so much redder and better tasting." His only criticism is that the breed grows a rather small loin, which makes for poorly pork chops. That's because in the mulefoot's heyday consumers were more interested in bacon, ham, and lard, which the breed produces extremely well.

A few weeks back Mr. Clair was good enough to ship up four and half pounds of assorted mulefoot cuts in dry ice. The pig had been fed on a great deal of grain, said Mr. Clair, partly due to drought in his area. Now his pigs are on pasture, which he prefers. "Now its so green we can't even find them," he says. I received one pound of sausage, one pound, six ounces of pork chops, one pound cured ham steaks, 12 ounces of bacon, and four ounces of the intriguing "hillbilly ends" which are cured pieces of shoulder, like bacon--only leaner. "That's the first thing that goes," says Clair.

I popped into the Jewelz and my neighborhood Cermak Produce for a comparable selection of concentration camp pork (excepting the hillbilly ends), and assembled a distinguished panel of tasters that included Slow Food Chicago's Joel Smith, The Land Connection executive director Terra Brockman, LTH Forum founder Gary Wiviott, the Food Chain's own Bayne, and Windy City Rollers cofounder Elizabeth Gomez, who pulled double duty as photographer. Now, to be honest the attitudes of this august group tend to skew toward fresh, organic, artisanally produced foodstuffs so I did my best to set up a blind tasting in an attempt to eliminate the appearance of bias. The pork was cooked unseasoned, side by side in two Lodge cast iron skillets (see pics below).

Mulefoot sausage vs. Odom's Tennessee Pride Mild Country Sausage: Visually this was a challenging comparison. Tommy Clair's sausage was lighter in color than the commercial brand, which appeared to be more heavily seasoned and perhaps slightly more coarsely ground. The panel had little idea which was which until the tasting. Most agreed that the mulefoot had a more apparent "greasiness" (not a criticism), which was odd since the Odom's rendered more liquid during the cooking. Terra Brockman attributed this to added liquid in the commercial product. Joel Smith said the Odom's had a familiar taste, like something you'd get at any greasy spoon. We generally agreed that the "off" flavor probably had little to do with pork and more to do with additives, something that may not be objectionable if it's all you know. The mulefoot in contrast had a clean, unadulterated flavor, observed Wiviott, identifiable by what it didn't taste like rather than what it did.

Four mulefoot pork chops vs. two Jewel center cut pork cops: Chops showed the starkest visual difference. The mulefoot chops were thin and a bit gnarly looking, the loin itself rather small and oblong shaped and attached to a very thick rind of fat. Mr. Clair warned me about tiny chops. The two Jewel pork chops had more meat on them, very little fat, and almost no marbling. The mulefoot chops developed a nice caramelized crust while the Jewel chops cooked up unappealingly gray. Both were a little dry, which I'll take the blame for--as I probably overcooked them--but again the mulefoot won out, having a pretty distinct clean flavor, nice caramelization, and again that gorgeous, luscious fat.

Mulefoot ham steak vs. Cook's Hickory Smoked Premium Lean Bone-in Steak Ham and Water Product: Nowhere was the difference more pronounced than in the ham steaks. I'll admit that the LP-size Cook's ham, produced by agribusiness giant Con-Agra of Omaha, Nebraska, is a product I buy with some frequency at my neighborhood Cermak, mainly for its convenience. But I never realized just how awful it really was until I ate it next to a mulefoot steak. In the pan the Cook's steak exuded a tremendous amount of liquid that took on at one point an unsavory looking grayish color. It refused to crisp up. Tellingly the label states "25% of weight is added ingredients." Next to the chewy, dark, rosy mulefoot meat it tasted like a foam rubber mat after a high school wrestling match.

Mulefoot bacon vs. Oscar Mayer thick cut bacon: Battle Bacon, the final, and in my view, most important test, pitted the fatty, gnarly mulefoot strips against a one pound package of uniformly striated commercial stuff. The mulefoot bacon had different fat compositions evidenced in different colored streaks. The commercial bacon had a more uniform appearance, more lean and somewhat slimy out of the package. During cooking the Oscar Mayer bacon took on crispy, almost burnt edges, while the mulefoot might have improved with a little longer cooking time--once again the difference between fat and lean. "The bacon triggered a memory of boyhood breakfasts," said Wiviott. 

A few weeks later Smith, who prefers the taste of other naturally raised cross breeds he's tried, sent me some more impressions, which I think sum up our overall feelings: "My memory of the mulefoot taste was that it was very earthy, in a way that differentiated it from other conscientiously raised 'real' breeds.  Most of the cuts had a nice unctuous greasiness that always gave away the mulefoot identity."

I'm guessing that's about all the the mulefoot we're going to taste until its time to eat our own pig. Until then we'll just watch how it gets there.

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 eight four new mulefoots, folks; 16 more uncloven hooves. No pics yet but maybe Linda will send some.

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.

If you had more than the usual trouble getting a table at Blackbird, Avec, Alinea, Frontera, Hot Doug's or any other local celebstaurant last week, it's likely because they were already booked up by thousands of out of town chefs, food writers, marketers, photographers, and entrepreneurs here for the International Association of Culinary Professionals conference. The four-day schedule of talks, workshops, tasting, tours, and dinners was thoroughly interesting, convivial, and so huge that it was damn near impossible to do anything without missing three or four other really cool programs.

This was particularly painful on Thursday morning, as I stood in the Hilton lobby trying to decide between cod, raw milk cheese, and butter tastings, a discussion on herbs and spices with Madhur Jaffrey, and a localism panel with Erika Lesser of Slow Food USA. I settled instead on "The Doctor is In" a Q & A with food science gurus Shirley O. Corriher and Harold McGee, in large part because ten years ago I'd been given Corriher's demystifying Cookwise at a formative time in my life (I'd forsworn vegetarianism), and it quickly became my best friend in the kitchen. The jolly, cherubic Corriher and gaunt, wry McGee had a winning Julia and Jacques-like chemistry as they fielded tough technical questions about brining, natural and unnatural transfats, and what it means when chopped garlic goes green (it's really fresh from high protein soil). Someone asked about how to work with flours with unknown protein content and Corriher said that in the old days German bakers would thrust a sweaty arm in the barrel. If the flour stuck to the arm they knew they were dealing with low protein stuff. The session provided the first of many we're-all-in-this-together, geek-out moments when Italophile Faith Willinger, in large metal cow earrings, rose from the crowd to ask what she could do to improve her zabaglione when she couldn't get Italian eggs (the answer: use extra yolks). 

I followed that with Going Underground: Roots, Rhizomes, and Tubers in Asian Cooking with Viet World Kitchen's Andrea Nguyen, Saveur editor James Oseland and Elizabeth Andoh, whose presentation on konnyaku, "the ugly duckling of the Japanese kitchen" was bizarre and fascinating. This highly fibrous, zero-cal "elephant yam" is extremely labor intensive to produce; it requires three transplants over three years before it's mature, it smells repulsive when it's pollinating, and it has to be processed with an alkaline liquid before it can be digested. If you buy a package that smells sweet it's spoiled--if it's fresh it smells bad. At some point I realized that I had eaten this last year, extruded into noodles. The flavorless end product has a good chew, is an ideal flavor absorber, and has been used for centuries in Japan--there were 82 recipes in a 1864 cookbook and 80 of them are still used. But as Andoh marveled, "Who had the courage to think you could eat it?"

For me, Friday's panel with Rick Bayless and Donald Bixby of the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy about the Renewing America's Food Traditions project (RAFT), and cooking heritage breeds was the most hopeful and inspiring segment of the conference. Bixby explained how the heritage breed movement got its start in the 70s, when bunch of agricultural historians working on bicentennial commemorations discovered that they couldn't find any any of the breeds our forefathers raised. Back then their few stewards were hobbyists who just thought it was cool to raise Buckeye chickens, Pineywoods cattle, or Mulefoot hogs, and for whom the thought of eating the endangered (but tasty) animals was counterinterintuitive. But eventually the idea that "You have to eat them to save them" prevailed--an idea Erika Lesser called "eater-based conservation. " Bayless explained that people will reconnect with these animals first through restaurants, so chefs have a serious responsibility to work with farmers, and learn how to properly prepare the animals before foisting them on to the eating public. And it ain't easy. You can't just throw a Buckeye into the pot and expect it to taste right. Bayless said his kitchen tested chickens from Lagrange's Gunthorp Farms for nine months before they appeared on the menu at Frontera (gotta brine them first). It took a year before they could figure out how to get grass-fed beef on the menu--but it was worth it. Now the grass-fed (and more expensive) carne asada outsells the the regular one, which he said was the biggest selling weekend item for 20 years. Bixby summed it up: "Education starts with the chefs." 

Bayless, incidentally, won the IACP's 2007 Humanitarian Award, recognizing "individuals who have contributed significantly to improving conditions for the underprivileged in our society," for his work with the Frontera Farmer Foundation.