Thinking of Eating: Roger Grows Up

I got a call from Clare the other day saying that Don and Roger were growing much faster than she expected and would reach their ideal slaughter weight a couple of weeks before she'd anticipated.

You might remember the last time I went out, the pigs weighed in the neighborhood of 200 pounds. Don has always been the larger of the two, outweighing Roger by ten or so pounds, and he's definitely the more food-oriented. It was obvious when we went out to feed them table scraps and vegetable trimmings—Don went right for their food bowl, while Roger stood and leaned against me, insisting on getting scratches before he joined his brother.

After playing some piggy tag with them, Clare suggested feeding them some of the blackberries from the bushes just outside the pasture. Now, these are big animals, at least three times the size of the biggest dog I've played with. Even Walker has surprised well-meaning guests when they've proferred a treat and in his excitement he's taken their whole hand into his mouth.

But when I offered Roger a juicy blackberry, rather than chomping down, he gently took it from my fingers with his lips and swallowed, grunting appreciatively. After several more he ran off to play with Don, who'd decided that he was through with this dainty exercise and had gone to the grain bucket for some real chow.

While Don was munching away, we gauged his weight by measuring him with string. Yes, you heard me right. You take a five foot or so length of string, put one end between your pig's ears and run it down his back to the base of his tail (illustration, right), then mark it with tape or a knot. Then you measure his girth by putting the string around him just behind his front legs. Measure the marks on the string with a tape measure, use the following formula and you'll get a weight that Clare has found accurate (on pigs…not so much on people or dogs) to within five pounds:

Weight (lbs) = (Length x Girth x Girth) ÷ 400 (inches)

Which put Don at about 285, making Roger's weight around 270, confirming her suspicion that they were going to be ready for slaughter any time in the next couple of weeks.

Not to get off track, but we had a delicious posole verde the other day, made with pork shoulder that had been simmered for several hours till it was fall-apart tender. Served with rice and a cabbage slaw it was fabulous. I no more thought about the pig that shoulder came from than I thought about the plant the tomatillos came from.

Which is where this whole thing gets complicated. I find myself thinking at odd moments about Roger, who's definitely a people-oriented guy, and I'm getting kind of attached to him for just that reason. It's hard thinking he's going to be killed in just a couple of weeks and I'm frankly not looking forward to being there.

Having been through this several times before, Clare says she find it helps to replace the sadness with feelings of gratitude, so I'll be working on that in the coming days. I'll keep you posted.

Read the other posts in this series: Roger and Me, Saying Goodbye, The Day Finally Comes, The Meat of the Matter and Pasture to Plate.

Less Stress, Better Lives

It was a case of unintended consequences.

The Bush recession, in addition to throwing millions of middle class Americans out of work and decimating retirement funds, made life much harder for small farmers who depended on selling the meat from the animals they raised. That's because many smaller, local slaughterhouses closed, leaving farmers with no choice but to truck their animals hours away to a larger slaughter facility. Catering to large producers, small farmers were often crowded out of line at these large facilities.

Not only did they have to spend more time getting their animals to the slaughterhouse, high gas prices made it prohibitively expensive. As outlined in the video above, a group of farmers in Pierce County, Washington, got together and developed their own solution: a USDA-approved mobile slaughter unit.

Note: No animals are shown being killed in the video above.

In The News: Market Closes and MPUs

A couple of news items have come across the digital transom in the last couple of days that I thought were worth sharing.

Portland Farmers' Market has announced the closure of their Thursday market at Ecotrust, the second closure of this market season after the cancellation of the Multnomah Village farmers' market back in July.

Ecotrust "never seemed to reach its full potential," said executive director Ann Forsthoefel, noting that while its four other market locations experienced increased traffic and sales, the Thursday market did not share the same rate of growth.

The press release stated that PFM is "currently evaluating other possible locations for a weekly market in Northwest Portland. The organization describes the ideal site as one that offers high visibility, community engagement and support from neighborhood and business associations."

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A paradigm shift in our ability to access meat produced by small farmers is outlined in an article recently posted at Grist. Titled "Will Whole Foods’ New Mobile Slaughterhouses Squeeze Small Farmers?" and written by Tom Laskawy, the article drops the bomb that Whole Foods, wanting to aggressively expand its local meat sourcing, is working with the US Dept. of Agriculture (USDA) to develop a fleet of mobile processing units (MPUs).

These units, initially designed to process poultry, would provide small farmers with a way to slaughter their animals on their farms and sell that meat to the public. Because of current regulations, only meat from animals slaughtered at USDA-approved facilities is allowed to be sold.

The development of MPUs became critical because of the closure of many local meat processing plants in the recent economic downturn, making it nearly impossible for some small farmers to get their animals to a USDA-approved facility unless they wanted to ship them hundreds of miles. With a booming demand for local meat and with farmers eager to provide farm-raised meat to a broader public, mobile units seem to provide a solution.

While Whole Foods will not require farmers to sell their meat exclusively to Whole Foods markets, some critics caution that proposed guidelines might cause small farmers to lose their independence because of the strict requirements that all birds produced for the company would need to have "a consistent look and taste." Raising the specter of "contract farming," or farmers essentially becoming indentured servants on their own land, critics are hoping to shape the debate to ensure farmers' access to these mobile units while being able to produce a unique product.