Pigging Out

So, I have pigs...

A week and a half ago, I drove up into the eastern hills of the Green Mountains, to the little town of Chelsea, Vermont, and came back with four wee piglets, Tamworth piglets to be precise. They had just been weened, and were perhaps six or seven weeks old at the time; still small enough to comfortably fit two to the dog crate. The little buggers squealed bloody murder for the first hour of travel, but as we drove south, homeward, they quieted, and all five of us settled into the warm funky stink of barnyard animal.

The first home for the four piggies was the fenced in garden plot at the farm, a small square overgrown with the withering remnants of this past summer's growth. After a little timidity, the pigs loved it. There are two males, one castrated, and two females, including the runt, who was simply too cute for me to leave lingering alone back in Vermont. After five days or so, the garden began to seem a tad small and well rooted-up, and so we fenced in a segment of pasture out behind the barn with wire and electric tape. Few things in this world are as sadistically comical as seeing a pig hit the electric fence...

But they learned. Now a week later, they've made the new paddock their own. The pile of horse manure we fenced them in with has been torn up, turned over, and lounged in thoroughly (happy as a pig in shit has taken on an all-new veracity). The little porkers, who are growing with nearly alarming speed, love to root up the grass, digging with their spade-like snouts for who-knows-what in the rich brown earth. They scratch themselves upon a log we provided, bury themselves in the hay of their shelter, and they come running when I ring their dinner bell. All in all, they seem like happy little piggies.

Which is the point of this whole enterprise. Anyone can go to the supermarket and buy a nice pork roast for a fraction of the cost and effort that I'm devoting to my pigs. But that's bad meat. Not bad for you, per se (though salmonella is rife in factory farmed meat), but bad in a way that I almost want to call spiritually. Pigs are smart animals, emotionally complete and social, and though the manner of industrial pig farming is a topic for another day this week, just know now that it's shameful and heartrending. There is nothing joyful about a Stop 'n Shop pork-chop.

But pork is delicious, and I honestly believe that eating meat can be reconcilabe with a firm set of ethics. I want my pigs to have a happy life. They are bound one day for the butcher's block, but in a manner of speaking so aren't we all; every beast's time comes due at some point, you and me included. But how much joy can be wrung from what life there is?

Watching my four new pigs gorge on pumpkin, nap in the warmth of the manure pile, and run around their grassy pen, I'd like to think quite a bit.