An American History of Hogs
Dec 30, 2008 farming, general food
My parents are, to put it bluntly, antique hoarders. Apart from couches and dining tables, few of the furniture items in their home are truly serving their original functions. Their curio cabinet, for example, is an American Legion Hall gun cabinet from Floyd County, Iowa, and their living room coffee table is an egg incubator from an old barn. In fact, further proving their resourcefulness, they even have an antique wooden toilet, with a steel bucket inside, which they use as an end table, and which my father threatens, to this day, to serve chili from at a party.
While I don’t have nearly the same obsession with antiques as they do, growing up around them, the bug has, at least to some degree, worn off on me. All those years of countless trips to antique stores left me fascinated not just by the history of the items that returned to our own home, but by the stories surrounding every item I would encounter.
Today, in my own home, this is reflected in some of my own items like my dresser–an antique wardrobe I built shelving into–and a storage cabinet in our dining room which is actually an oak icebox. It has always been photographs, however, that I have been particularly drawn to. Even when they are reproductions.
Take those you’ll find in a chain restaurant like Mimi’s Cafe. Assuming they don’t outfit each restaurant with a different set of gathered photographs, the people in those photos are scattered throughout the nation in Mimi’s 138 locations. But who are they? Are any of them Mimi, and do their relatives dine in the restaurant, see their photographs, and think, “hey, that’s Grandma.”? More than anything I look at those photographs and wonder what stories the people would have to tell as they certainly never imagined that one day a subsidiary of Bob Evan’s would have them plastered on the wall.
Whatever my reasons for wondering about the people and places in these antique photos, due to my clear fascination, I recently began purchasing them along with vintage advertisements. In the past I had purchased some chef-related photos,
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Tags: animal husbandry, antique photos, Floyd County, hogs, Iowa, slaughter
More Modern Marvels
Apr 26, 2008 Television, offal watch
Last night the episode of Modern Marvels was titled “The Pig.”
Although I braced myself for a biased portrayal of the pork industry as it shifted from the lard type breeds of old to the lean “white” meat of the 80’s and 90’s; and they were a bit generous with their praise regarding the genetic engineering of hogs and made it sound almost like a good thing that you need to take showers before going into a CAFO operation; they did swing it around at the end showing an organic farm that raises Berkshire hogs and even fattens some of them on acorns in their final days.
Still, it was after showing some medcal uses for pig genetics like insulin and tissue repair that the episode steered into a direction I didn’t see coming: Chris Cosentino was on cooking offal at Incanto.
He cracked open a pigs head, poached the brain, and then sautéed it with mushrooms and capers.
The listing on The History Channel’s website also shows that Missouri’s Burger’s Smokehouse was also in the episode, but I missed the first ten minutes and it must have been in that segment as I didn’t see it.
It will air again May 7, and here’s the rundown on upcoming episodes of food-related interest:
- Whiskey - April 26
- Corn - May 5
- Farming Technology - May 6
- The Pig - May 7
Tags: Berkshire, Burger's Smokehouse, Chris Cosentino, hogs, modern marvels, offal, pigs, pork
Bring it
Mar 13, 2008 farming, general food
Yes, more pigs.
I’m really fascinated by this because Heath Putnam said the mangalitsa-berkshire hybrids were only a few days old when this was taken and it’s hard to imagine any animal having the were-with-all to throw down like this practically day one.
Tags: hog-fight, hogs, Mangalitsa-Berkshire hybrids, pigs, Wooly Pigs
Hey, what’s that smell?
Dec 7, 2007 farming
Having immersed myself in pigs over the last two months I’ve been following a sweep of news stories coming out of Southwestern Missouri regarding hog CAFOs.
Apparently the stench of these facilities is a problem in many Southern Missouri areas, and State Sen. Gary Nodler, R-Joplin is filing a bill to toughen the regulations of new and existing CAFOs. “He said that if his pre-filed bill gets through the Agriculture Committee in the upcoming session — as he predicts it will — the measure will become ‘the CAFO bill.’ ”
“Rumors about a large hog farm coming to Dade County in southwest Missouri have prompted county commissioners to pass a health ordinance” to establish standards about how animal waste is handled as well as create “setbacks of from one-quarter mile to one mile” based upon the size of the operation and their location relative to homes and businesses.
In Barton County a lawsuit was trying to stop a just completed CAFO, Kenoma (”a farmer-owned company that contracts with Synergy, a pork-producing company with offices in Lamar and Sully, Iowa”), from swinging into production on the basis of it’s violating their laws based on animal density rather than locality.
However the Kenoma lawsuit ended this week when Judge Carl Gum filed in favor of Kenoma.
“Kenoma plans to house 2,400 hogs in three barns on 30 acres of land. The township’s zoning handbook prohibits concentrated livestock operations or feedlots where at least 800 hogs are raised on less than 160 acres. The regulations require that all sewage lagoons and concentrated animal feeding operations be at least a mile from any homes, and that they be screened from public view.”
“Gum also ruled that the township’s zoning handbooks are void and unenforceable because the board allegedly violated the Sunshine Law and couldn’t prove that it had met the requirements for notification of public meetings.”
Another town, Arrow Rock is apparently some sort of “Williamsburg of the Midwest” and the people their are concerned about a 2800 hog CAFO being built within a 1/4 mile of many historic sites in their town will hurt tourism as
“The 4,800 hogs will be confined in two buildings. The urine and feces will fall through slatted floors into concrete pits where it will be held for up to a year before it is spread on nearby farmland.
“The hogs will produce up to 2 million gallons of manure annually.”
Former Missouri Tourism Board director has hopped on board and spoken out:
“This state is big enough — 68,674 square miles — that factory farms with thousands of confined animals don’t need to set up next to state parks, and above trout streams,”
The Missouri DNR has responded to critics about Arrow Rock specifically.
And this article, about The National Trust for Historic Preservation angle, has a really interesting statistic:
“there were 388,000 hog farms in 1985, today there are just 73,000. Nearly half of the hog production in the United States occurs on just 110 factory farms.”
Animal rights and husbandry aside, there are local economic implications to this sort of Wal-Mart like desimation of farming as well.
Historic rural communities and Main Street businesses suffer because factory farms employ fewer people than small farms, and typically purchase feed and supplies from sources outside the community.
I leave you with what Kenoma owner, Francis Forst said:
“The reason we do this is because you can get a pork chop for $2.50 a pound. Out on the little dirt lot you can’t afford to do that. The feed is going to cost you the same, the labor is the same, but you won’t be able to make it.”
Perhaps we’re eating too much meat.
Tags: cafo, hogs, stinky-manure
