The Hog Farmer's Wife

Photo by John Jackson To give some context--I graduated from Eastern Michigan University with a Bachelor of Arts in December, 2004. I started my MFA in Poetry at the University of Michigan's Creative Writing program in the fall of 2005, and having been awarded a fellowship was able to take some time off of working at Zanzibar while I studied before graduating in April of 2007.  The Omnivore's Dilemma , by Michael Pollan, was written in April of 2006. It is hard to overstate the effect that this book has had on my life, to say nothing of the effect that it has had on the rest of the American food landscape. If you haven't read this book, or haven't read it in awhile, I would recommend picking it up again. For me, it was perhaps akin to my parents' experiences of reading Silent Spring by Rachel Carson.  From the publisher  As the cornucopia of the modern American supermarket and fast food outlet confronts us with a bewildering and treacherous landscape, what's at ...

Do you sometimes stop and ask yourself what are the events and people from earlier in your life that really shaped you into who you are today? I was reflecting on this the other day--specifically what caused me to be passionate about food and raising animals that would become good food? The two are not mutually exclusive, although there are many American chefs who are interested in the concept of Farm to Table and restaurants that incorporate food from local, small farmers are increasingly becoming more visible in the restaurant world. To patronize your local, small farms is very en vogue, so to speak, in the food world right now--wonderful news for the small farmer.  My infancy in the food world began at Zanzibar, a restaurant in Ann Arbor, Michigan, that has now been closed for years, whose chefs and owners had great dreams but perhaps too much real estate to support them. Though Zanzibar, like many restaurants, was the product of many individuals, its main proprietors I knew we...

Hello friends! It has been an eventful few days, with our first hog going to market sooner than expected, and the rest of them going yesterday.  Last Sunday, a week before the scheduled "to market" date for the hogs, it became quickly apparent that Spot, one of our two male hogs, had injured his leg. First he was limping, and then he wasn't moving much, and then not at all; temperatures were lower last week but still sunny, and we had real worries about him getting to water and food. We were so close to "surviving" our first season of raising hogs without any major events (save two escapes) and now this. I was stressed out and spent many a sleepless night praying Psalm 127 to walk myself down from the ledge.  Dave got in touch with a mobile processor who agreed to come out to our farm later in the week. In the meantime we would take Spot a chafing pan full of water and a plastic sled that we would put his feed into. (He did try to sit in the chafing pan, which w...