Back in May I wrote about a couple of back-to-the-landers in Wisconsin who’d purchased four American mulefoot hogs. That’s a hairy, black heritage breed known to produce good hams and lots of fat and possessed of an unusual mutation—dainty, uncloven hooves. For decades the mulefoots faced oblivion, and by the 70s an elderly Missouri farmer had the sole remaining purebred herd. But over the last seven years or so their cause has been taken up by a couple of breeders in Michigan and South Dakota and organizations such as the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy and Slow Food USA. The mulefoot’s making a comeback.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Linda Derrickson and Mark Kessenich, the farmers I wrote about, didn’t just buy their pigs because they wanted a healthy, delicious source of fat in their diets. They believe in the principle of “eater-based conservation,” which holds that the best way to ensure the survival of rare and endangered livestock is to build consumer demand for them. “You have to eat them to save them,” as Erika Lesser, executive director of Slow Food USA, puts it.
The Rocks live on 150 gently hilly acres in Argyle, Wisconsin—cheese country. A few weeks ago I checked in on our gilt (the term for a female swine that has yet to give birth), whom we’ve named Dee Dee, after the late Ramone. The mulefoots have been living in a large fenced-off pasture between the Rocks’ house and barn. The pen includes part of what’s left of the Rocks’ summer garden, and when I arrived all eight pigs were snoozing peacefully in the sunshine amid dried, broken cornstalks. When I stepped over the fence they began to stir.
Harvesting the pigs will be another big step for her (and a completely new one for me). When she and Mike took possession of the herd she spent a night out in their paddock. “I care tremendously about them,” she says, but “you wouldn’t have animals if you weren’t using them for something.” A colleague of hers, an instructor in the culinary program at Madison Area Technical College, where she teaches, has offered to bring his students out and conduct a butchering class on one of the pigs.
