The Pigness

Yesterday I was to be floating down the Dan River in an inner tube (by the way, woot!—so awesome), and I was going to miss the pick-up time for my CSA produce. I emailed Friday night and asked if anyone would be at the farm earlier. No, came the reply, just go on into the walk-in refrigerator—the produce boxes are under the tarp.

My Subaru bounced along the gravel driveway, past a passel of sleepy pigs. I was reminded of Joel Salatin, the farmer in Omnivore’s Dilemma and Food Inc., who urges his fellow humans to “honor the pigness of the pig”. In the book and movie, his words are juxtaposed against the CAFOs of the midwest and the kill floors of the Smithfield processing plant, which slaughters 2,000 pigs an hour.

The pigs at the farm up the road from my house are clearly honored, raised in the woods, flopping around in mud, hanging out with their porcine pals. I took a moment to honor them myself, and felt a little guilty for having feasted on four strips of bacon the prior evening.

I pulled around past the greenhouses. Four sentries sprinted out to meet me. First, the two herding dogs that I always see trotting around, yoked together by the stick each grasps in his mouth. Today they were emboldened by their comrades—they charged up to the car and barked. One of their peers was a big yellow dog, a labradoodle maybe, shaved down to his patchy skin, and the other a white lamb with a black face. All of them circled the Outback, sounding the alarm. Well, except the lamby; he was quiet.

I disembarked and patted each animal on his fuzzy head. The produce boxes were, indeed, right there in the walk-in under the tarp. As I got back in the car, the lamb tried to join me. Tempting. He was so cute! But I would be traveling this coming week, and my two beasts are already handful enough. Not sure how my mom’s family would respond to having a baby sheep resting on their feet under the dinner table. Plus, I don’t know shit about taking care of farm animals. I would not be able to honor the lambness of the lamb.

The herding dogs honored their herding-dogness by escorting my four-wheeled pack animal back down the driveway for a ways, woofing and nipping at my hubcaps. A black kitty bounded through the brush on the side of the road.