Mama and Her Chicks

Farming has been a blast. I’ve learned more in a shorter period of time than any other of my life’s endeavors. I also really enjoy what I’m learning, feeling more confident and reliable each passing day. About a thousand animals rely on me and our little crew daily to keep them happy and healthy and I believe we do so quite well. Farming has also been emotional, challenging and, at times, frustrating. Animals escape, hang themselves on fencing, get eaten by predators and die of old age. Recently we had to put down one of our eldest boars, Clinton, who was dying at the age of 7. He was the sweetest pig, very gentle and communicative, but slowly falling apart metabolically. Towards the end he had a hard time raising his 1000 pounds off the ground to eat and drink and we saved his life three times through medication, determination and hand feeding. Finally he had to die and rather than send him on a journey to new jersey to be made into pepperoni (old boar meat tastes horrible in anything but), we put him down on the farm and had him composted locally. This was a hard moment for me, reminiscent of putting my cat to sleep 10 years ago. I suppose raising animals means killing animals, but I didn’t expect to forge such powerful bonds with them.

At first putting Clinton down made me despise the idea of farming pigs. They have such complex characters and personalities, too similar to ourselves. I once wrote in high school, “Cats look down on us, dogs look up and pigs are our equals.” I didn’t know what truth that really was. So we shouldn’t raise them, we should let our porcine equivalents be, right? Unfortunately, if farms like ours didn’t exist, pigs would only be raised in the most abhorrent of circumstances, literally torturing these beautiful animals their whole lives. Farming like this is maybe the best thing we can do for pigs, save for stop eating them.

My darling girlfriend and I spent a week in North Carolina on Cane Creek Farm three weeks ago. The farm is incredible, raising just about every animal I can name and more that I can’t. They have chickens for eggs in mobile hen houses who cruise huge pastures daily. They have free range, birth-to-death grass-fed cattle (that make a burger like you would never believe). They also have a rambling group of exotic breed pigs for sweet, tasty pork. They are truly happy animals.

Kate looking after a wounded Clinton-the-pig

On top of those regular farm animals they breed ducks, goats, donkeys, sheep, guinea hens, turkeys, cats, and dogs. The animals mostly hang out with each other, peacefully like some type of Eden. The farm is run by Kate’s cousin and we loved it so much she’s letting us come back for June and July to work and learn with and from her. In short, we’re pumped. The farm is set up the way I would run a farm, there are no shitty jobs. Really, no shit shoveling of any kind because it all goes back to the soil from whence it came. There is no ‘farm animal smell’ and the cute animals still like being petted from time to time. It’s basically an extension of the education I started getting in France, rounding it out with a productive, working farm that stresses quality above all, for the people, animals and food they all produce.

It might be the stepping stone to the next adventure. Or it might be the next adventure.

Since the lard is soft at room-temp and melts very quickly when heated, we need a container for our candle. I use old glass jars, baby-food size for my first experiment. The theory is simple, fill a jar with liquid lard, insert a wick (I used an old sheet, torn into strips and twisted up) and let solidify.

Left: Lard Lamp, Right: Lard Candle

On the left you’ll see the lamp I made. I got the idea from Instructables. Simply make a wick by wrapping metal wire around linen, sheet strips or cotton balls. Make it so it can stand up on it’s own and place it in a shallow can. Pack the can with solid lard and good to go. Here’s my wick before I put it in the can:

Cotton/Wire Wick

The wick stays up and the flame stays at the top while it sucks up the liquid lard like a normal lamp. It works pretty well and I imagine will provide many hours of light for about one and a half cups of lard. The lamp is better than the candle since the candle wick has started to fall over from liquifying the lard holding it up.