Jack was trying to tell me something about worming the pigs – he was shouting but I couldn’t hear him over the cacophony that those six little porkers were making while he spilled slop from a bucket into their trough. They squealed and oinked – pushing their way through the mud and nipping at each other’s ears to get at the food. Each pig was trying to eat it all before any other one had a chance. It was frenzy — pigs like their slop and they don’t like to share it. That afternoon their smorgasbord of swill was scrapings from school lunch — bean burritos, cheese and crackers, salad, pineapple chunks and milk, juice and scraps from my kitchen – limp carrots, onion and garlic skins, mushy grapes, wilted kale, leek tops and that morning’s soggy pancakes along with bananas gone black.

I backed off to give the hogs as much room as they needed. They stomped, snorted and slobbered their way through the mess and while it was pretty exciting, gross and frightening — it was also immediately gratifying. Watching them chow down, all I kept thinking was ‘Eat more and more. Get bigger and bigger and fatter and fatter!’ Feeding pigs is a beautiful thing because they eat the food that would otherwise be thrown away and they seem to love it. And to me, those six muddy, farting pig butts looked just like the cured prosciutto, fresh hams, smoked bacon and homemade sausage that they’re going to become. I love being a part of this but it’s a challenge because it’s the first time that I’ve actively participated in farming the animals that I’ll eat. It’s my attempt bridge the disconnect that I still have between a pig and a pork chop.

These swine are collectively known as the Community Pigs (or co-pigs for short) and they live on a farm in West Tisbury, Massachusetts on Martha’s Vineyard. Jack, a wheat-grass farmer and Ryan Hardy, the executive chef from The Coach House in Edgartown, came up with this idea of raising pigs for use in his restaurant. It’s really an experiment in local, sustainable, small scale, pig-husbandry. Ryan helped with the initial funding and his restaurant provides an ongoing supply of slop from the kitchen and Jack is the co-pigs’ prime caretaker. He’s arranged for a few people (like me) to help – in exchange for a pig to share once they’ve been slaughtered. And the restaurant will buy back most of the meat so they’ll have good tasting, local pork to put on their menu. The overall plan is to keep one sow out for breeding purposes and then we’ll do it all over again. That is – if we can manage to keep the pigs in their pen and the landlord and neighbors happy. They keep digging out – wreaking havoc on lawn, garden and blacktop.

So once a week, I collect what slop I can to feed to the pigs and I make sure that they have their organic grain, seaweed powder, clean hay to nestle in and plenty of water. (Pigs drink a lot of water.) It’s going to be strange to have cared for the very animals that I’ll end up eating. I am emotionally attached the pigs — I know which ones like to have their backs scratched and which ones will try to eat my boots. But it’s all in context because I’m pretty much attached to everything I eat. I care about where my food comes from, how it’s been raised, what it’s been fed, how I’m going to cook it and what it’s going to taste like. So naturally I want these pigs to be healthy, heavy and to roll around in the mud whenever they feel like it. But like most livestock, these pigs remain nameless.