In a 5,000-word pasture-to-table tour de force, the Chicago Reader’s Mike Sula documents the journey of a few mulefoot pigs—a very rare, black-haired, uncloven breed—from a farm in Wisconsin to a local slaughterhouse to a sold-out celebratory dinner at Chicago’s Blackbird restaurant. It’s the culmination of Sula’s 18-month Whole Hog Project, which began when he, and the Reader, purchased a mulefoot pig—later named Dee Dee—and blogged about it all the way to market. It’s a smart, superbly written story, beginning with the very first sentence: “Halfway to the slaughterhouse, I started choking on a pork rind.”
Also, we gave a shout-out to Sky Full of Bacon’s meet-your-friendly-pig-head video last month. The same excellent site has a video narrative—“There Will Be Pork”—of the first half of Sula’s story. (The second half should be posted shortly.) Once again, recommended.
