Gardener's Glut

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Obviously, the pig solution is not available to everybody. Most towns and suburbs have a quite narrow prejudice (and also a couple of laws) about pigs, even though the family pig is quiet, clean, and perfectly odor-free when kept in a reasonable-size pen. It's commercial hog farms that produce the smell, require the medicated feed, etc. Your individual pig can be downright dainty. But many suburban mayors fail to realize that.

Even where no laws exist, there's often another severe problem: No slaughterhouse exists, either. There are many reasons why this is so, not least being the successful lobbying of the major meat-packers to make running a slaughterhouse so complicated and expensive that only large companies can afford to do it.

Beyond all this, of course, there are two major religions that frown on pig keeping, no matter where you do it.

If a pig is impossible, the next best solution is to keep chickens. There is a widespread impression in this country that chickens are picky about what they eat, preferring only a few things like cracked corn and, when available (which on large battery farms is never), the more succulent varieties of earthworms.

This impression is wholly false. A chicken will eat just about anything a pig will, though obviously in much smaller quantities. The only vegetable I'm aware of that chickens won't peck into is lettuce that has gone totally to seed and hence is totally bitter. Moreover, chickens have, in terms of diet, one advantage over pigs. They love Japanese beetles, whereas pigs can take them or leave them alone. To a gardener who doesn't love them—perhaps actively dislikes them—it can be deeply satisfying to toss a dozen beetles into the chicken yard and watch the hens snap them up as hors d'oeuvres.

Many a community whose officials would turn livid at the mere thought of a family pig can stand the idea of four or five chickens, especially if there is no rooster to announce dawn. A rooster makes life more interesting both for the hens and for the owners, and there are even those who think his presence leads to tastier eggs, though I am not among them. All informed persons agree that vegetable- and bug-eating hens, with or without a rooster, produce better-flavored and healthier eggs than the prisoners on the battery farms do. The difference is not so extreme as with pork, but it is perceptible to nearly all palates. Four or five chickens won't handle your surplus produce with the monumental efficiency of a half-grown pig, but they can and will consume most of it—and pass it back to you in the form of two dozen eggs a week.

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