feedback on: PIGS & PORK

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If you think you have cholera among your hogs, call your county agent. Your herd, however small, will be examined, and if the sickness is present the animals will be destroyed (theoretically) and you'll be reimbursed.

You may be able to avoid such a misfortune, though, if you check a little when you notice that feeder pigs are particularly cheap. And although hog cholera is the worst disease of swine, being easily spread and 85-100% fatal, it's not the only one your herd could contract from unhealthy new stock. You'll be wise to inform yourself about the others, and about the prevalent illnesses of any livestock you decide to go into.

I hope I've convinced you by now that bargain feeders can be a bummer . . . but super-expensive ones can be a screw, as we've learned from some very bad experiences with $100 gilts bought at shows. The practice of inbreeding swine to make them conform to the current styles has produced nervous hogs, hogs so long that they never finish out, muscle-bound hogs that can hardly get around, sows with farrrowing problems and sterile boars. The best route to go in acquiring feeder pigs (bearing in mind that you're going to eat them in the end) is to buy carefully, if possible from someone you can trust and who seems know what he's doing.

Speaking of eating, the pictures in your pig-butchering articles showed the head cut off in the correct way to yield jowl bacon. Because this is the fattest bacon and we find we always have more of that than we need anyhow, we cut the head straight around and use it, instead for tamales or liver sausage. Here are the recipes in case yo.. interested . . . but whatever you do with your pigs, don't throw away anything but the squeal.

TAMALES

1 large pig head
2-3 pounds or more of lard
40-50 dozen corn shucks
50 pounds masa (fine-ground corn moistened to about the texture of biscuit dough)
6-8 clusters of garlic
1/2 cup cominos (cumin seed)
8-10 chile peppers (the large red ones, black when dried)
salt
2 bottles Chile powder

Clean the silk from the corn shucks and soak them overnight. Boil the head until the meat is easily stripped from the bones . . . they remove all meat and grind it. Save the juice. Peel the peppers by boiling for a few minutes, then dipping in cold water. Grind the pepper, garlic and the cominos and add to the pork, with salt to taste. Cook the meat mixture for at least one hour, adding a little juice from the head if the pork is too dry.

Work the masa, while adding the chile powder and salt to taste along with plenty of lard and some juice from the head, until the paste is about the texture of biscuit dough. Next, roll out the corn cakes: place a corn shuck with the rough side down and spread on it a rectangle of masa not more than 1/4 inch thick with a margin of about 1/2 in around (except at the base of the shuck where the margin should be 1-1/2 inches.)

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