I'm a farmer. A pig farmer.
Have been all my life. Matter of fact, my daddy was a pig farmer. Like his daddy before him and his daddy before him. And so on.
I don't like to brag, but I am good at it too.
Best bacon and pork chops this side of the Mississippi.
Better than any of my predecessors.
I mean, they did good. I took what they did and well...perfected it.
What's the secret to my success?
Well now, that's a little more complicated than just “I did this or that”
That would take for me to divulge our family recipe...for success.
But I suppose that's what you all are here for, right? To know how I do what I do and how I do it so well?
Right.
Let me tell you how my great great granddaddy figured out what his granddaddy had been doing wrong all those years.
He started his farm with nothing but six pigs. Two males and four females. All for breeding purposes.
Times were okay. Kinda rough if one of the sows lost any of her litter.
But for the most part, they did well enough.
That is, until a drifter came through town and begged for a little work.
That's how a lot of folks got farm hands, ya see?
It twernt nothin to bring in some down on his luck hobo, feed him and give him a warm place to sleep, so as long as he did his fare share.
Some stayed for a while. Some just stayed one night.
Either way, they weren't getting fed until they did an honest days work.
So as I was sayin, this drifter came through and asked to stay a week with food and a dry bed and he'd help ‘em out with their farmin.
We will call him, Sly.
Sly was decent folk. He said he didn’t have much family to speak of. His wife a child died in a fire a few years back. The poor man lost everything. His house. His woman. His legacy. Everything.
And his sister was pretty much the only living relative he had left. But she was one of them uppity folks and couldn't see herself admitting to having a homeless brother.
So Sly took to wandering.
Jumping trains and whatnot just to keep on the move. Picking up odd jobs here and there to put food in his belly and on occasion, when needed, another pair of shoes on his feet.
So great great granddaddy, Paul, took old Sly in. His wife, my great great grandmammy, Elizabeth, she got the man some bedclothes, a pillow and a nice warm quilt, and Paul showed Sly his cot in the barn next to the pig house.
It wasn't much, but they didn't have much back in those days. Not being farmers, and such.
So, things went pretty smooth the first couple of days.
Until the third day.
They'd got up, like normal, slopped the hogs and tilled the small garden out back of the barn. Then after they ate some breakfast they washed down the hogs pen and Paul asked Sly to gather the piglets that were ready to be weaned from their momma.
So, Sly went in the pig house and made his way over to the sow’s stall.
Now, that sow was a prize sow for Paul. Her name was Helen. Just like that Helen of Troy girl? You know, the one that caused all that ruckus between those men because of her beauty? Yeah. Well, this Helen wasn't gonna cause any wars, but she was something else.
She'd had six good sized litters and even fed Paul's family in the harshest of winters they'd had when his oldest daughter, Corinne, was just a baby.
But she was getting up in years and as cranky as the day is long.
And wouldn't ya know it, the second that Sly stuck his hand amidst her babies, she took a big old chunk outta his arm. Ripped a hole in that muscle like one of them hole punch things popped through paper.
Well, Sly let out a holler that you coulda heard three counties over and just as Paul came running in the pig house all those piglets went a scattering out the door and old Sly was already shoulder deep with the mighty Helen rippin and tearin away at him like he was a stack of hay.
Paul didn't quite know what to do. For about ten seconds he stood there in shock as he watched his prize sow as she devoured a hired hand.
But ten seconds is all it took for Paul to do what he had to, to keep his life as he knew it intact.
That's when he picked up the hay fork and charged at those two, landin those prines of the fork dead middle of Sly’s throat, thus ending his screams and makin it easier for Helen to finish the job.
Now don't get him wrong, Paul wasn't the murderin’ type. Matter of fact he didn’t have a mean bone in his body.
He just knew, if he would have aimed the pitch fork at Helen, he would have given up the best sow money could buy.
And he just couldn't do that to his family.
So he did what he had to do to keep from losing all he had worked for.
Now ya know why he did it at first. It was an accident that coulda gone South fast and he made a snap decision.
But some months went by, and the next litter Helen had after that was probably the tastiest pork you'd ever had.
Tender, sweet meat that had such little wrong with it that he sold each and every pig she had.
But none of the others were even close to being as good.
Sure, they were still good. But nothing compared to that litter Helen had with old Sly’s blood still pumping deep in her belly.
That got Paul to thinking. He was always the smart one in the family.
Yep, Paul had an idea.
He figured any time drifters came through town, he would pick and choose to get some help.
If they fit the criteria, he'd hire them.
And that's how things went for years.
Paul handed the family farm and secret down to his sons. And they to their sons.
And so on.
And that comes to me. My name's Jacob.
Times are different now. You don't get so many drifters coming through. Hobos are practically a thing of the past.
So, I had to improvise. And that, my dear friends, is what makes me so much better of a farmer than my ancestors.
I don't use homeless people, or vagrants. I keep my secret in house.
It's one family secret that stays in the family.
The meat is sweeter, and with all this bacon craze in the world, it has me in quite the lucrative business.
I've got six farms across this great nation of ours. All family ran. Even though they are all under different names. They're all mine.
And I have to tell you all my boys have the same family values I do.
Yep. Keep it in the family.
Now, you wanna know my secret?
(Chuckles)
Let's just say, the younger the feed, the sweeter the meat.
Speakin of, my son Jimmy, his wife, Eleanor, is due...any...day...now.
