Revised Profile

Scraping By: Life on the Small Farms of Southwest Michigan
May 19th, 2009
By Elizabeth Porter




Willie the boar grunts. He shoves his glossy wet nose into the side of a plump female pig several times. He sniffs, grunts again, and with surprising agility for the three-hundred plus pound animal, hoists himself onto the back of the impatient looking female. “The first pigs he tried to mount were cut males,” Kim, his owner, sighs. “We thought he was gay at first – but now he’s doing his job.” By “doing his job” what Kim means is that Willie is functional – if only with some rather intimate assistance from Kim. Kim entering the pig pen dons rubber gloves and explains the procedure of “lining it up.” He says that on a good day, he can ensure that Willie’s rather skinny penis enters, “the right hole.”
Willie’s sole purpose on this farm, owned by Kim and his wife Sandy, is to sire offspring: offspring that will grow up grazing under the lush organic apple orchards of the farm, and will eventually be butchered, sold and, ultimately, provide an income for the McNee family.
Usually, this story would serve as a marginally humorous anecdote, maybe a good bar story or the “gay pig” punch line of some low-brow joke. But for the McNees’, the seemingly homosexual pig, and what he means for their bottom line is a serious problem.
On a drizzling Monday morning, the rolling landscape of Paw Paw, Michigan is a graying blur. On the outskirts of Paw Paw, past an aging bowling alley, a few haggard mechanic shops, and a dimly lit diner, a gravel road twists towards the McNees’ farm. A large, prominently displayed sign reads “DEAD END” and hangs haphazardly on a rusting signpost; the smell of manure is thick.
Sandy stands on the front step of her small house. She is past sixty, and her dark hair seems too youthful against her aged face. “You don’t have to take off your shoes – I just hate shoes,” she explains, as she hobbles, barefoot, to the recliner in her small living room.
She and her husband Kim have been farming here for the past fifteen years, the two of them doing almost all the work it takes to grow and harvest their organic vegetables and now, increasingly, hogs and cattle. To sustain Barefoot Farm, the only additional labor they bring in is the occasional high school kid, usually in the summer, when the backbreaking field work becomes too much for them. They estimate their average workday at sixteen hours, give or take, during those summer months.
Sandy hobbles outside to the greenhouse toward her seedlings. Severe arthritis and old injuries make walking a struggle, and it seems to take a long time to get to the field. Sandy sighs and admits to the pain. “I have a high pain tolerance and I’m stubborn as hell.”
Entering the greenhouse, where Sandy spends most of her time, rows and rows of tiny green shoots are lined up; box after box of the sprouting plants are just breaking the surface of dark soil. She points to different groups of boxes: jalapeños, onions, broccoli, some lettuces, zucchini, even garlic.
Regardless of the difficultly of the farm tasks, she and Kim make it on the profits they earn at the weekly farmers markets all over southwest Michigan. Travelling sometimes up to an hour, Sandy and Kim wake at 3 or 4 on the mornings they go to the market. On one drizzly market morning, the crowds that pour into the small stalls, picking over produce and freshly butchered meats, hover over Sandy and Kim’s booth, shoving handfuls of fives and ones over the mountains of vegetables. These market days gross a surprising amount of money for the McNees, typically upwards of six or seven hundred dollars, much more on a good day. Back in the greenhouse, talking about money pushes a nagging problem to the forefront of Sandy’s thoughts. She sighs. She starts to talk about the problems with Willie the boar.
For the last several weeks, she and Kim have been trying with yet unknown success to ensure that Willie impregnates as many of the young females as possible. “There’s no pregnancy test for pigs, unlike cows,” Sandy informs me. Not that a pregnancy test seems needed in any case. Just in the last few days have the McNees begun to see success with Willie, meaning he has, indeed, begun to mount females. However, it has been a long struggle to get him to this point. Getting Willie to adjust has been difficult; getting him to procreate has proved impossible. Given the choice, or just the chance, he will mount one of the McNees’ cut males.
The gamble of whether or not Willie has done his job is a palpable source of stress to Sandy and Kim. As the McNees age, it becomes harder every year to maintain the farm solely off of the profits they make on agriculture and the McNees are increasingly reliant on the gamble of raising livestock. Sandy wrinkles her brow and runs her hands together, thoughtful. “Physically, the vegetables are getting harder to do,” she says.
And yet, the McNees seem sure that if they could produce enough pork next year to start phasing into livestock, and out of agriculture, that they will make it. They describe themselves, even after twenty-one years together, as best friends. “I was born to be a farmer,” Sandy says. Kim doesn’t say anything, but seems to agree with Sandy, and nods his head. Kim finally looks up. If it weren’t for the financial burden, farming would be their ideal lifestyle. “I wish I were richer,” Kim finally says, his sun weathered skin wrinkling like leather as he laughs, a mix of anxious joy, smiling through the struggle.

WORD COUNT: 976