Yes, this is my pig story...

A gay pig is threatening to ruin Kim and Sandra McNees’ family farm. The boar, purchased for the sole purpose of siring offspring; offspring that would grow up graizing under the lush organic apple orchards of farm, and would eventually be butchered, sold and, ultimately, provide an income for the McNee family.
Sandra and Kim, who name all of the animals on their farm, named their new boar Willie. Arriving on the farm, Willie was immediately charged by the eager female pigs: he ran away squeeling. 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.

Usually, this story would serve as a marginally humorous anecdote, maybe a good bar story or the “gay pig” a punchline of some low-brow joke. But for the McNees’, the seemingly homosexual pig, and what he means for their bottom line, and Barefoot Farm, a labor of love built over fifteen years of backbreaking labor, is a serious problem.

Arriving on the McNee farm on a drizzling Monday morning, the rolling landscape of Paw Paw is a greying blur beyond the windshield of my car. On the outskirts of Paw Paw, I pass an aging bowling alley, a few haggard mechanic shops, and a dimly lit diner. The gravel road that leads to the McNees’ is ominous: a large, prominently displayed sign that reads “DEAD END” hangs haphazardley on a rusting signpost; the smell of manure creeps into the secure interior of my car.

Sandra McNees, who immediately tells me that she prefers “Sandy,” is waiting on the front step of her house. She is past sixty, and her dark – not grey – 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. This preference, she later tells me, is the reason for the name of the farm – Barefoot Farms.

She and her husband Kim have been farming here for the past fifteen years, the two of then doing almost the entirety of the work it takes to grow and harvest their organic vegetables and now, increasingly, hogs and cattle. 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 Sandra and Kim. They estimate their average workday at sixteen hours, give or take, during those summer months.

Sandy hobbles outside to the greenhouse to show me her seedlings. Sandy is severely disabled, and even walking seems to take a long time. “I have a high pain tolerance and I’m stubbon as hell,” she says when I ask her how she manages to work the farm.
Entering the greenhouse, where Sandy says she spends most of her time, rows and rows of tiny green shoots are lined up; box after box of the sprouting plants are “popping,” as Sandy says. She points different groups of boxes: jalepenos, onions, broccoli, some lettuces, zucchini, even garlic, which she says she has let go too long. She pulls one of the garlic shoots from the black soil and peels back a portion of the milky stem with a fingernail. She lifts the bulb to my nose. One whiff of the plant makes my eyes water; indeed, even I can tell that something has been allowed to get out of hand with the garlic. She chucks the plant over her shoulder, and starts to talk about the problems with Willie the boar.

“When I first saw the boar, I thought ‘he looks like my first husband,’” Sandy sighs. Apparently, this was not a good omen. For the last several weeks, she and Kim have been trying with yet unknown success to ensure that Willie empregnates 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. At this point, Willie has yet to mount a female. That is, without direct guidance from Kim. The procedure is a messy one – and just as I am starting to visualize what this might entail, Kim chimes in, the first time he has entered our conversation so directly in the hour I have been at the farm. “The first pigs he tried to mount were cut males,” Kim says. “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 dons rubber gloves, and, entering the pen, explains the procedure of “lining it up.” He tells me that on a good day, he can ensure that Willie’s rather skinny penis enters, “the right hole.”

Sandy and Kim are increasingly reliant on the gamble of raising livestock. Livestock, apart from the sometimes graphic nature of ensuring procreation, is much easier for the aging couple to raise. “Physically, the vegetables are getting harder to do,” Sandy says. As the McNees age, it becomes harder every year to maintain the farm solely off of the profits they make on agriculture. Their income comes from the farmers markets they frequent, sometimes selling through small shops and at fairs. They only sell what is in season, right now, asparagus. Still, with the endless work, they are still just scrapping by. “The expense of it is a struggle – every single year,” she says. This year, with the unusually cold winter, the McNees nearly gave up on the farm altogether. “The colder it is, the more they eat – we depleted all the money we had, trying to keep them fed.”

And yet, back in the warm living room of the McNees home, they 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. Kim gets up to pour coffee for Sandy, and he pats her hand as he sets the mug down next to her on the side table. “I was born to be a farmer,” Sandy says. Kim doesn’t say anything, but seems to agree with Sandy, and nods his head. Do they have any regrets? Kim finally looks up. “I wish I were richer,” Kim says, his sunweathered skin wrinkling like leather as he laughs.