This is the pig that roots in the woods then lives in the barn that eats the grain that becomes the bacon that I bought in the market that came from the house that Jill built.

Jill is really called Marie-Helène but she did indeed plant the corn that she feeds her long-snouted pigs that she takes to the abattoir that she turns into fine traditional charcuterie that she sells at the weekend markets in the Tarn department about 2 hours from here.

Marie-Helene defies the beret-wearing burly butcher stereotype here in France. She is a feminine and soft-but outspoken butcher/pig farmer who singularly raises and processes her own pigs before selling them to a small but loyal group of farmer market goers. She tells me that she sells a relationship as well as the fresh pork and cured meats, one based on trust and confidence in her everyday hard work. Her week is long, like most farmers, but she has learned how to maximize the time spent in the ‘laboratoire‘ to slaughter, cure and pack just enough pork each week to sell out. And she does it alone. Yup! All by herself. single-handed. Alone. She raises, slaughters, butchers and cures two to three pigs a week, every week, all year long. She is my new hero.

The bacon made with these pigs tastes and smells of that earthy farm perfume that distinguishes  ‘small-batch’ farm-raised charcuterie from the sanitized version of pork products that Americans have come to know and love. It only happens when the farmer is the cook and in this case, the butcher and charcutière as well. I call it ‘close-to-the-earth’ gastronomy.

What do you know about pigs and pork? Think again. Think France. Think 5 generations of raising pigs.

This could be your new teacher.

(Fergus Henderson admonished us years ago to ‘hug our butchers’ and today Ed Bruske inspired to me hug my teachers.  Hugs to the garden teachers here at Slow Cook.)

Photography by Eugene Frerichs while at the Kitchen-at-Camont this summer. To see more of her work while in residence here, click here.

Merci!