- Sep 26, 2000
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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/01/u...uest-for-perfect-pig.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
(its behind a paywall)
An Iowa Farmers Quest for No Ordinary Pig
ONIA, Iowa There once was a young boy who built motorcycles with his father, raised pigs for Iowa county fairs and eventually fell in love with computers when his fingers first tapped on a Teletype portal in middle school. He would write programs to help with eighth-grade algebra and use ASCII code to create images resembling Playboy centerfolds.
Carl Edgar Blake II has tried to breed the perfect pig. Fatty and smooth. Meaty and flavorful.
He crossed a Chinese swine, the Meishan, with the Russian wild boar emulating a 19th-century German formula created when King Wilhelm I imported the fatty Meishan to breed with leaner native wild pigs in what is now the state of Baden-Württemberg. They called that one the Swabian Hall. With dark and juicy meat, it assumed a place among Europes finest swine.
Mr. Blake, 49, has bet that his 21st-century American version the Iowa Swabian Hall can be equally delectable.
The early reviews have been promising. Two years after his operation began, his pig won a heritage pork culinary contest in 2010, Cochon 555 in San Francisco.
I can build a motorcycle, I can fly a model airplane, I can throw somebody out of a bar, I can wrestle a pig and I can program a computer, he said. Im a strange duck, thats for sure.
But Mr. Blake is never quite satisfied. He speaks giddily of the hydroponic chambers (not hippie hydroponics, he says) he uses to make barley to feed his pigs, and of a super pig he is breeding one with the tasty qualities of the Swabian that can be raised at the speed of commercial pigs. For now, he is not saying much more than that.
I think were on the verge of something, he said.
A true American hero.
(its behind a paywall)
An Iowa Farmers Quest for No Ordinary Pig
ONIA, Iowa There once was a young boy who built motorcycles with his father, raised pigs for Iowa county fairs and eventually fell in love with computers when his fingers first tapped on a Teletype portal in middle school. He would write programs to help with eighth-grade algebra and use ASCII code to create images resembling Playboy centerfolds.
Carl Edgar Blake II has tried to breed the perfect pig. Fatty and smooth. Meaty and flavorful.
He crossed a Chinese swine, the Meishan, with the Russian wild boar emulating a 19th-century German formula created when King Wilhelm I imported the fatty Meishan to breed with leaner native wild pigs in what is now the state of Baden-Württemberg. They called that one the Swabian Hall. With dark and juicy meat, it assumed a place among Europes finest swine.
Mr. Blake, 49, has bet that his 21st-century American version the Iowa Swabian Hall can be equally delectable.
The early reviews have been promising. Two years after his operation began, his pig won a heritage pork culinary contest in 2010, Cochon 555 in San Francisco.
I can build a motorcycle, I can fly a model airplane, I can throw somebody out of a bar, I can wrestle a pig and I can program a computer, he said. Im a strange duck, thats for sure.
But Mr. Blake is never quite satisfied. He speaks giddily of the hydroponic chambers (not hippie hydroponics, he says) he uses to make barley to feed his pigs, and of a super pig he is breeding one with the tasty qualities of the Swabian that can be raised at the speed of commercial pigs. For now, he is not saying much more than that.
I think were on the verge of something, he said.
A true American hero.
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