Farmer John and No. 10

The hands of the mantel clock stood at 4 a.m. Outside, in the frozen Iowa dark, a bitter wind whistled through the naked black branches of the elms. Thirty-nine-year-old Iowa Farmer John Van Devender tumbled out of bed, dressed himself, pulled on his five-buckle rubber overshoes, buttoned up his blue denim jacket, put on his corduroy cap and yellow cloth gloves, flicked the switch that turned on the light strung on a pole half way between the house and the barn, stepped out into the cold.

The thermometer outside the back door read 2DEG above. The icy wind, sweeping up from Nebraska, rolling across the vast bread basket of the land, stung his face with needles sharp as ice. Bending into it, he made his way past the garage, past the combined corncrib and granary, toward the white barn on whose galvanized cupola a riderless horse swung nervously to the east. The thoughts of Farmer Van Devender were old thoughts, such musings as have men who till the earth on mornings black and harsh with cold, but on this morning they were quickened by excitement--the No. 10 sow, one of the white ones, was three days overdue.

The hog books say a sow will be delivered 113 days after she has been serviced by the boar. Farmer John knew that No. 10 had been serviced 116 days ago, but he was not upset. His sows usually run beyond the theoretical 113 days, often as long as 118 days. Sometimes he wonders if the men who write hog books ever kept books on a hog.

Farmer John stepped into the barn's cloistered warmth and turned on the switch. The sound of the wind dwindled as he closed the door. The sleeping animals arose to blink. Queenie, the light khaki collie, yipped a greeting from her bed of alfalfa stalks and ground corncobs alongside the salt barrel, ran up wagging her tail. Four cows, drowsing in their stanchions, turned their heads to stare. Patting Queenie on the head, Farmer John moved through the barn, the air heavy with the composite odor of beasts and dung and a vague memory of last year's summer held in the sun-cured alfalfa stored in the loft above, coming finally to the old horse stall in the southeast corner of the barn where sow No. 10 was quartered.

No. 10's condition was good. Stretched out on her side on a bed of ground corncobs, her pigs were still warm within her. Farmer John scratched her behind her left ear and jowl, grinned at her answering indifferent grunt. Today, he knew, was the day.

Leaving No. 10 to her labor, Farmer John went about his early morning chores. No "by-cracky" farmer, he runs the one-man skillfully operated agricultural unit characteristic of modern Iowa farming. This year, with only his wife Ethel to help him, he is concentrating on hog production, hopes to contribute 432 hogs to the nation's food supply.

For almost an hour Farmer John busied himself about the windswept barnyard. Then he went back to take another look at No. 10. The white sow lay big and inert, preoccupied, occasionally grunting in a major key. Farmer John milked the cows, set the pails in order, began to hunger for his Waiting breakfast of eggs and oatmeal. But first he decided to have a last check on No. 10--and there, behind the sow, wet and shivering, stood a white and wrinkled two-pound pig.

It was not the first pig born in Iowa in 1943, nor would it be the last. But in a hungry world, in a nation that for the first time in its history faced the specter of hunger, few events in the U.S. last week were of more importance than the humble birth of sow No. ID'S two-pound pig. (Her litter: eight.)* By so much had the nation's meat supply been increased, by so much had the Battle of Food been won.

-The "$16 hog" appeared on the Chicago livestock market last week for the first time since October 1920. Expected hog production for 1943: 115-120,000,000.

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