where can i play gourmet ranch now that it is not on facebook anymore?

Most of the land rolls, and in early summer it was lush and green.

None of my Eastern prejudices prepared me for the charm of Iowa. Instead, he manages a small group of producers whose pork ends up in a specialty niche, which was based at first almost entirely on restaurants. Months later, I discovered the farmer was Paul Willis. Someone was raising delicious pork, and his name was on the menu, although I didn’t pay attention. I thought immediately that it was the best pork I’d ever eaten - tender and somewhat fatty, though you could avoid most of the fat if you wanted. But last January at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, I ate a thick chop that had been cut from a loin roasted before a wood fire. Maybe it doesn’t cost enough it’s much less than beef, since pigs cost less to raise than cattle. The lean meat is almost impossible to cook without making it dry and tough, and, no matter what, the new pork will never taste very good because it isn’t marbled with fat.įresh pork was probably never fashionable in ambitious American restaurants. Occasionally in the supermarket, you can still find some marbled, more tender, and tasty pork, but most is as lean and characterless as factory-chicken breast. Rubbery is the best word to describe the pork the flavor is bland, so the texture stands out. Even the taste of pork has changed in the last ten years because almost all pigs have been bred to be lean.

Paul Willis is making money, but overall the Iowa family pig farm is in deep trouble, and most of the farms won’t survive.

The state has been the biggest pork producer in the country for a hundred years or more. Iowa produces a sea of grain, and much of it is fed to pigs. I stopped for toast and coffee at the Chit Chat I (the check came to $1.06), where at the late hour of 9:30 the only customers still lingering were a table of retired farmers. Four hundred and seventy-five people live in Thornton, which is dominated by the grain elevators of the local farmers’ co-op. Paul Willis raises about 2,500 hogs a year and cultivates about 600 acres of corn, soybeans, and oats just outside Thornton, Iowa, two hours north of Des Moines.

Where can i play gourmet ranch now that it is not on facebook anymore?