Pig deal

Julie Brown

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To the uninitiated, the Annual Jack Hitt Last Day of Classes Pig Roast just looks like a good time. In the eyes of the Yale Sustainable Food Project, however, it is an educational event promoting “responsible eating”: the pork is locally raised, and its bones are used later for stock. The roast, held at Yale’s one-acre educational farm on Edwards Street, is maybe the most popular YSFP event. It’s named for journalist and Yale writing teacher Jack Hitt—who saved the day at the inaugural event in 2008 by showing the inexperienced organizers how a pig is actually roasted. Since then, the crowd of happy pork-eaters has doubled every year. For this year’s event on April 27, volunteers prepared two pigs, 22 pecan pies, and 60 pounds of beans. Organizers want the pig roast to become a Yale tradition, but they are still figuring out how to deal with the ever-expanding crowds. Says organizer Nozlee Samadzadeh ’10: “We roasted two pigs in the smoker this year for the first time—I don’t think we’ll be able to fit in three!”