ALEXANDRIA, Ind. —
When 19-year-old Jared Burke stepped into the show ring at the Madison County 4-H Fair swine show Monday, he wasn’t just ending his 10-year 4-H career, he was following in the footsteps of his parents, aunts, uncles, brothers and grandparents.
For the Burkes, hog farming is as much a part of family tradition as Thanksgiving dinner and summer vacations.
The family’s patriarch, 79-year-old Gordon Burke, spent 10 years showing hogs at the 4-H fair when he was a boy, and so did his wife, Marsha.
Their three children, Rochelle, Roletta and Kevin all followed their parent’s lead, each devoting 10 years of their youth to the family business, winning championships at the 4-H fair. Jared, the youngest of Kevin’s three boys, has spent the past 10 years showing hogs like his brothers did and his parents before them. The only thing he hadn’t done by the time of the swine show Monday was raise a grand champion hog.
Monday, however, changed that, as Jared Burke won grand champion.
“Every one of our children and grandchildren have won grand championships,” Marsha Burke bragged Monday. Standing near the family’s pen in the pig barn, she was surrounded by flies buzzing around heaping piles of pig feces. The stench of the pigs was heavy in the air, compounded by the oppressive 90-degree heat. She didn’t seem to mind it.
Even if he hadn’t won, the 4-H experience had been worth it, Jared Burke said, standing near his 8-month-old cross-breed barrow, a pink pig with black spots.
Waking up each morning at 7 a.m. to feed the pigs had taught the teen responsibility, he said, and he was grateful for the lesson. In all his years on the farm, Jared Burke said he never got attached to the animals, primarily because he knew they’d all end up facing the same fate. It was a fact of life, one that he’d been raised to accept.
“It’s income for the family,” Marsha Burke explained.
Still, not everyone handles the hard truth of hog farming so well, she said.
Marsha Burke said she’d seen a girl walk by Monday calling her pig by name.
“She’s going to have a hard time at auction,” Burke said. “There’s a lot of crying when they auction the pigs off.”
Though he enjoyed the farm life, Burke said he has no intentions of taking over the Burke family hog empire. Instead, he’s hoping to go to medical school and become a doctor specializing in sports medicine.
The pigs will have to wait.
Contact Brandi Watters: 640-4847, brandi.watters@heraldbulletin.com
