This town meeting season we are collectively being asked to appropriate $47 million to educate our 2,133 public school students.

“We let pigs live like pigs,” says Matthew Goldfarb, executive director of the Farm Institute, the nonprofit that runs the Edgartown-owned Katama Farm.

It’s an allowance that benefits animals and farmers alike: by the time the pigs leave the paddock later in the spring, the soil will be ready for reseeding. Meat-eaters benefit as well. Pigs free to trot and root, pigs fed corn grown in an adjacent field, provide guilt-free bacon.