Hog Farm
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The Hog Farm is an organization considered to be America's longest running hippie commune. With beginnings as an actual collective hog farm in Tujunga, California, the group, founded in the 1960s by Wavy Gravy, evolved into a "mobile, hallucination-extended family", active internationally in both music and politics.
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[edit] Woodstock
The Hog Farm is perhaps best known for their involvement with the Woodstock Music Festival. While lodging on Manhattan's East Side from 1968-69, the Farm was approached by Woodstock Ventures with a proposal — participate in a planned music festival in upstate New York. Although the Farm had just bought land in Llano, New Mexico (near Truchas, New Mexico) and the commune had plans to depart New York City and settle in Llano, they accepted the offer to become involved with Woodstock. Recruited to build fire pits and trails on the festival grounds at Woodstock, the Hog Farm convinced the promoter to let them set up a free kitchen as well.
Just prior to Woodstock, the Hog Farm constituents attended the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. At the convention, the Farm and Abbie Hoffman presented a satirical presidential candidate, a pig named Pigasus, who remained with the Hog Farm after the convention. Upon returning to New York, they were met by the world press at John F. Kennedy International Airport and told for the first time that they had also been assigned the task of providing security at Woodstock.
Gravy called his rather unorthodox security force the "Please Force," a reference to their non-intrusive tactics at keeping order ("please don't do that, please do this instead"). When asked by the press what kind of tools he intended to use to maintain order at the event, his instant response was "Cream pies and seltzer bottles."
[edit] Other projects
Shortly after Woodstock, the Hog Farmers helped keep the peace between the cowboys and the hippies at the Texas International Pop Festival, where blues giant B. B. King gave Wavy Gravy his name.
Recruited by San Francisco underground radio pioneer Tom Donahue and Warner Brothers Records to travel from San Francisco, California to New York and be filmed for a movie called Cruising for Burgers or "We have Come for your Daughters" later renamed Medicine Ball Caravan, the Hog Farmers bussed themselves across America, setting up stages for mainstream rock artists. Finally, in 1970 after a concert with Pink Floyd in Bishopsbourne, England, the Farmers pooled their movie salaries basically; Warner Brothers gave us each $100.00 for the work we did while traveling accross the U.S. for the purpose of promoting various musical groups that they had contracted with.(and some funds raised for them from a benefit staged by a London commune at the Round House) and continued their trek across Europe, and into India, where we decided to continue to Katmando, Nepal and worked as extras in a movie called Hare Kishna Hare Rama, by a Baliwood producer. After which we were invited by the then King of Nepal to visit his palace in Pockara.
Sponsored by Steward Brand from the Whole Earth Catalogue the Hog Farm made a second trip to Europe in 1972. Invited by the United Nations to attend the Save the Whales Conference were the city fathers of Stockholm were worried that a horde of Hippies were about to invade their city, they asked us to help them control the Hippies. Passing through Amsterdam where they joined up with the crew of the Man bus just returned from India they set out for Stockholm Sweden in a bus called the Mouse bus that had been converted from a gasoline engine to a natural gas engine in order to make the point at the conference that if a bunch of ignorant Hippies could convert machines that consumed gasoline (and create unessesary pollution), then industry could just as well or perhaps even better convert motors to a cleaner fuel. The United Nations was organizing the first ecology conference. The Hog Farm set up camp at Skarpnack, a air strip outside Stockholm together with a assortment of ecology activists. A free kitchen was feeding a thousand people. Highlite was the whalemarch into downtown Stockholm were we traveled in a bus--the Mouse bus--that was dress as a large whale and preceded by a group of dancers representing death, to support a moratorium on the killing of whales. It is believed that the march was instrumental in helping the organization pass the moratorium on the killing of whales.
In 1978, the Hog Farm assisted in the founding of the Seva Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to alleviating suffering caused by disease and poverty.
[edit] Later years
Today, the Hog Farm is still in existence, with various locations including a headquarters in Berkeley, California, and a 200+ acre farm in Laytonville, California, known as Black Oak Ranch -- also home to Wavy Gravy's performing arts camp for children, Camp Winnarainbow. Black Oak plays host to several music festivals each year, most of which operate in support of charitable causes. One such event was the annual Hog Farm Family Pig-Nic, which has featured performances by artists such as Ben Harper, Spearhead, and others. In recent years the Kate Wolf Memorial Music Festival and Earthdance festivals have been held there.
[edit] References
- Gravy, Wavy, The Hog Farm and Friends (1974; Link Books; ISBN 0-8256-3014-2)
- Gravy, Wavy, Something Good for a Change: Random Notes on Peace Thru Living (1992; St Martins; ISBN 0-312-07838-2)
