Make Love And Lard

Well, we did it.

Raised a pig.

Finished a pig.

Butchered a pig.

Have pork for sale.

The results were better than we had even dared hope.  Our lovely, apple- and black walnut-finished pigs lived a good life and they live on in our hearts and bodies.  This is why we do what we do.  And that marbling!  My goodness.

And in case you're interested in buying any, the first results are starting to come in...  There's nothing that feels so good as hearing that you raised and produced a happy animal and a tasty product.

If you want to try some for yourself, email me at kate@hamsweetfarm.com for available cuts and prices.

Thanks, piggies.  We love you.

Porky Preview

Hubba hubba!

Practice Practice Practice

This afternoon, I left work early.  Actually, I left earlier than the "early" I had originally intended.  We were due at our local packing plant before 6 pm this evening, but today's nasty wind & rain made C and I worry about impending darkness, loading conditions, and the safest trip possible.

I planned to leave the office around 2 or so, but by 12:30 I was so nervous I couldn't concentrate on the work at hand.  I alternated between bouts of feeling sick to my stomach, and welling tears.  I finished up and left at 1, thankful for the escape to my car and the radio.  Between tears and rainy it was a blurry ride home.  One of my old country favorites came on, and I had to laugh at how the love story might have been about farming...

Going out of my mind these days,

Like I'm walkin' round in a haze.

I can't think straight, I can't concentrate.

And I need to shave.

I go to work and I look tired.

The boss man says: "Son, you're gonna get fired,

This ain't your style," and from behind my coffee cup,

I just smile.

What a beautiful mess!

What a beautiful mess I'm in.

Spendin' all my time with you,

There's nothin' else I'd rather do.

What a sweet addiction that I'm caught up in.

'Cos I can't get enough,

Can't stop the hunger for your love.

What a beautiful, what a beautiful mess I'm in. 

Ahhh.

This morning put salt in my coffee.

I put my shoes on the wrong feet.

I'm losin' my mind, I swear; It might be the death of me,

But I don't care.

Had you told me a year ago that C and I would own a little farmstead, in Michigan, and be taking our first pigs to slaughter before the year was out, I wouldn't have known what to say!  Not possible.  Too many moving pieces in Colorado, jobs, the house, our friends... but here we are, and it's a frightful and wonderful piece of work.  It truly does consume most of our time, energies, resources, but the rewards and satisfaction are immeasurable.  The relationships we have with the animals also are their own reward... but it makes parting such sweet sorrow.

When I got home, it was time for early evening feeding and chores.  The pigs get an afternoon snack of some kind every day when I get home from work— they know that when the car pulls into the driveway, snack-time is drawing nigh!  They came running from the back of their pasture, faces and legs black from the rich peat-y mud they turn over in their rooting exploits each day.  They make a particular grunt when they think food is coming to them— not quite a grunt, not nearly a whine, but a higher-pitched singsong call.  

For the last few days, we have had our trailer backed up to the pen, gate down.  We've been feeding them on the trailer so that they're used to getting on and off of it— the last thing you want while trying to load pigs is for them to panic or just plain refuse to go up the ramp.  The two pigs we planned to take typically hang out and eat together, and the two we're keeping tend to eat together.  That makes things fairly easy.  Put some treats in each of our two feeders, one on the trailer and one off, and the pigs will sort themselves out!  

All of the sleep I've lost over the past few days [and truly, weeks] thinking of every single detail I may have forgotten or overlooked, a what-if I may not have considered, a zombie invasion... it all fell away when Jack Sparrow and Rigatoni flung themselves up onto the trailer in their haste to get to the fresh apples and bread awaiting.  Ramp up, pins in, I climb out trying not to bust my nose open slipping on muddy Mucks... sigh of relief, laughter to diffuse tears.  It's go time.

Biting the Bullet

We've been lost in a whirlwind of activity as summer accelerated from the muggy days of August into September and October when everything is coming into harvest.  Jars upon jars of tomatoes are tucked away in our cellar with apple butter, pickles, and alcohol infusions.  Right now we have an entire cooler of the last of the vegetables from our garden that hung on until our first hard frost.  We took our first animals to slaughter a few weeks ago— 10 beautiful heavy ducks.

The schedule of a farmer is different than that of the modern person who considers "summer" to be over after Labor Day.  If tomatoes are still on the vine, I'd say it's still summer.  And only in autumn are meat animals typically ready for harvest.  The ducks were our first, but within the month we will also take 10 Thanksgiving turkeys and 20 chickens for processing as well.

But the really big one is coming up in just a few days.  We are taking two of our pigs to a local slaughterhouse, dropping them off Wednesday night and returning Thursday morning to get a tour of the place and see the kill.  I've been saying goodbye in some ways for weeks... extra treats, extra straw in their shelter, even just lingering near them, watching them play and root around and be themselves.  It is most definitely a mourning process along with the celebration of their life, the sacrifice they make to put food on your
table.

Just before our boar Melvin was slated to go to the slaughterhouse, he succumbed to a week of brutal heat, with temperatures over 100 degrees during the day hardly cooling down at night.  In some ways, it was terrible to have to make the decision to put him down at home.  In others, it was a relief not to have to load him up onto a trailer and take him to a strange place for the last day of his life.  He laid down and it was over.  I took a shot of bourbon first.  I cried.  A somber mood settled over the farmstead.  It was over.

Hopefully, on Wednesday we will load up two of our pigs.  Jack Sparrow and Rigatoni.  They are accustomed to the trailer and we've been feeding them and giving treats on it so they're not afraid of it.  The best you can do as a caretaker of any animals is set them up for success, and do as much as possible to ensure they're calm.  We've done our best and can only hope that everything goes the way it should over the course of the next few days.  I struggle with the emotions of it all, and quite frankly, sometimes I don't do well with it.  I always cry.  It's exhausting but I wouldn't have it any other way.

Ham Sweet Farm in the news!

I promise I haven't forgotten about you, little blog!

The passing of time on a farm is marked by empty bags of grain, refilled waterers, ripening tomatoes, and growing babies.  Our ducks, who were once so small that they couldn't be contained inside the small bars of a dog crate, have now outgrown the coop we built for them.  Our pigs outgrew the feeder we made for them, their shoulders growing too wide to fit four-abreast.  When we first got them, all five could eat from one feeder at the same time [albeit with some squealing].

The rotational nature of growing living things is entrancing, hypnotizing, steady.  By the time you catch up on one corner of the farm, another has grown wild and needs attention.  So it is, too, with the seasons.  The bursting greens of spring, the scorching haze of summer, the bounty of autumn, the halting blanket of winter.

With September looming just around the corner, we are starting to think of wintry solutions to what surely will be problems with our methods of feeding and watering everyone.  Currently, you can stumble outside in pajamas and flipflops to take care of morning chores.  A few crisp mornings with dew resting heavy on the grass jolted us into the reality that soon, we will need to be all layered up before we venture outside.  Reality bites.  But it also means an end to the frenetic garden-watering and grass-mowing and fence-building, at least until spring decides to come around again.

The local magazine Capital Gains was kind enough to interview me recently, for an article about eating ethical meat.  I'm always happy to talk about why Christian and I are doing what we're doing.  Check it out below!

Conscientious Flexitarians— eating the right meat

This Little Piggy...

Last night we had our first on-farm kill... we had planned to take our young boar, Melvin, up to the processor today.  In this extreme heat wave we've been under, he was very stressed— we worried what effect the trailer ride and overnight in a strange facility would have.  We didn't want to lose the meat, nor did we want him to suffer... so C and I waited for him to lay down last night as the evening cooled, and lured the other pigs away with grain, then took the shot.

In many ways, but particularly when it comes to things of this matter, I feel so lucky to have C as my partner.  Even the most merciful of shots is so difficult for me.  C took the perfect shot and Melvin was gone instantly.  The other pigs calmly eating on the other side of their shelter didn't notice a thing, not even the involuntary muscle spasms that accompany death [just not in the movies].  I cried and put my hand on his still-warm cheek, said thank you, what a good boy you were.

We carried him out of the pen and hoisted him on the tractor to bleed him out.  In these moments I always remember the words of Temple Grandin.  "It was here; now it's meat.  Where did it go?"  The Melvin we knew and took care of was gone, and now we had our upcoming pig roast to look forward to.  The chickens and dogs got some of the odd bits, and everything else went into the compost.  We hosed him inside and out, both cleaning and cooling the carcass.  For now, Melvin rests in our refrigerator.  This weekend, we will celebrate with friends his life and the land that sustains us.

His boisterous spirit and silly straw-burrowing will be missed on the farm, but we will eat him so that one less pig is raised in a confinement operation for a miserable dark 6 months of "life."  If you think I did it without the help of a shot of bourbon you'd be sorely mistaken.

Many people find it strange that we name the animals we intend to eat.  But knowing the animal is about more than the name— even without one we would find some moniker by which to talk about that once-living piece of pork versus the other four that we woke up this morning to feed.  In the end, we should all be so lucky as to spend our last day wallowing in silky black mud, playing in straw and eating cold melon, the dappled sun shining through trees.

Grrls Meat Camp in the news

Grrls Meat Camp has been getting some great press of late.  I'm incredibly honored to be a part of it, as well as to be included in this article.

Women Breaking Down Hogs, Beef and the 'Old Boy Network' in Kentucky Butchering Camps

If you're interested in attending one of these workshops, well, you're in luck!  There's one coming up.  I can't make it, but I'm thinking about crashing the after party/BBQ.

Grrls Meat Camp Workshop in Kentucky, April 12-14

The Meat You Eat

Butchering animals is a grave thing.

For me, it always starts joyously— the prospect of beautiful fresh meat, raised by a local farmer/friend, pastured and fed a top-notch diet of grain and fresh veggies.

As you pull the door to the walk-in cooler open, the unmistakeable scent of fresh meat wafts out, curling around your senses in all its minerality and rawness.  Try though you might, your animalistic nature is overjoyed at the prospect of this feast.

The pig is neatly tucked into large plastic bags— one side on the left of the cooler, one side on the right, and the head sitting there, locked in a macabre grin with ears splaying out playfully, eyes closed as if the pig's last moments were spent in laughter.  You and your partner make sure you have space cleared for it in the back of the car, and then return to hoist the first side.

The front leg is so heavy, with that big shoulder and rib cage, that you can't even lift it.  You switch places, picking up the back leg instead.  The plastic sighs and stretches, and you wrap your hands around the ham as well as you can, staggering out into the light and towards the car.  It fully spans the length of your car from rear door hatch to drivers' seat.  You return for the second side, this time going straight for the rear leg, and resolving to lift more weights in the farming off-season.

The head you nestle between the sides where it won't topple or slide around as you drive home.

When you pull into your driveway, you look around the neighborhood, curious if anyone will bear witness to the cold carcass you are about to lug into the house, one side and then the next.  Ours must surely be the strangest household in town.  You wonder what neighbors think as you sharpen knives and don aprons, cleaning the countertop and laying down plastic and a cutting board to keep things clean.

By the time that carcass has come into your possession, it is most definitely meat.  It looks like the meat we all know, cold to the touch and bloodless.  If you start to glance across the landscapes of reds, pinks and whites, you can see cuts waiting to come out.  The marbling and the fat cap are enough to make your mouth water.  But that pig waited for you to bring "slop" this summer— veggies, fruit, the occasional cracked egg.  You knew that pig, although not closely.  No names were exchanged.  This stranger is now coming to rest in your house, in your freezer and eventually, the bellies of you and your friends and family.

And then, you begin.  With that first grasp of the leaf lard, lifting, gently tearing, you have begun to butcher an animal.  The sound of leaf lard separating from the tender organs and muscles it protected is like the sound of a peeling grapefruit.  It's crisp, the detachment is audible.  You wonder if your body would come apart so easily.  The sound makes you thirsty, a Pavlovian response that surprises you in the context of dismembering something.  But it's January, and grapefruit are in season.

As you settle into the carcass, you remember things.  Separate the legs right in the joint, popping the tendons and putting downward pressure until the two bones part ways.  Cut at the 7th rib, use the weight of the shoulder to break through the spinal column rather than cutting with a saw or cleaver.  Look for seams, and separate at the silver skin with your fingers first, following through with the tip of the knife.  Let the weight of those large muscles and pieces fall away from themselves.  Butchering is tough physical labor, but some of the work is done by the pig.  It's ironic, the way our bodies betray us.

Bit by bit, you realize that what was a nearly unmanageable half of a pig has become "primals" which then are whittled away into things that your kindergarten-era memory recognizes.  Chops, loin, belly that still looks unmistakably like bacon even though four days ago this animal was waiting expectantly to be fed each morning.  Through it all, that is what you remember most.  You take care not to waste a single thing.  Anything that falls on the floor are eagerly cleaned up by your dogs, and you set aside a bowl for scraps to grind later.  Even the bones will be turned into rich stocks later on.  Your reptilian brain tells you not to waste a single morsel, because it is all sustenance.  Your modern-day brain tells you not to waste anything because the thought of any of this beautiful animal ending up in a landfill along with the neighborhood trash makes you queasy.

The hardest part for me is the head.  There's no way around how personal it is to slice the jowls off of this creature's face, but the jowls are plump and sumptuous.  First, the ears are cut off and saved for dog treats [although they're good eating, too].  Then, right under where the ears used to be, make your cut.  Scrape the knife as closely along the cranial and jaw bones as you can.  Suddenly, the sound of a blade scraping against teeth.  You inhale sharply, close your eyes, take a breath.  Proceed with care, but remember that this animal was alive.  You cut just under the eye, still locked in smiling disregard.  When you've removed both cheeks, the jovial pig has been reduced to a hollowed-looking monster, teeth clenched in a grimace.  Some part of your brain tells you to take this skull in your hands and say thanks.  You murmur it, and know that you will use the head, too.  It will stay with the body for now, just in many more parts than three.

It never gets any easier, never stops causing me to take a sharp breath and be thankful.  The day I stop caring about the meat as I did the animal— or vice versa— is the day I should put down the blades and perhaps farming itself.  The things that make farming and eating meat difficult are the same things that make it joyful and rewarding.

After a long evening of butchering, Christian and I collapsed on the couch, nearly too tired even to wait for rice to cook.  We had a simple dinner, rice and a skirt-type steak from the pig.  It was just what we needed, and each bite was rich, perfectly seared, and inspiring.

Miss Cracklins, part 2

[Read part 1 here]

We stepped onto the kill floor.  Steam was roiling up from the scalder making the room humid, sticky, almost tropical.  The clean, buttery smell of fresh blood was in the air and I was nervous.  We discussed how the harvest had been going thus far with the men on the floor, their rolled-up sleeves revealing knotted muscles and scars.  We walked into the blast chiller to check out the morning's carcasses, still with wisps of steam curling up amongst them as Jay looked them over.  They were beautiful.  And I was nervous, nervous, nervous.

We'd gotten a late start that day and there was only one pig left to walk through the doors from the holding pen.  The door opened and she walked into the chute.  At that point I could feel some adrenaline coursing through my veins and I was focused on nothing else in the room.  The workers were finishing up with another carcass so Jay and I stood and watched as this sow checked the room out, sniffed around, took a couple exploratory nibbles on the bars of the chute, tried to root under the door through which she had just walked.

She didn't appear to be stressed out, just curious, just... obstinate.  The one pig with the neck fatter than any others... It took me what felt like years to finally turn to Jay and whisper, it's Cracklins.

I know, he said.

Of course we had both known the moment they opened the door.  Of course she WOULD be lucky number 13, the last pig to be slaughtered, the only one we would see.  If watching an animal die was ever going to turn me into a strict vegetarian for life, it would be the queen of the tummy-rub herself.  My legs felt rooted in place, as anyone who consumes meat is rooted to the slaughterhouses of the world.  One man picked up the .22 and walked up to her, steadied his aim... she moved.  It had to be a clean shot, an instant kill, for him to take it.  And then he did.  And there was Miss Cracklins' blood pooling on the kill floor.

What more is there to say?  This had to be personal because eating is as personal as it is animal.  Cracklins had a good life, as did all of the hogs we harvested.  In the end, I wasn't upset.  The night before, after loading them onto a trailer and sending them off the farm, Jay and I were watching Forrest Gump.  In the depths of some sad theme music I suddenly was awash in tears [and let me say, also extremely embarrassed.  What a girl!].  I was afraid of what I might see in the morning and how I might potentially feel about it.  I felt heartsick.  Jay was concerned and gently suggested that maybe we shouldn't go, but I insisted.  Never again would I have this opportunity and I tried to explain why.  He and I both realized, I think, that it wasn't a morbid curiosity but need for both answers and more questions.

How I came to be so intimately involved with meat and livestock and a farm is sometimes as much a mystery to me as it is to you, my readers, my family and friends.  I love it, but I also love the opportunity to tell people about what I see, just in case they wonder about but will likely never visit a kill floor.  I think it's something worth seeing, but I also think there is a right and wrong way to go about getting there.  You can't see blood for the sake of seeing it.  Cracklins is a reason for everyone to know their farmer, even if you don't want to know the names of his or her bacon-makers.  She's a reason to know your butcher, to know where your food comes from, and know how you feel about the way it was produced.  Death is difficult to see, but peace of mind is a beautiful thing.

Miss Cracklins, part 1

Creepin' up to say 'hey'

Here is why I've been hesitant to write about the pig formerly known as Cracklins:

we gave her a name and she enjoyed belly rubs and then she got mean and then she became sausage.

There, ok, I said it.

That's sort of what it comes down to, but at the same time, I'm not sure how to go about sharing the humor and smiles and, frankly, the agony caused by this one particular sow.  The book Half the Sky by Nick Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn describes the challenge writers and activists are faced with when translating a problem into action from readers: people feel overwhelmed by the idea of hundreds, thousands, or millions of beings [whether women, children, oppressed peoples, or animals] in trouble.  But if you can just tell the story of one, and give the reader a way to feel connected, you can build support or garner donations or accomplish what it is you've set out to do.

So what is the problem here?  The problem is that when most people go to the supermarket and pick out neat little bloodless packages of chicken breasts or ground chuck or pork loin, they only see the meat.  There is no connection to the animals.  To channel Temple Grandin again, it was here, now it's meat.  Where did it go?

Miss Cracklins was somewhat of an abberation.  All of the hogs on the farm are fairly social— they're used to the humans, legs, boots with stick-things coming out of them, whatever, that walk through the herd and bring grain and move fences.  Some of them don't mind being touched, some of them squeal if you get close, and some of them like back scratches.  Pigs are curious and they aren't above taking little bites of your boots when you're standing amongst a swirl of them.  But this goofy one, Miss Cracklins...  you'd be out in the field counting or fixing a fence or something and it would catch your eye.  This pig would be standing right behind you, waiting for a tummy rub.  And she would lay down and roll over, eyes closed, and let you scratch her to your heart's content.  As long as you were willing to stay there, she was happy to be there.

Out of 100 or so hogs running freely in a huge wooded pasture, many of whom looked almost exactly like she did, I could pick her out of the crowd by her fat neck.  Good lord did she have a fat neck, and I mean really.

The Cracklins fairytale continued as it became apparent that she was going to be a mama!  In raising free-range pigs, unlike in factory operations where confinement makes temperament irrelevant, a friendly sow makes life easier for everyone.  In theory her pigs would be friendly too, and if you had the choice between a sow who wanted to take a chunk out of your butt and one who wanted a tummy rub, the choice is pretty obvious which you would want to keep around.

On the day that we loaded for the last fall harvest, we saved her out.  Once again, among 20 hogs who mostly looked the same, there was Miss Cracklins and her fat neck.  She had a diva personality and was obstinate about being moved... even sweet-talk and grain failed to win her over.  But she was still here and everyone was excited for her little piggies to arrive.

She farrowed while I was home for Christmas, and out of 8 pigs only 2 survived.  Some sows have really great maternal instincts and others just... don't.  But even that could be forgiven for an inexperienced sow.  What I noticed, however, was that while the other sows in the field with her became increasingly friendly [game of tag with the Plastic-Loving Pig, anyone?], Cracklins became more aggressive.  It didn't make much sense to me but the signs were unmistakeable.  She was still small, but I kept imagining her with an extra 100, 200, 300 pounds of weight and attitude.  I certainly wouldn't want to work with her.

I had a difficult time choosing, between all of the sows I had come to know, which ones to keep and which to send for one final harvest.  They have distinct personalities.  With Cracklins, even the thought of sending her, a named pig, made me a little uneasy.  I'm new to this and I'm a softy prone to anthropomorphizing.  But for many reasons, she was loaded onto the trailer with the others.

to be continued...

Eating Well

Yesterday I watched the HBO film Temple Grandin.  She's arguably the world's most famous autistic person, and a foremost expert on animal behavior and slaughterhouse design.  Grandin thinks and sees the world in pictures, she has a difficult time understanding what death means.  [Just watch the movie, I can't do it justice.]

In one scene that particularly moved me, she questions what happens to a cow after it is slaughtered:

"Where does it go?  It  was here, now it's meat.  Where does it go?"

Being here on the farm for nearly 6 months has brought that question to my mind as well.  Once as we were loading a group of hogs to send to the processing plant, I wryly remarked that "today is the first day of the rest of your lives."  [The pigs didn't seem terribly impressed by my sense of humor, but they don't get impressed by much except straw and grain.]  These pigs, like millions of other livestock around the world, are born and raised for slaughter.  Our market hogs spend about a year on the farm, rooting around for delicious woodlands treats.  Then they spend 2 years curing, becoming Woodlands Pork.

In the months since I first arrived at the farm, I've gotten to know the pigs pretty well, not only individually but collectively in their respective groups.  I see their day-to-day interactions, and they see a lot of me.  When they're hungry they follow me around, even if I'm nowhere near their pasture.  They'll walk their fenceline, eyes trained on me, and whine in my general direction.  Some of them like to nibble on my boots, others like to rub on the tractor tires.  A few seemed to watch for me to set down a bucket or a grain bag— as soon as I did they would snatch it and run away [can someone tell me— why do pigs LOVE plastic so much?].

Our last harvest was on Monday.  This one was personal, different from the others— previous harvest-loads came out of one large group who lived their final months in the woods.  There were too many to know them individually.  We loaded them onto the trailer or sent them back into the woods based on size, the biggest first.  You look at them one last time with the knowledge that you've taken care of them every day but... beyond that there's only so much emotional rollercoasting going on.  It's exciting to have a successful day of loading, and it means out-of-this-world [to-die-for?] pork is in your future.

I knew the ones we sent on Monday.  They have been living at the front of the farm with their piglets for the last few months.  I interacted with them every day and came to know their personalities.  The spotty one who is obsessed with plastic.  The Hereford with her ever-alert ears and that square, puffed-up way she would stand and snort if you surprised her in a field.  The two who stood watch over each other while they gave birth to piglets.  Miss Cracklins.  We sent a pig with a name.

I asked Chuck last week if I could have the day off so that I could drive up to Nelson's Processing Plant.  I felt it was a necessary part of the experience for me— as a carnivore, as a farmer, as a student, as a human— to confront the fate of "my" pigs.  Even as I discussed my reasons for wanting to go with him I could feel a tightness in my throat, the sometimes-choking knowledge that when I watched them take their last breath it wouldn't be like the cows I saw before.  These aren't pets, of course, but they're more than just dinner, too.  My sows, my charges, my Big Mamas, my girls.  It was me who walked through all of the fields and decided which ones would live and which would die, who we'd keep and who we'd eat.  Cracklins, who used to walk up to people and roll over for tummy rubs, was a lackluster sow [she had 8 piglets and only 2 survived] and she had become increasingly aggressive.  She was also difficult to work with, obstinate as hell.  So she went on the trailer along with 12 others.

Meat-eating has been getting both more and less complicated for me in the last few years.  More complicated because of what I have learned about production and what I know about the animals themselves.  But far, far less complicated because I see a clear way of eating that is good and right.  Because I personally saw to it that each of the pigs we slaughtered had a good life, to the best of my abilities.  They have forever changed the way I think about food, and not in the way I expected.  It's not what you eat, but how you eat.  As they say in West Virginia... I eat pretty damn good.

Next up, Miss Cracklins' story.  Coming soon.

Of the Fallen

[click to enlarge]

abattoir |ˈabəˌtwär|
noun
a slaughterhouse.
ORIGIN early 19th cent.: from French, from abattre ‘to fell.’


Just over one week ago I stood on a kill floor for the first time. In many ways I've been building up to that moment for a few years now [at least], learning about food systems and production and how the food we eat gets from the farm to the table. In elementary school we were assigned a research paper, and my initial "animal rights" topic quickly changed to a more focused study of slaughterhouses. What I learned turned me off meat for months, as I recall.

But let's face it. I'm like many other red-blooded Americans who love bacon and steak and fried chicken and Thanksgiving turkey. My studies [and interests in life] led me to food, and I changed the way I bought milk, where I shopped, what I shopped for. My internship in Italy got me so close to the food chain as helping raise animals, and seeing their carcasses return in halves, still warm.

But this whole part about death... that part scared me as it does so many people. It's easier to turn away and pretend that pork chops simply come from the grocery store in neat little bloodless, and plastic-wrapped, packages. I've seen film footage, both raw and in documentary form about it, but I wondered how I would feel actually being there for the moment of death. Could I ever, EVER, eat it again?

Butchering!

This week I was very lucky and privileged to spend two days in Spannocchia’s “transformation room,” where all the salumi and other meat products are made. I say lucky because butchering only takes place in the winter and spring in keeping with tradition, and the room is not climate-controlled and relies on nature’s air conditioning to maintain a safe temperature for processing carcasses.

The pigs raised here are Cinta Senese, an heirloom breed local to the Siena region. They are easily identified— black with a broad white stripe across their shoulders and down their front legs. Because the Cinta are an heirloom variety, they do not pack on weight quickly like many modern breeds, and are generally slaughtered at anywhere from 10 to 16 months of age (as opposed to the pigs commonly raised en masse in America who are slaughtered at little more than five months). The selected pigs are sent to a nearby slaughterhouse four at a time, for a total of twenty to thirty in a year, and the butchering of each group takes place every two weeks. As a testament to the intimate and local nature of the process, the pigs are transported on a Sunday and returned in halves the next morning, still warm.

From those halves come all the cuts of meat and various ingredients used to make the many types of salumi and pork products for which Spannocchia is known. After the meat has been prepared, the products, which require curing, are hung to dry a small, cool, humidity-controlled room. Prosciutto, which takes about as long to cure as it does to raise a Cinta to butchering age, has its own tightly climate-controlled room. It’s quite a production and requires an impressive amount of knowledge, finesse and patience to produce such high-quality meats.

On Monday as I did various chores around the farm, I walked by the transformation room and could see the halved carcasses hanging. By Tuesday morning when I showed up to work, the only pieces left intact were the hind legs, which become prosciutto. Another of the animales interns, Greg, and I suited up in long, white lab-type jackets, medieval-looking chain mail aprons and a chain mail glove to protect our non-cutting hands. While we got ready, the master butcher Pierro arrived. He is probably in his sixties, grandfatherly but stern, a man of few words and even fewer compliments. He only comes to the farm when there is butchering to be done. We were also working with Riccio who lives and works on the farm, and is the boss of my animales supervisor. Last but not least, Devin, a volunteer who has been working in the transformation room since November and was asked to stay on until the end of butchering season.

Pierro got right down to business, carving up the hind legs until they became recognizable as prosciutto. While he worked on that, Riccio and Devin continued to pare down the remaining parts, taking the good cuts to be used for various things. Greg and I were charged with cleaning up the leftover bones, cutting away all the leftover bits of meat to be used in salumi. The knife I used was easily the sharpest I have ever handled, sharp enough to leave slice-marks across the bones. Every so often Pierro would take the knife from me and expertly sharpen it on a whetstone. When I first started, Devin handed me a bone and told me to “get all the red.” Then Riccio came over and showed me how to cut with the grain of the meat, and they left me to work. When I had finished that one, Devin brought me two more bones and I set to work on them. At home I never cook with meat because I hate handling it, so this was a new experience for me. Apparently though, I passed the test— Riccio came over and inspected the bones, then patted me on the back and said I was “catching on” and doing a good job. He then showed the bones to Pierro who seemed to nod approvingly, although it was hard to tell for sure.