Twelve
The Slaughter
I grew up in the city, buying meat in the grocery store that was sold in foam trays, shrink-wrapped in plastic and bearing little if any resemblance to an actual animal. I was content with that, as most people are. It is easy and normal and expected. No butcher shops remain in the city where we can see sides of beef, no farms are nearby to trigger thoughts about where meat comes from. We have collectively removed animals (save for housepets) from our lives, and yet we consume vast amounts of animal protein. Yet I never had a problem with it.
Once I had moved from the city and started the farm, animals were an obvious next step. Sheep arrived first, cast-offs from other farmer wannabes unaware that sheep are quite boring, not to mention the significant work involved in making tasty lamb. Pigs followed, as the idea of delicious pork was a great motivator. Getting my first pigs and setting them up at the farm was a challenge, but slaughtering those pigs was totally unknown territory for me.
For a few years I would call a local custom slaughterhouse. These slaughterhouses are licensed by the state, but not by the federal government. Their license gives them the right to slaughter animals for private use only, not for commerce; you are not allowed to sell the meat that they slaughter and butcher. These are guys who drive a large step-van out to local farms, shoot the animal in the field, gut it and skin it and then hang it in the back of the van for transport back to their butchering facilities. The mobile units have some great advantages: the killing is done in the field so that the animals never get agitated, the butcher takes the by-products from the kill and removes them from the farm. It is also perfectly acceptable to point out the animal to the butcher and then go off to work, picking up the meat from his butcher shop days later. I like to think of the mobile slaughter system as training wheels for performing animal butchery yourself. You get to bike down the street wobbling back and forth with no chance of falling and yet you learn a few things.
The first few times I couldn’t watch the actual kill, but would come out of the house once the gun had gone off. I would actually make some kind of excuse to the butcher like, “Gosh, I have to catch the teakettle before it burns dry,” or some such nonsense. As I look back, he had probably heard it all before. Once the shot went off I would emerge from the kitchen as if that teakettle were now under control and head over to where my sheep or pig now lay dead. At that point I could watch the butcher bleed and gut the animal. The first cut was always the most difficult to watch, but after that it was more fascinating than anything. I would stand there and observe everything the butcher did. He had years of experience and was exceptionally quick and precise. Without question it was better than any book for learning the basics of slaughter.
And then tragedy struck: my first sow, a very large, lovely female hog, ended up with a broken leg. The vet was called and informed me that she could not be helped, but that the hog was not sick and therefore the meat was good. There I was, standing in the field with the vet, realizing I had to solve this problem, but the mobile butcher was busy for weeks and could not come out to the farm.
I think this is known as trial by fire. I had a hog I felt compassion for, who needed to be slaughtered immediately. I had seen it done a few times when the butcher had slaughtered this very sow’s grown-up offspring, but had never done it myself. As best as I could, I stepped up to the plate. My neighbor Larry is a man twenty years my senior who grew up on this island and who has acquired many of the skills I was looking for in my new life here. From chatting with him over the fence I knew he was a hunter and I was confident that he would have a gun and have no qualms about shooting an animal. I enlisted his help to shoot the pig and slit her throat.
And then Larry left.
There I was at the end of the afternoon with a dead pig in the field, bled out but needing to be butchered. As I had spent the best part of the short winter day pacing around the farm trying to figure out a way to solve my pig problem, by the time I finally chatted with Larry and got the sow slaughtered, darkness had fallen on the farm. By the light of the small headlights on my tractor, I loaded her in the tractor’s bucket, drove her down the hill to the driveway in front of the house and laid her on the open tailgate of my truck. I grabbed what knives I had and began to attempt to repeat what I had watched the butcher with thirty years’ experience do many times. All the while, the diesel motor of the tractor was running to keep the lights shining on my work, the otherwise quiet winter night filled with the slow rumble of the engine.
The meat was oddly cut, not professional in any way, but the pig was eventually broken down enough to get the pieces into the coolers. I think this is the best way to learn—on your own, with some knowledge under your belt, but with no safety net.
Although the sow with the broken leg was a great start to my career as a butcher, I didn’t actually slaughter the animal, my neighbor did. Butchering is a complicated skill, but involves the same basic skills as cutting up steaks bought at a grocery store; killing an animal is much different. It is the taking of a life, deliberately and intentionally. You know that that sheep that is walking around the pastures at this moment will be dead minutes later, by your own hand. In late fall a few years back, Matt and I had decided that the time had come to kill a couple of goats for a holiday barbecue without the assistance of the mobile butcher. We discussed it and were confident that it was appropriate and that we were capable. Actually, we discussed it for weeks. Endlessly. In hindsight, I am struck by the tremendous luxury of being able to discuss the killing of an animal for food for weeks. Only recently in human history has that been possible—hunger would quickly have made the decision for us.
As there were two goats, we each would kill one and then help each other skin and gut. Goats and sheep are killed by slitting their throats; hogs are shot with a rifle. I’d had the cooks at my restaurant in the city sharpen knives for me and we each proceeded to slit the throats of the goats, bleeding them out.
We both discovered in those quick seconds that although we had spent many hours talking about our roles in killing animals for meat, the actual kill was not terribly difficult. Anticlimactic, if you will.
I still think about the taking of life beforehand, thank the animal for its life and proceed with a professional detachment. I never talk to anyone while the gun is in my hand. I want no one to chat with me then. Others may be chatting behind me, but I can’t hear. My only concern is a successful kill: the animal having no idea what is coming and dying instantly, and no one hurt in the process.
I have learned to have a few guys around for the slaughter, particularly with pigs, though with creatures as lightweight as lambs it’s hardly necessary. Without people around it is a sad moment. A larger crew makes it more socially acceptable: if all of us think this is a good idea, then of course it is. With just you and the beast there in the field, it is an open question.
A question that has bothered me for some time is whether children should be present at the kill or at the cutting up of the pig. Early on I suggested that my friend Dan bring his young son D.J. Being a responsible, if a bit high-strung parent, he shrieked and assured me that D.J. would have nightmares for years if he witnessed such an act. I tried to reason, with no success, that children had been present historically at such porcine preparations and that they seemed to live through it. He didn’t buy my argument at all and his son was absent, as was he, for the slaughter. Jorge’s sons often come out to pig slaughters and are generally bored by the whole affair.
My thought has been that if the parent is upset by killing animals, the child will pick up on it and assume that killing is bad. If there is an attitude of normalcy to preparing food, then the child will pick that up as well. I can see where parents would not want to risk scaring their beloved children, but it is that nervousness that indicates their apprehension with the entire process. They are more comfortable buying a pork chop in a Styrofoam tray at the local supermarket.
Although Matt does not work on this
farm any longer, he often brings his daughter to the pig slaughters here. She is two now and has witnessed a few goats and pigs, plus plenty of chickens, come to their end. He feels that this is a gift he can give her: the ability to see the animals, raise them, slaughter them and then eat them. We adults who grew up in the city can never obtain an early exposure to a true connection between food and animals.
For pigs we muster at least three guys for a slaughter. Although I get many requests to join in, I prefer to have a select few guys who know what they are doing and have the temperament I like: professional, yet fun; solemn, yet never dour. Certain jokes are fine, others inappropriate. Respect for guns and knives is essential. A few outsiders have joined us, but the small circle remains. Others are rarely invited back to help a second time.
Slaughtering is always done in the cool months: October through March. Without nighttime temperatures below forty degrees, cooling the meat down is difficult if not impossible. Freezing temperatures are ideal, but rare.
We start after the morning chores are finished. The animals are all fed and watered, the cows milked and the milking equipment cleaned and put away. The day begins as every day begins at the farm. The morning chores have usually been completed before anyone else arrives. I like to have my chores done so that no one will interrupt and throw off the sequence. Chatting and catching up with friends is put on hold until the chores are done.
The pigs will not be fed on the morning of the slaughter. They will have to wait for their breakfast until we all head up to the pig yard that morning. The pig to be slaughtered will be kept with the others so as not to induce any stress into its life. The pigs came to the farm months ago and have never been moved from where they spend their entire lives. Trucking them to a slaughterhouse in my opinion would cause them too much stress, running the risks of damaging the meat and making them suffer unnecessarily.
The morning crew gathers near the kitchen, kicking their heels to stay warm, smoking cigarettes in front of the wood-fired oven. While I finish the early chores, coffee is brewed, toast is made and bacon and eggs are fried. A hearty breakfast is the best start.
Although the core crew is always the same, often a new guy has joined us. Whether new or old, there is still an uneasy tension in the air. Nervousness is assumed, but not showing nerves is essential. Chat about food, restaurants, chefs and girlfriends fills the void.
When the crew is fed, the necessary tools are brought together: sharp knives, gun and ammunition, water hose and bowls for blood and offal. A quick toast to the pig with shots of bourbon ends the morning and begins the slaughter.
Ritual and repetition are crucial at this point. Everyone knows what to do and what will happen. Anyone new knows well enough to follow along, yet not get too close. The first few times were more difficult as we were trying out different methods and procedures.
The jobs are preassigned, briefly discussed and tend to match personality and task:
Trigger-man, always myself. The one who will pull the trigger and kill the animal. A bad shot is a disaster; a good shot essential.
Knife-boy, the one who will slit the throat of the pig, quickly, precisely and confidently. The blood must be pumped out of the pig quickly while the heart is still beating. The window of opportunity is the minute following death. Sloppy cutting destroys the jowls that will later be used for guanciale. The best for the job are always great restaurant line cooks: stress junkies who can jump in immediately and make a precise cut without panicking. Knife-boy will begin the morning by spreading out his tools, soaking the sharpening stone in water, dragging his knife precisely across it back and forth. He will spend the morning honing his knife, checking it often, fearful that it has dulled in the minutes since he last checked it.
Blood-boy, the one who will jump in after the throat has been cut and catch the blood coming from the slit throat into a large bowl. The blood will be stirred by his hand as it comes into the bowl, his fingers catching the coagulants to be pulled out of the full bowl. Obviously good hygiene is important, no squeamishness at all and a great love of the eventual product: blood sausage.
Bung-boy, the least glamorous job; the one who will tie off the anus with a string, keeping the manure safely in the intestines.
Others assist but don’t get a cool nickname. One will help hold the moving hog still so that the blood can freely flow to the bowl. Another will hold the head steady for the same goal.
The whole process takes a very few minutes. The walk to the Pig Forest takes longer. The pigs will be given a bucket of grain, the selected hog will come into the ideal position and the gun will go off. The throat will be slit, the blood collected. Visitors watching usually comment that they thought it would take longer. The sound of the gunshot announces to all that the pig is dead.
The sound of a gunshot is shockingly loud. I am always amazed that neighbors have not called the sheriff to investigate what is occurring on the other side of the dense brush that surrounds the farm, separating it from the more suburban lawns on the other side. The law has never arrived, convincing me that I do live in an area that has a bit of rural grit left in it. Never in the city could a gun go off without causing some alarm.
The gun used for the killing of calves and pigs is a .30-30. Honestly, I do not know what that means. When I say it to people who grew up with guns, they all immediately remark that it sounds a bit large for hogs and calves. I concur that, yes, it is large, but does the job well. I truly have no idea; the animal falls quickly and dies immediately but the connection between the gauge of the gun and the ease of death escapes me.
My friend Matthew lent me the rifle years ago. He started by teaching me how to shoot with a .420. It was the most beautiful gun I had ever seen. In fact, it was the only gun I had ever seen. Having grown up in the tranquillity of Seattle, I had never seen or discussed guns.
The liberal middle-class predisposition against guns is the norm here in the coastal edge of the country. The NRA is considered a sad, lower-class, red-state institution and there is rarely room in the discussion to consider guns for hunting.
When I was in the process of looking for the appropriate weapon to kill a pig, I stopped in a gun shop off-island that I had driven by for many years but had never entered. Why would I have entered a gun shop? With me that day was one of my farm interns, a terribly idealistic young liberal farmer-to-be. I carried my cultural reservations with me, but marched in, viewing it as an adventure. And I needed a gun.
I began walking around the store, trying to look like I did this all the time, but really I was clueless as to how the store was arranged or what I was supposed to do. A few minutes into my vague browsing, I turned to my young intern Evan to ask him what he thought. He was standing in the middle of the store, frozen, not finding this in the least bit amusing. He could barely speak; there was a tension that couldn’t be broken. I told him he should wait in the truck and that I would be out soon. You would think that I had thrown him into the middle of the Republican National Convention.
I continued with my shopping, hoping to find a gun to buy, as the weather was soon to break and the pigs were getting bigger every day. Quickly I discovered that gun shops, or at least this one gun shop, have a basic system. You go up to the long glass counters, chat vaguely about the guns in the case or on the back wall behind the case, then the salesman pulls a weapon out for you and places it on the case in front of you. You then pick it up and point it at something other than the salesman or another customer, look through the sight and then make a comment—“Yes, very nice” or “Hmm, seems a bit tight.”
I did this a few times, trying not to look like a complete neophyte. When Matthew had brought over the small shotgun to the farm a couple of years earlier, we shot cans in the back pasture. I was not much of a shot, but I got the idea of putting the butt up to my shoulder, squinting one eye and pulling the trigger with my index finger. I doubt that I fooled anyone behind the counter with my crude ways and so I just told the salesman what I wante
d. “I need to kill a pig and I need a gun to do it. What should I buy?” He suggested—rather oddly, I thought at the time—to just smack the pig over the head with a two-by-four and then slit its throat. I reassured him that I wanted a gun and could he suggest one. After much chatting about this one and that one, I realized I had left Evan in my truck, exited gracefully and committed to carrying on my search for a gun later.
I now admire guns deeply. I like the wood on the butt—smooth and somewhat exotic. The varnish is often thick, yet not chipped or yellowed. The metal has a depth to it. Blue-black, slick and hard; cold. The process to make a gun must be very exacting. Even being on a factory line, producing rifle after rifle after rifle, the worker must still respect the product—it is a gun, made to kill, not just a knickknack to tell the time or hold flowers or cut paper. The same is true after the gun is made and shipped and sold. No one leaves a gun out in the rain to get rusty and dirty. People love to shine them and clean them and polish them. Guns get attention; they get respect. Few things, actual things, get respect throughout a lifetime.
In a family album is a photograph of my father in 1939 standing with his friends on a log spanning a creek in northern British Columbia on a hunting trip. In his hand is a large rifle. I have often peered at that small photograph, wondering where that rifle is now. It has to be somewhere, it would not have been thrown away with the trash one day during housecleaning. To have that gun, to hold that gun, my father’s gun, would connect me to my father. Guns bridge the generations.
Matthew would later lend me a larger gun—the .30-30—to slaughter pigs. It has served me well. Slaughter day on the farm is often foggy, and generally quiet and muddy. By this time of year it has been raining enough to soak the ground through. We all have mud boots on and dirty work coats. Those who are part of this are trusted friends, and I have no trouble nowadays telling people who are only casually interested that they are not welcome—this is serious business.
Growing a Farmer Page 22