I'm more than a little ill at the moment.
I had my most intense initiation into farm life.
I watched the pig slaughter this morning. And I watched my husband collect the blood for the blood sausage. And I watched the butcher skin and gut the animal (saving the hearts and livers for sausage).
And I was doing great.
Until now, when I got home and there's a pig leg (who I saw walking around this morning) in my refrigerator.
It's time to make the sausage but I can't even stand up... I'm confined to my bed, not to be disturbed.
(Yeah, I'll get up in a while and try to get into it with great gusto, but I need a moment to... recover).
Am I a vegetarian now? No. But I won't take meat for granted anymore.
2 comments:
Oh I am trying to feel your pain. I watched one once on TV and that was bad enough. I can't imagine seeing it in person. Despite it all, one of my favorite things is bacon. :)
I could never handle the whole butchering process(me with my city-bred sensibilities!), but my kids only have trouble with the killing, not the butchering. We don't do it ourselves anymore--we bring hogs and steers to the butcher and for a fee, we get back a bunch of nice little deep-frozen packages, all labeled!
Funny story: we did do our first pig ourselves. I didn't witness the whole thing, but husband and I had to take these enormous chunks of pork and cut them up. I was 8 months pregnant, and we are working like crazy, trying to keep 3 little kids out of the kitchen. At some point I began to laugh, and hubby, tired and irritated after hours of cutting, wrapping and labeling, asked, "What's so funny?" I gestured to us--smeared with blood--and my kitchen, which looked like an abattoir, and said, "I was a vegetarian for twenty years of my life!"
Anyway, it took 6 hours to do and a few years off of my life, so now we have the butcher do it.
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