Oh Oink!

Image credit: boquerron, Morguefile.com

My husband is at the neighbor’s farm today helping them butcher a pig. Tomorrow is their pig roast and this year they decided to buy hog on the hoof and do it themselves. I’m hiding at home working. True love is allowing your carnivorous spouse to do what he thinks is right and help a neighbor when you are aiming for vegetarian!

It is not the right time of year to butcher hogs, but butchering is going on today. Normally, pigs are butchered in the fall, when the high heat needed to scald the carcass won’t be as bothersome and the meat can be smoked.  But this weekend my neighbors are hosting a big party and wanted fresh meat to barbecue.

They named the pig Wilburjene.

My neighbor Annette posted this fact to Facebook. I said something like, “You named it???” and she said, “Yes, big mistake.”

Even though I ran around the house last night chanting “free the pig” (more to annoy my spouse than anything else), I can’t be a hypocrite. My grandfather, great grandfather, and probably many generations back were all butchers in Germany. Slaughtering pigs and other creatures was how they made their living.  And my motto is that I never, ever, impose my own dietary choices on anyone else – not family or friends who visit. If you came to visit and I knew you liked meat, I’d serve you meat.  I never dictate. I share what I think – but I will never try to force you or anyone in my family to eat what I eat!

The pig couldn’t go free at any rate. To do would be an enormous and costly mistake with horrific consequences.  Wild pigs root in the ground and dig up farmland, causing damage. In Georgia and Florida, pigs that escaped from farms have done terrible damage to the land. They are also dangerous. One of our farming neighbors was severely mauled by a sow and had to have many surgeries to reattach digits and limbs the sow took off. No, they are not cuddly beasts, and they cannot go free.  A long time ago perhaps nature had predators for them around here but now man is their only predator, at least here.

Our neighbors at Shady Acres Farm, Patty & Ron, had the special scrapers needed to clean the pig after scalding, so we ran over there the other night with Phil and picked them up. They were so generous in lending out their equipment to a total stranger.  Thank you both!

Tomorrow is the big pig roast day on the farm.  To me it is like the old New York City block parties or festival days we had, like the Feast of St Vincent de Paul in Elmont. Our neighbors open up their entire farm and several hundred people attend.  They will roast and barbecue Wilburjene tomorrow.  Everyone brings something to drink and side dishes. The fellas will start a baseball game in the field while cows graze nearby.  Many of the families bring instruments such as guitars and keyboards and they set up a makeshift stage on the front porch of the old farmhouse, and families take turns singing songs and being the entertainment.  I like to just sit and visit with people but John likes to play baseball with the kids.  It’s a great day and really does remind me of a good old fashioned New York block party.

I’ll be the one reclining on my lawn chair, nibbling salads and catching up with the gardening neighbors. Wilburjene is safe from me.

But poor Wilburjene. I wish she could have been part of the fun.  I suppose she is, in a sick sort of way.