It was a brisk day in January, the traditional time for butchering in the South, and it was time for Wilbur the Pig to meet his fate.
Always the animal lover, knowing about the imminent slaughter well in advance didn't help the wife's feelings much. Perhaps it would have helped if she hadn't named the pig Wilbur. And buying the critter a polka-dotted collar and petting it a lot probably didn't help, either. Even I teared up a little bit during the butchering process. Or maybe it was the sausage seasoning getting in my eyes.
At any rate, here are a few random observations from a Lowcountry butchering and puddin' pulling last week:
- Butchering is an all day job, but only if you do it right. It took us three days, counting the extra day to clean up the mess. But my family likes to talk a lot while they work. We're a Southern family.
- Probably the hardest part of butchering would have to be shaving the hairs off the
hogs the old fashioned way. Maybe next time I'll borrow some of those pink razors my wife uses on her tough old legs.
- Country people will always survive because we will eat anything. For example - liver puddin' (also known as country puddin') and chitlins. While I won't talk about chitlins in front of polite mixed company, for those of you these days who don't know what real puddin' is, you take all the good parts of the pig (ribs, pork chops, ham, bacon, etc.) and put them in one pile. That's pork.
Then you take all the innards and other nasty parts of the pig and throw them in the other pile. Cook them up and add rice and onions. That's puddin'.
- Never pull anything directly from the puddin' pot and eat it. There's nothing nastier than a puddin' puller trying to guess which organ they're eating.
- I'm still not 100 percent sure that raising your own fresh meat saves money. After buying the hogs, investing in all that corn to fatten them up, and then adding the cost of supplies, I saw that pork loins were on sale in town for about a dollar a pound.
But if the economy gets any worse, and we do find ourselves in the middle of another Great Depression any time soon, country folks like us won't be going hungry.
- While many folks don't go through all the trouble of producing their own food anymore, around our neck of the woods all you have to do is say the word butcher and the neighbors will come running to help. You don't see that kind of community spirit much anymore.
- Surprisingly, it was my kid who was the most excited about family butchering day, and he had a blast playing with his cousins. Maybe, just maybe, the old ways of doing things won't die with our generation after all.
And in the end, that is what it's all about. The day was not about food, and certainly not about saving money. It was about family, about coming together for fun and fellowship under that old pecan tree, to pass on an old family farming tradition, to keep alive a dying way of life in ever-changing modern times.
Too bad about Wilbur, though. And I guess next week I'll have to break the news to the wife about our plans for Bessie the Cow.