I did the coolest thing yesterday. Albeit, most people would probably not agree with me, BUT most people are stuck in the fog of conventional wisdom/living/breathing/etc!
As you know, Korey and I live on a farm, in the country, out in the middle of beautiful NOWHERE. We love it. This Saturday we are having a pig pickin' for the owners and staff of my workplace, Fitness Together. This will be the 2nd annual Meadows-hosted pig pickin' and we are thrilled to have folks out to the house. I mean, I get to cook, entertain, EAT WELL, and be with folks that I enjoy being around. Who could ask for more?!
Back to the coolest thing...
This year Korey wanted to go all out with the vittles, so he decided no matter how few folks we were going to end up having at the house, we MUST have a whole hog for the cooker...for the visual, of course. (You gotta know that we're just about the only true country folk that wonder the streets of metropolitan areas, so it's kinda cool to freak people out with whole, dead livestock!) Well, we were invited out to the farm where we purchase our local, pastured pork yesterday. We've been buying from him, Brian, for quite some time but we've never been to see the pigs.
We got there and in front of me was literally a HERD of freely roaming, freely grazing hogs of all sizes--from babies to sows and boars of at least 400-500 pounds! Loud as they could be, they'd squeal and play and eat and repeat. Brian had some separate from the rest of the herd in a smaller area. These were the ones for us to look over to choose for our cookout. We chose one of about 100 pounds, a small-to-medium pig that would easily feed 50 people; but WHAT THE HELL, WHY NOT?!
On the way back home I couldn't help but think about how awesome my life is. I live a mile from my beef farmer, a mile-and-a-half from my pig farmer, I raise my own chickens and collect my own eggs, and right now we have a garden so abundant with produce that we literally don't even have to leave the house for groceries! How could it get any better? What people don't understand, or realize even, how far we've come from just a mere 50-75 years ago. A complete ancestry of living off of the land only to be quickly trumped by convenience, impatience, and lack of desire to know where our food comes from.
There's something to be said about knowing exactly where your food comes from, not simply how it's prepared. Last weekend we bough 11 more hens to add to our flock. We don't plan on eating these hens (at least not right now) but they will provide us with nutrition by way of eggs and eventually by the sacrifice of their own lives. Ronnie, our beef farmer, was once our egg man. He now has some layers that are aging out and is willing to give them to us for free--to have when we want to eat them. I can't say I've even slaughtered a chicken, but there's a good deal of freedom in knowing where those hens were raised, that we took them into our care (another stress-free environment), and took good care of them until the day that they would give up their lives for the purpose of our consumption. With their sacrifice, we will enjoy the experience of using the entirety of it's being. The same goes with our hog.
Korey will pick up our hog, already slaughtered and ready for the cooker Friday afternoon. With it he will also pick up what modern society usually tosses out back--the liver, heart, kidneys, and other 'odd bits' that most folks turn their noses up to in disgust. What burns me up is the disrepect these animals are given once they've given their lives for us to be able to continue ours! Not to mention the greatest nutrition is found in the parts that aren't usually on modern-day menus. If you're going to spare an animal's life, enjoy and be grateful for all that the animal had to offer for crying out loud.
I look forward to every BIT of that pig. Praise the Lard!
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