Nose to Tail
Oct. 14th, 2020 02:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greenstormI have so much to write about from the last... has it only been a couple days? There's no natural starting point except for the butcher.
So.
My freezers are full, as is my fridge. I have roughly 86lbs of meat into cure, 22lbs of chunks to be made into sausage, 18lbs of ground, many chops and roasts, 8 or 10L of soap lard, 2.5L eating lard plus maybe another half-dozen liters to render, and I'm currently processing stock into bean with bacon soup and chili con carne, which I will can.
A sow's meat is so glorious. Everything is laced through with thin ribbons of far. Nothing - even the loin - was white, or pale pink, or even pink: it was all deep red with use and life. I have never felt the visceral abundance of food or harvest in the way I did with Sparky when I was cutting up her meat. For me -- with commercial food cheap and abundant, and rarely having gone a full day without food without it being my own choice -- I found this a gift worthy of spiritual awe. For someone who is doing hard labour in fields every day, whose living from the soil has no backup? I can't even imagine how holy it would be to see all that food, all those calories, all that security for so many days to come.
This is why animals were sacrificed to gods: because they are such a stuff of life.
I'm glad my family shared it with me. Well, some did: mom and Ben. They helped the whole way through, with skinning and pulling out tenderloin and leaf fat and cutting meat from the bone and bagging and vacuum sealing. Those labels have mom's and Ben's writing on them for me to remember fondly over the next year as I pull them out of the freezer to eat. It's a lovely sharing.
Plus we had scraps fried crispy in lard, tenderloin seared in maple and salt, and a low-roasted shoulder chunk with peach BBQ sauce. We had two kinds of sausage and bacon. We may have had other things but I remember those mostly clearly. It was a good thanksgiving. Tucker even made it back from his trip with a pecan pie he'd made.
Mom is learning to channel her energy in my space. She asked about things, she didn't wreck anything I think (?) and she cleaned a lot in useful ways. She did take my multiple months of garden cardboard to the dump, but you can't have it all. She mentioned maybe coming back after Christmas and I'm looking forward to that a lot -- coming back if she isn't able to fly to New Zealand and help bring her friend's boat back, that is, which is entirely covid and politics dependent.
I taught her how to make sauerkraut, Ben learned different charcuterie cuts by sight ("shouldn't this side have a loin?"), and I had a stockpile of company for the emotional shock I got on the last night.
Ben even stopped snoring as much once I started leaving the upstairs window open at night.
Now we're getting our hard frosts. I haven't pulled the beets yet, but I do need to. I also need to do the winter pigpen.
The leaves are falling still, fallen in some places and tossing back and forth in glittery gold in others. Geese are fattening for winter. The cats are spending most of their time indoors and the woodstove is running full-time.
It's time for turning inwards, for contemplation.
So.
My freezers are full, as is my fridge. I have roughly 86lbs of meat into cure, 22lbs of chunks to be made into sausage, 18lbs of ground, many chops and roasts, 8 or 10L of soap lard, 2.5L eating lard plus maybe another half-dozen liters to render, and I'm currently processing stock into bean with bacon soup and chili con carne, which I will can.
A sow's meat is so glorious. Everything is laced through with thin ribbons of far. Nothing - even the loin - was white, or pale pink, or even pink: it was all deep red with use and life. I have never felt the visceral abundance of food or harvest in the way I did with Sparky when I was cutting up her meat. For me -- with commercial food cheap and abundant, and rarely having gone a full day without food without it being my own choice -- I found this a gift worthy of spiritual awe. For someone who is doing hard labour in fields every day, whose living from the soil has no backup? I can't even imagine how holy it would be to see all that food, all those calories, all that security for so many days to come.
This is why animals were sacrificed to gods: because they are such a stuff of life.
I'm glad my family shared it with me. Well, some did: mom and Ben. They helped the whole way through, with skinning and pulling out tenderloin and leaf fat and cutting meat from the bone and bagging and vacuum sealing. Those labels have mom's and Ben's writing on them for me to remember fondly over the next year as I pull them out of the freezer to eat. It's a lovely sharing.
Plus we had scraps fried crispy in lard, tenderloin seared in maple and salt, and a low-roasted shoulder chunk with peach BBQ sauce. We had two kinds of sausage and bacon. We may have had other things but I remember those mostly clearly. It was a good thanksgiving. Tucker even made it back from his trip with a pecan pie he'd made.
Mom is learning to channel her energy in my space. She asked about things, she didn't wreck anything I think (?) and she cleaned a lot in useful ways. She did take my multiple months of garden cardboard to the dump, but you can't have it all. She mentioned maybe coming back after Christmas and I'm looking forward to that a lot -- coming back if she isn't able to fly to New Zealand and help bring her friend's boat back, that is, which is entirely covid and politics dependent.
I taught her how to make sauerkraut, Ben learned different charcuterie cuts by sight ("shouldn't this side have a loin?"), and I had a stockpile of company for the emotional shock I got on the last night.
Ben even stopped snoring as much once I started leaving the upstairs window open at night.
Now we're getting our hard frosts. I haven't pulled the beets yet, but I do need to. I also need to do the winter pigpen.
The leaves are falling still, fallen in some places and tossing back and forth in glittery gold in others. Geese are fattening for winter. The cats are spending most of their time indoors and the woodstove is running full-time.
It's time for turning inwards, for contemplation.
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