Miscellanea

Richard and I have decided to invest in half a pig.

A dead one, that is, not a live one. That’s silly. He’d fall right over.

I was expecting things like investing in half an animal would happen after our dear friends Chris and Emily bequeathed us an unused freezer of theirs right around Christmas. It resides in our garage now, waiting with open arms for anything we'd like stored within its frigid domain. Having decided on the purchase, we then had to fill out a form which asks how we want the various parts of the pig carved, whether we want those parts smoked or fresh, ground or linked, how many servings per package. Most of these parts of the pig were easily recognized; however, we were both perplexed over the term “picnic shoulder.” When I phoned Larry Scott, the pig raiser, to inquire on what he meant, I was given an unbidden anatomical tour of the entire animal which included the location of the loin (back), pork chops (vertebrae), ham (hip), bacon (stomach), spare ribs (self explanatory). Of course the picnic shoulder is the shoulder. "That's right," said Richard after I hung up, reeling a bit from imagining the various parts being sliced and chopped," we're eating muscle. Muscle and veins and arteries." Lovely, thank you. I tried to tune him out, but the damage had been done. My nascent vegan wannabe me had been conjured and he hovered in front of me, frozen in its version of Klimt scream. "You're purchasing half a PIG?!!” it wailed, “What do you think you’re doing?!!" I tried to talk sense to him and replied, calmly, ‘It'll be very economical buying bulk like this. It comes to about $3.25 a pound.’ The Klimt vegan wannabee screamed back "AHHHHHHH!" I continued, reassuringly, ‘The pig was raised very humanely …’ “HALF A PIG!! SAWED DOWN THE MIDDLE!!” I continued, ignoring the outburst, ‘ … fed grass and organic vegetables. He gamboled freely in pastures during his lifetime and will be humanely slaughtered. By now the Klimt screamer was writhing on our carpet, gnashing its teeth and foaming at the mouth. I’d had it. ‘Oh come on!’ I snapped, ‘I'll become vegan right after I chomp into this BLT. Right after my Easter ham! Right after this pork roast dinner!!’ And as the moaning and keening faded into so much white noise, the cold hard facts settled in and I looked into a mirror. Oh God, I'm a carnivore, a blood thirsty, flesh eating consumer of corpses. Yep. That's what I am.

Oh well.

Richard and I have just come off a 9 day cleanse so I'm hungry for ANYTHING. And the pig won't be ready until the end of March so anything could happen between now and then. So I won’t think about any more of this now, I’ll think about this tomorrow. Because tomorrow is another day.

IT’S COLD

Yesterday morning was chilly, at least 10 below. When I went out to give the geese their daily allotment of greens, I looked off to the far hills and even the firs and spruce seemed bent in upon themselves, bundled up against the frigid air. I had some kale and iceberg lettuce for the geese and Shmuel made it very clear by his half-hearted gnaw and then side mouthed spit that he thought the kale was crap and that I’d better give him the iceberg if I knew what was good for me. He looked like a goose version of Leo Gorcey. I complied. The snow in front of their house had a coating of ice on it and they were slip-sliding around as they tried to gain purchase craning for grub. Shmuel tried to act tough, but his big orange feet going every which way beneath him like a Barnum and Bailey clown destroyed the effect. A little homage to Emmet Kelly with all the lettuce leaves around. Or were they cabbage leaves he used? Whatever. After feeding them, I lay down some additional straw on top of the ice to allow them a little better traction.

This morning there were 2 new inches of snow on the ground, fine and dusty, the kind that would drift were we in blizzard conditions. Again, I brought the kale and lettuce. Shmuel didn’t even have to try the kale, he dismissed it at first sight. Next! But the girls, thank you very much, enjoyed the kale and appreciated the extra effort it takes to chew it. So fuck you, Shmuel. (Not really.)

The new snow sheened up the hillside with a sparkly shimmer. To borrow one of my mom’s favorite sayings, it was picture perfect. It did look like a postcard out there. I couldn’t help but smile.

My friend John and I plan to climb Smarts Mountain on Sunday, about 5 hours round trip. It should be fun, bracing. It’ll be the first time I try out my new pair of micro-spikes. They’re a criss-cross collection of spikes connected by tiny metal chains woven into a rubber framework that stretches right over the sole of your shoe or boot. John’s wife Faith calls the spikes “shoe jewelry.” Our friend Dennis down the road recommended them, saying they served him well when he made a hike up the icy slopes of Mt. Moosilauke on New Years Day. This’ll be my first winter hike up a mountain. I think it’ll be grand. Glad I can get it in before I take off for New York City.

Nothing against New York, because I do love it so, but I’m going to miss this place when I’m gone. That’s a good thing.

CHICKEN NEWS

To Richard and my surprise, egg production is UP!! Oft times cold weather clamps up the hen’s behinds, at least that’s been our experience over the past few years, especially with some breeds (I may get an editorial correction from Richard on this after he reads it), but we’re getting up to 13 eggs a day from our crew! Keep it up, girls!

We had a little rooster cleansing over the past week. 3 brothers bit the dust. Just too many roosters in that coop, 6 in total before the 3 met the hatchet. Richard had been hemming and hawing about when to do it. He knew he had to do it, and he wanted to, but he couldn’t settle on a firm date. Then in the middle of a walk we were taking the other day, he stopped, decided ‘this is the day, now is the moment’ and he turned around and headed back for home. I gave a half hearted call after him, ‘Need any help?’ secretly hoping he wouldn’t, probably coloring my request with that hope. “Nope, thanks!” Score! Then he added “It’ll probably all be over by the time you get back!” And he was gone.

When I returned from my 4 miles about an hour later and walked up our driveway to the garage through the fresh, white, pristine snow, I noticed a small patch of bright red right right in front of the closed garage door. There in a pool of gore lay the 3 severed rooster heads, eyes shut. Lovely. It looked like a warning to all recalcitrant roosters. “This is what you got coming to you if you don’t watch out, so shape up!!”
I thought of the beheadings of traitors in Elizabethan London and wondered why Richard hadn’t skewered the rooster heads on spikes. That would’ve been a nice touch. I opened the back door and then the door from the entryway into into the abattoir, uh, excuse me, garage, and there squatted Richard, surrounded all the gruesome tools of his trade: a steaming cauldron of hot water; a spread of wet, blood spattered newspapers; and various hatchets, knives, and what nots covered with wet feathers. He’d been an efficient killer. “I’m getting good at this!” he chimed cherrily as I walked in. True to his word he’d done in, plucked, and gutted all 3 and now was ready for me to wrap them up in plastic to be stored in the freezer. The freezer where the pig half will go soon. Was that a scream I heard from inside the house?

ONE MORE THING

An interesting chicken/rooster tidbit. Richard came in the other morning a bit peeved with himself. “I should’ve known better,” he said scolding himself. When I asked ‘about what?’, he explained that a piece of our main rooster Red Vestey’s crest had turned black due to the icy temperatures. The black means that that piece of crest had been frost-bitten and was now dead and would eventually fall off. You can prevent this from happening on the crests and “waddles”, if that’s the chicken term for the sometime skin beneath their beak, by slathering on a goodly cover of Vaseline Petroleum Jelly. ‘Who knew?’ “I did,” Richard harrumphed.

OKAY, ONE MORE THING.

I know I’ve mentioned it before, but the light this time of year is something to behold. The other day I went out to grab a walk down our road before nightfall. It was about 4, the setting sun was to my back, and at one point I looked up and there stood this grove of trees, basking in this rich blast of reflected vanilla light. They looked as if they were as surprised as I was, frozen, still, like pilgrims witnessing some miraculous event. As I walked on and caught other trees looking back, pinks began filtering in, subtly altering the quality of the light, this warm, inviting, enchantment. When I reached my favorite point of the walk, where the forest opens to my right and sweeps this stunning far off view of New Hampshire’s White Mountains, the last little bit of reddish light was hitting the crest of a nearby hill and the trees seemed as if they were on their tiptoes, craning for that last catch of light. Oh, man. So wonderful.

I trekked back home, dusk now, the light still in the sky, a pale white grey backdrop, and as the back of our land came into view, I marveled at the sight of the line of our maples bordering the eastern side our old orchard, the silhouettes of the branches against the light looked like delicate tendril tree fingers open in a final farewell to the day.

I like this place.