Here pig pig pig

Yesterday Elena and I made the trek (the claim was 30 minutes, either I'm an extremely cautious driver, they know a faster route than I do, or they can't tell time because the trip was an hour) up to Weathertop Farms to get our half of a pig. It's all cut and frozen and, theoretically, fills about a banana box. Super. Life is easy, life is good. I haven't had a pork chop in 5 months, so I'm looking forward to this. Good thing. You buy at hanging weight and the slip had 110 lbs on it. We lost our half of the head etc., but probably netted at least 75 lbs of pork. Whew! I forget the breed of pig that they raise, but it's a heritage breed that "does well on pasture. They eat a lot of grass." No kidding, 220 lbs at 6 months of age is a LOT of grass.

Now, 6 months of age. That's right. They put down two rounds of pigs a year and kill every 6 months. Which means round two was just down on pasture and we got to go check them out. Allow me to preface this by pointing out, or reminding, that you can't do ANYTHING with a 3 year old without answering "why" a million times. So just exactly "why" were we going to get our pig? How did we get half a one? Well, turns out the pig is dead, and it gets dead by being killed. You can see where this is going. And oh yes, we don't have facilities to kill, process, and freeze our own pig and no, you can't just stick it live in the freezer and go from there. "Why?" Well, turns out that freezing to death is cruel. And so on, so we arrived at the farm with one very enlighted little girl churning over what kind of killing is (food animals) and isn't (people) OK and why this is so (Uhhhh, yes, do tell us Daddy... digging deep for that "because").

So off we tramp to go down and see the new little pigs. Who ran and hid



'They probaly think we'll put them in the freezer' --- Right on the money sweetheart:




Mmmmmmm. Chops.

Next question: "How do you kill the pigs?" Answer: " With a gun." Dinner table conversation later that evening? "What is a gun and why we don't touch them"

Knowing where your food comes from can be very enlightening for everyone. My take home message? Good thing I don't teach philosophy or religion, I'm not really good at explaining relatively arbitrary "morals" that are based, more or less, on deeply rooted biological wiring. "Why do cold fronts move?" "Why yes sweetie, come over here and look at this diagram..." I'm all over that one, but will probably be waiting a LONG time for it.

Weathertop is in a beautiful location and they also raise pastured rabbit so Elena and I checked out the latest crop of rabbits in their frames and I snapped a couple of shots of her out in the chill wind (42 degrees pre wind chill -- that's what Elena calls "brisky"!).



We haven't cracked into the pork yet, but the package of spare ribs is striking up a relationship with the bag of blackberries next to it in the freezer and I think that will turn out quite nicely.