Three days before Christmas, we loaded up our pigs and hauled them to market, to market…or the butcher shop, rather.

Loading was tricky. Literally a head-scratching affair…

See?

We are not farmers, so we lack the farmery equipment, such as sturdy trailers for hauling large animals. Instead, my husband put them on his trailer, in the wooden box that he built to carry boring things like trash and mulch. The pigs did not fancy the trailer or the climb up the old wooden door-turned-ramp, so my daughter coaxed them with grain, and my husband and younger kids made a makeshift barrier with sheets of cardboard. The cardboard was more of a vision block than anything, considering the pigs could have plowed through them at any point. 

Once Pig One was in the trailer, happily breakfasting, my son put a piece of wood in the middle of the trailer to serve as a partition and they set to work on Pig Two, the more temperamental of the two. Lots of hushed yelling, slopping about in the mud, and very cautious maneuvering later and Pig Two was finally up and in.

And then my older daughter was like, Uh, Dad, they’re going to bust out of this box. And it was true, the pigs’ backs were above the top, and whenever they leaned against the sides, the walls bulged out. If they decided to chuck a fit, it’d be bye-bye piggies for sure.

So my husband belted the box with ropes, and then lidded it with a tarp and firmly bungee-corded it down. It was time to hit the road. Fingers crossed we wouldn’t be chasing pigs on Route 42.

I had told my younger daughter she could ride along in the truck. Since she’s the most resistant to the butchering process and had never been to the slaughter house, I hoped that seeing the end destination might help her integrate the whole pig-raising experience. And I told my older daughter she could go along, too. She was the one that cared for the pigs, after all. But then both my boys threw fits—they wanted to go, too. Fine, I yelled. We’ll ALL go.

After we unloaded the pigs into the holding shed behind the butcher shop…

…we crowded into the tiny office to turn in our paperwork. I had spent the previous evening researching a variety of cuts and making my selections and wanted to be sure I had done everything correctly. While we waited for the customer in front of us to finish up, I pointed out the little window behind the desk through which we could see the workers cutting up great slabs of beef. The kids jostled to see, oohing and aahing. After a minute, the woman behind the desk (over whose head we were staring) asked if we’d like a tour. 

Actually, first she said, “Are you the one who brought the two little kids to have a tour a few years ago?”

“Yep, that was us,” I said.

“We talk about you all the time,” she beamed.

(That she remembered didn’t catch me off guard completely. When I had stopped by the office to set the slaughter date and the guy behind the desk asked if we had done business with them before, I explained that no, we hadn’t, but we had come by for a tour several years ago, at which point the owner popped his head around the corner and said, “You the one that brought those two little kids? I still have their thank you letters!” And then he quoted from them, I kid you not: Mr. Joe, you have the best job in the world!, and I liked seeing the beating heart after the pig was dead. The whole exchange—connections! relationships!—made me feel fuzzy warm about the place, which come to think of it, seems a little odd, considering the place is a slaughter house and all.)

They weren’t slaughtering that day, so the kids and I got to walk all over the place in our mesh caps and white coats, getting an up-close look at the pulley systems, scalding tank, and fancy saws.

Monday morning of this week, I got the call that our meat was ready. Eight heavy boxes of tenderloin, pork butt, side meat, hams, ground pork, sausage, ribs, and fat. (We sold half of one pig, so this is 1.5 pigs.)

That evening we piled the boxes on the table. While my husband cut open the boxes to inspect the contents, I cackled like a tipsy chicken, so over-the-moon happy with our piggy-pork bounty I could hardly stand it. The next morning we ate sage sausage with our fried eggs and bagels, and that evening’s supper was pulled pork in soft tortillas.

This is the first time we’ve raised our own meat (not counting chickens) and I have two thoughts and one request.

Two Thoughts:
1. I had no idea how gratifying it would be to stand in my kitchen eating the meat that came from the animals that I, from my very kitchen window, watched grow up.
2. When raising your own food, the harvest is often overwhelming, so I’m familiar with the drowning-in-food feeling. Meat, however, is a totally new experience. The sheer quantity feels like riches untold.

One Request:
In those brown boxes are more large chunks of meat than I’ve ever possessed in my life. I have little experience preparing big pieces of meat, so I’d love to hear your favorite recipes. I know there’s pulled pork and stew with chunks of pork, but what else?

This same time, years previous: Christmas, quite frankly, 5-grain porridge with apples, breaking the fruitcake barrier, the quotidian (1.6.14), headless chickens, buckwheat apple pancakes, candied peanuts, winter chickens, and my jackpot.      

Or “a sudden fire,” as my older son calls it, as in, Hey guys, let’s go make a sudden fire.

1. Beg your mom for candles. When she says no—candles are expensive and she has hers for a reason: to enjoy them—keep begging. Point out that the fat red one from the thrift store, the one with the feeble flame, is really pathetic. Please? Pretty please can I have it? When she finally says, “Okay, whatever, take it,” snatch it from its black, three-legged stand and race out the door before she can change her mind.

2. Steal an old metal flower pot from the tool shed (don’t bother to ask Mom for permission to use it). Using a piece of rebar and a sledgehammer, punch holes about an inch from the top on either side of the pot. String a study wire or old wire pole through the holes. Put the wax in the pot.

3. Build a fire down in the field, far from the house and other outbuildings.

4. Place sawhorses on either side of the fire and dangle the pot of wax between them.

5. Fashion a long pole by attaching two poles together. Hook an old metal soup can to one end. Get a big jug of water and set it beside the pole.

6. Bring the melted wax to a rolling boil. When it starts to burn on top, yell at everyone to come outside immediately. Make sure Mom has her camera.

7. Hold the long pole steady while Dad fills the tin can with water from the jug.

8. Creep toward the fire, staying low and yelling at everyone to get back.

9. Pour the water into the kettle of wax.

10. Whoop and holler as a column of fire roars out of the kettle, shooting towards the sky and billowing into a mushroom cloud, its wall of heat flashing past. From the corner of your eye, notice the traumatized sheep and chickens bolting away.

11. Wonder if the neighbors are watching. Hope no one calls the fire department.

12. Attempt a second fireball by dumping in more water, but, considering there’s hardly any wax left, don’t be disappointed when it only sputters.

This same time, years previous: constant motion, when cars dance, cranberry crumble bars, the quotidian (1.2.12), classic cranberry sauce, of an evening and a morning, loose ends, baguettes, sweet and spicy popcorn, and lentil sausage soup.      

Since I made the commitment to read one book a month, I have been reading much more than I used to. I’ve read thirty books since my last list, and that’s not including the ones I read out loud to the kids or the ones that I started and never got around to finishing (there are a lot of those). There’s another reason I’m reading more: I’m learning to count reading as part of my work. If I’m going to write a book, I must read, both for research and to better my own writing. So now I have an excuse for reading in the middle of the day.

Here’s what I’ve read in 2015:

*100 Sideways Miles, by Andrew Smith. I’m not generally a fan of Young Adult Lit, and it’s been a year since I read this book, but I remember liking this one.

*I’ll Give You the Sun, by Jandy Nelson. Another YA fiction. Enjoyable.

*Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn. A page-turner. My husband and I literally read it at the same time (see above photo).

*The Color Purple, by Alice Walker. I read this years ago and loved it. It seemed different this time around, harder to understand, almost. Does that even make any sense?

*The Presence of the Actor, by Joseph Choikin. I read this book (and the other two acting books on this list) because the director of the play I was in said it was required reading for his beginning acting classes. Since I’m a beginner, I read it. (Or skimmed it, rather.)

*An Actor Prepares, by Constantin Stanislavski. Because the director said to. The book’s concepts would’ve been easier to absorb if I had been reading the book in conjunction with actual acting classes, I suppose.

*Yes Please! By Amy Poehler. Fairly insipid. Lots of famous-name spouting, so a person like me who can’t remember famous names to save her life (probably because she doesn’t know them in the first place) finds it rather dull.

*The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky. Another YA Fiction (what is up with me?). Well done, but nothing thrilling.

*The Actor At Work, by Robert C. Benedetti. I probably gleaned some valuable information, though I can’t remember what.

*Nurture Shock: New Thinking About Children, by Po Pronson and Ashley Merryman. I bought it and then wrote about it here. Highly recommend.

*Things I’ve Learned From Dying: A Book About Life, by David R. Dow. The author defends inmates on death row and deals with his father who is dying from a terminal illness. Well done, raw, and thoughtful.

*The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, by John Boyne. A staggering book. Tears and five stars.

*Maus I and Maus II, by Art Spiegelman. Graphic novel memoirs about the author’s father’s experience during the Holocaust. All the Jews are drawn as mice and the Germans as cats. I cannot recommend these two books highly enough.

*Small Wonder, by Barbara Kingsolver. Another re-read. I love her essays, particularly the personal stories.

*Red Kayak, by Priscilla Cummings. Another YA. I finished it, so I guess it was okay.

*The Language of Flowers, by Vanessa Diffenbaugh. Interesting story plot, but underdeveloped characters. Lacked credibility but still a fun read.

*Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith, by Anne Lamott. And yet another re-read. Anne cracks me up. Love her.

*John Barleycorn, by Jack London. An autobiography about being an alcoholic while still managing to deny that he’s an alcoholic. The guy had a fascinating life, but about halfway through the book, he started to drone. (Side note: London is a great example of an unschooler.)

*Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, by Jenny Lawson. Fun, but I find her humor tiresome after awhile. My older son loved it.

*Bird by Bird, by Anne Lamott. Another re-read, and, now that I’m trying to write something bigger than a blog post, quite pertinent. Reading about Anne’s writing process affirmed my own, normalizing my angst and helping me relax.

*The Year of Learning Dangerously: Adventures in Homeschooling, by Quinn Cummings. About a mother who decides to homeschool her middle school-aged daughter for one year. The book is well-written and engaging, but I got the impression Cummings was engineering and exploiting her experiences (for example, visiting an unschoolers’ conference and an ultra-conservative homeschool group) for the sake of book material, boo-hiss.

*The Girl on the Train, by Paula Hawkins. A non-scary page turner.

*Motherlunge, by Kirstin Scott. Craftily written (or so they say) but I thought all the pretty words were overkill. I’m in the minority, though—here’s a more positive review—so give it a try.

*11/22/63, by Stephen King. My first King book. It didn’t give me nightmares! (And then I watched The Kennedys on Netflix streaming—highly recommend the eight episode dramadocumentary—and, when it we got to the Oswald shooting scene, I felt like I had already seen it before.)

*On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, by Stephen King. I enjoy his personal writing more than his fiction. After reading the book, I bought it and the Strunk book he kept going on about.

*Why Not Me? by Mindy Kaling. In the style of Yes, Please!: light entertainment in a hollow sort of way.

*Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear, by Elizabeth Gilbert. Revolutionized how I think about the creative process. Slightly repetitive, but, since my beliefs are so entrenched, I needed the slow pace to mull things over. Highly recommend.

*The Thirteenth Tale, by Diane Setterfield. A novel about a writer and her biographer. The story sucked me in, and for several days I lived in a satisfying haze. (The biographer was always drinking hot cocoa, so I drank a lot of hot chocolate while reading.)

*You’d Be So Pretty If…: Teaching Our Daughters to Love Their Bodies—Even When We Don’t Love Our Own, by Dara Chadwick. Clunkily written (example, see title) but extremely valuable and helpful. It gave me some good tools and much-needed perspective. If you have daughters, read this.

PS. This blogger has great taste and fabulous book reviews. Every time she posts a write-up, I end up putting a book (or three) on hold at the library.

PPS. 2014 Book List.

This same time, years previous: the quotidian (12.23.13), dancing mice, and other Christmas tales, raw, and on doing the dishes.