Two Years

Two years ago today, we left Vashon Island for good—me driving our jam-packed Jetta and Tim driving the truck, Bertha, which was topped somewhat precariously by the frame of our greenhouse. It rained as we drove and I cried a little. Behind us was the little farmhouse we'd spent a very happy first year of marriage in. 

 

All we knew was that God had opened every door for this move to the Upper Skagit and, in my case, given me the boot through them all (lovingly). It seemed to be the right hard thing to do. 

Tonight, as we walked a six-mile loop around Elysium Farms and the neighborhood, this overwhelming joy and peace bubbled up inside me when I remembered the anniversary. Our walk took us through thickets of snowberry that now look like a green haze from afar, as the shrubs begin to leaf out; past the swift Skagit along a cobbled beach; across a pasture with views of still-snowy hills draped in puffy clouds; through dense mossy woods with surprise splashes of trillium here and there. And all of it aglow in evening sun. 

 

 

 

Some aspects of settling in here were not easy, like finding friends and coping with loneliness, and figuring out if we should stay when Tim's job at the winery, which had brought us here, became negative and unsustainable. But other parts of it have always felt natural and right: gardening; walks on the trail; sharing the beauty of it with family, neighbors, our landlords; growing my business here; and enjoying it all with Tim. We have felt nurtured here and, especially in the last year, rooted. 

Now, I am so thankful to be able to say we have friends—awesome friends!—and even a small group of young married couples that meets every week at our home, and shares dinner and bible study together. Tim has an amazing job right here on Elysium Farms, which we couldn't have guessed about when we moved. God has been faithful to provide these two things in the last year, and I give him all the glory for that. 

Ginger the cat

 

Ginger was a cat of surprises. The first surprise was bringing him home—we had just gone to "look" at kittens. But how do you just "look" at kittens when they're only thirty dollars?!

 

 

 

Indulge me while I remember how tiny he was. Because eventually he was surprisingly large—nearly twenty pounds—and surprisingly feisty. Everyone was always surprised, too, to find out he wasn't orange. 

 

But what would be the fun of naming an orange cat Ginger?

 

Surprise doesn't even begin to describe how I felt when the vet called, after I dropped him off to be spayed, that the cat I thought was a she—for five months!—was a he. 

Ginger's life ended in surprise too. I did not expect the vet's bad diagnosis on March 9, 2017. 

Though he scared a lot of people off with his "saucy man" act, to quote the vet, I knew the real Ginger. He was lively, spunky, and friendly to me—loved to snooze by the fire and cuddle on my chest, purring and head-butting my nose and glasses. He knew how to make up for being an embarrassing menace in front of guests, once everyone had gone, and I found it flattering to be loved so exclusively by a creature. 

 

 

He was also silly, a sucker for cardboard boxes, surprise attacks, ninja jumps, seeing how far he could climb up door frames, opening doors, battling the vacuum cleaner, and playing with dogs. 

 

 

 

He liked a serious board game every now and then, too.

 

 

And he appreciated the finer things of life, like beautiful music...

 

 

...and books in any stage of the production process...

 

...and a quality snuggle spot. 

 

Lest he sound too angelic in the past tense, let me say that he could be a truly awful cat, especially in his first year, and drove me to tears more than once. He laughed in the face of discipline and couldn't have cared less about any principles we had about keeping cats off counters or...well, I can't even remember our other principles because they were pretty quickly replaced with Ginger's Laws of the Land. I always thought this picture pretty adequately sums up his tyranny, and our submission to it: 

 

I will not miss sweeping up the fountains of litter he sprayed all over the floor, despite an enclosed litter box. Or miss watching him tear our nice couches to shreds though we hand-built him a super sweet cat tower and scratching post. 

 

But. None of that really mattered because he was my friend. It sounds cheesy, but it's true. It is surprising how much a pet can become a pal.

 

 

The triumph of the oatmeal box

Now that June is older, more reliable with basic commands, not going to the bathroom at night, and vaccinated, we've gotten into a good routine with her. In the morning, Tim takes her over to the barn and does sheep chores, and then takes her to work with him. Most days, she plays with Pepper and Molly, his employers' dogs, and explores on a long lead while he works. Lunchtime, they come back, and in the afternoon she's with me—much more boring than work with Tim, though by that time she needs a good long nap punctuated by a trip or two outside to walk the trail, chill by the river, or play fetch. 

 

 

Evenings, we are all usually home and when she was little-little, I found it difficult to get non-puppy things done, because she needed supervision and/or a playmate (especially when the kitty, a.k.a puppysitter, was not in the entertaining mood). 

But recently we have discovered the best evening activity, thanks to this great book I found on border collies. The author suggests introducing a game in which you hide a toy under a cup, add a few other cups, mix them up, and have the dog guess what cup the toy is under. The first time I tried it, it went way over June's head. She stood very politely, head cocked to one side, and did not know what to do. 

 

So we scaled way down to the basics: defining a yogurt cup. First I put her favorite toy, a tennis ball, in the yogurt cup upside right on the floor. The first night, the cup got stuck on her nose when she reached in for it, and for the rest of the night the cup was a Big Scary Thing. But by the next night, she was snatching toys out of yogurt cups right and left. 

We moved to one upside-down cup, with the toy hidden beneath. This took a number of nights for her to crack. She'd lie down right next to the cup and stare at it for long minutes at a time, then stand and take a paw swipe at it. If that didn't work, she'd lie down again and think a bit longer. But finally, she seemed to consistently understand the science of knocking over yogurt cups. We introduced another yogurt cup, the decoy, and then another and another until—

 

Just kidding. This was only once. Tim's doing! Amazingly, she persevered and, with some elimination help, did find the ball. 

Now, when I'm making dinner or washing dishes, out come the yogurt cups and tennis ball. She'll usually sit and think for a good few minutes before starting to knock them over, and sometimes she'll knock the right one over immediately. Then she brings the ball, gets the long-awaited ball toss, and we start again when she brings it back. 

The other night, while we were playing a board game, we introduced the next level—hide and seek. We'd take her down the hall, tell her to sit and stay, hide the ball around the house, and then tell her to find it. She was a pretty bad looker at first; she'd glance one way and then another, and then sit down and give up. But after a few easy obvious hides, she started to understand how to poke around with her eyes and nose until she found the ball—on a chair, between our feet, tucked into the wood bin. She must be able to smell it, because she can find it even when she can't see it, like when it's under an overturned oatmeal box—the next level beyond yogurt cups. 

This box is a Costco Quaker Oats one, at least a foot tall and half a foot wide, fairly stable on its feet and bulky for a little pup. It's been the puzzle for the last few nights, and she has pursued it with serious dedication. I've been amazed at her attention span: she'll decide the ball is beneath it and then spend the next half hour alternately sitting next to it quietly with only her tail moving (lashing back and forth, like a cat's), pushing at it with her nose, swatting at it with her paw, and giving up for a minute or two to bother the cat. But she will always return to the box and try again. 

Tim wonders if we're teaching her to be destructive, but I say critical thinking skills. It helps that she's totally ball crazy...I mean, out of her mind. Bring out that ball, and she becomes fixated, please throw that ball now, do not delay or try to trick me, this is a Very Serious Matter. 

Anyway, tonight she finally did it, twice! It was cause for much celebration. Ideas for the next level of the tennis ball game? 

 

Lambing time

 

Yesterday, I was convinced it was spring. It was sunny, the kind of sunny where when the sun is full out, you want to take off your coat, but when it pops behind a cloud, you wish you had worn another layer outside. 

The first lambs were born, too, a surprise! They were eleven days early, at least, by the calendar, so lambs had not been on my radar. When Tim called me to say one of the ewes was in labor, I ran out without a coat and left the garden gate open—later found all our chickens in there. 

 

I was determined to see the second twin born. Our neighbor Christina dropped by to wait for a bit with me, and brought beers. Her six-month-old, Simon, played in the hay and laughed at the mama ewe. Finally, I did see it happen. It was sort of terrifying. I have been listening to James Herriot stories from the library recently, so I found myself thinking, James! What do I do?! I did nothing and the ewe did everything and it was fine. It was neat to hear her grunting with pleasure as she licked off the lamb, and to watch the lamb struggle up within minutes and start to head-bonk the mama's udder for milk—Herriot talks about both of those things as sights that never got old for him. 

So what with the lambs, the slender green shoots of garlic in the garden, the myriad tulip stalks in the pots on the patio—it really did seem like spring. 

But then today it was fifteen degrees colder and snowing for most of the morning. I guess that sounds like spring too. 

 

Snow days

This morning, we woke up to four inches of snow. I still feel that giddy surprise when I open up the curtains and see it blanketing the pasture—snow day! The Friendly Red Pen office stayed open . . . no slippery commute to endanger travel to the desk. But snow days always feel special, not a little magical, somehow set apart. 

 

 

 

But of course it's tonight that the antsyness that's been growing within me recently decides to really move in to stay. Spring. Doesn't spring sound nice? I'm all for lazy winter evenings, for a season. But I've just about had my fill of them now. I'm ready for it to be light later, to set out for the garden after work or, gasp, after dinner. Does it really stay light out that late in other seasons? Sometimes in the dark of winter that seems too improbable to be true. 

The weird thing is that I'm perfectly happy knowing tomorrow will be another snow day and full of childlike dread of the Wednesday rain that will wash all this away. I want it to stay. 

But spring . . . The tulip bulbs in the pots on the patio, which have already sent up green shoots, agree with me. It's almost time. 

From the forest to the freezer, part 2

Last weekend, at a family get-together, the first thing my twelve-year-old cousin said to me was "The meat is sooooooo good!!"

We sold a quarter pig to my aunt and uncle. He proceeded to tell me a few of his recent favorite pork dishes--pasta with bacon, a slow-cooked ham, and a few other things--all unprompted.

This weekend, at a family get-together, after a long walk through the woods, Tim whipped out a beautiful charcuterie plate for snacking while we played games: saucisson sec (a simple French sausage featuring a lot of garlic), coppa (cured pork shoulder), and cured bacon alongside sharp cheddar cheese, kalamata olives, and a selection of homemade pickles.

Those two moments are the deeply satisfying ones we were dreaming about on day three of pig butchering. We had come so far, but had so far to go. Yesterday's last pig half had hung overnight in the cold, from the cedar tree out back. After breakfast, Tim and Dad went to work on it. More giant slabs of bacon for our bulging fridge, more chops for the freezer, and two big hams for holidays: a Christmas one and an Easter one. I had had fun with the three previous pig halves, but I was happy to turn my attention to the pate that morning.

When we butchered pigs on Vashon, our friend John made a ton of pate with the livers. I didn't grow up with pate, or liver, and for whatever reason I never got up the courage to try it. I have always felt silly about that and wished I had at least sampled a bite. So I was excited to craft my own pate, a la Ruhlman and Charcuterie. I had combined the chopped liver and cubed pork shoulder with salt and thyme and pepper the night before, so first thing I seared the liver chunks--which smelled heavenly--then the pork shoulder, and sauteed shallots. Brandy, cream, milk, and eggs combined with the meat and shallots before I ground the mixture through the electric sausage grinder that we borrowed from our landlords. I lined three loaf pans with caul fat, the lacy fat that encases the pig's innards, and filled the loaf pans with pate. The caul fat kept the pate moist. Then low and slow heat cooked it all up.

 

 

While it cooked, we moved on to cubing shoulder meat for sausage. Working with super cold meat and keeping everything cold in bowls set in ice was key here. Gosh, it takes a while to cube up so many pounds of sausage. After cubing it, we weighed it out into portions for chorizo, Italian, and breakfast freezer sausage, and salted it. The funny thing is, I had thought long and hard about all these sausage recipes, the ingredients, and the process of making them. But I never once thought about bowls until basically the day before we began. Bowls to fit a scaled-up recipe for 15 pounds of chorizo?! Luckily, Mom and Barb came to the rescue with some truly giant bowls and tubs that saved the day.  And somehow, with a lot of jigsaw puzzling, our fridge was able to fit it all--40+ pounds of cubed sausage meat, 30 pounds of bacon slabs, some of it already curing, the 30-pound proscuitto ham, eventually the three loaf tins of pate, and miscellaneous other things.

 

Dad and Mom carefully weighed out the herbs, spices, and alliums for the freezer sausages. The chorizo spices were a study in shades of red--chipotle chili powder and smoked hot paprika--with ground cumin and fresh oregano. The Italian got a cascade of toasted cumin seeds, more fresh oregano, and sweet paprika. Minced fresh sage leaves and minced fresh ginger spiced the breakfast sausage.

 

We had originally intended to be finished with the work by Saturday night and had invited out landlords, Barb and Ger, to come for dinner to celebrate with us. By then, we knew we weren't close to done, but we paused to celebrate anyway! Tim cooked strip steak and potatoes, my parents made salad, and Barb brought brussels sprouts. It was a treat to stop working, sit down, and eat yummy food and chat and laugh together. One memorable moment was when Barb asked us if this pig thing was like having a kid--if, after the laboring process, we would swear off having another for at least a few years, to recover! Tim and I didn't hesitate; no, we'd do it all again in a heart beat.

After dinner, it was nose to the grindstone again--actually, sausage to the grinder! This was easy and fun; the grinder did most of the work, and we just had to make sure the ground meat poured into the bowls set in ice. And it was a serious treat, and so delightfully satisfying, to fry up little patties of sausage to sample it. Crispy and browned on the outside, and punchy with flavor...it was impossible to choose a favorite.

 

 

 

Day Four
Mom and Dad left after breakfast. I honestly don't know what we would have done without them. Looking back, I think we were somewhat naive about the amount of work that we had cut out for ourselves, and what we could accomplish with just the two of us. It is the little things that end up taking the most time, the things like washing mounds of dishes, measuring out spices, cubing sausage meat, tearing off strips of masking tape and labeling butcher-paper-wrapped packages. Mom and Dad jumped in to help with the little things and with the big things, worked tirelessly and uncomplainingly, and--I think!--had a great time experiencing the process with us. We were so thankful.

Tim and I spent the morning with more spices: crushed juniper berries and peppercorns to rub all over the coppa, bay leaves and garlic cloves for savory bacon, maple syrup for sweet bacon. Mounds of garlic for the saucisson sec, more chili powders and paprika for chorizo, and plenty more fennel for salami. And a whole lot of salt for everything.

 

Yesterday's pate was ready to eat, and it made a fitting lunch: slabs of pate on good bread, with Dijon mustard and lots of sweet pickles. I will pause here to say that I wanted to like it--so badly. I put so much care into the making of it, and knew that all the ingredients were quality, but the more pate I ate, the less I liked it. I know that it was delicious pate. Tim loved it. Our landlords said it was exquisite. I tried really hard to like it. But I just didn't. 

The afternoon brought the new adventure of stuffing sausage casings. While we packaged our freezer sausages loose, we needed to case the saucisson sec, chorizo, and salami so we could hang it to cure. We were both nervous about this part. Making sausages for curing requires an extra level of precision and cleanliness, and not to sound dramatic, but actually life and death hang in the balance! Everything you do along the way--from using squeaky-clean sterilized equipment to fully incorporating the curing salt and table salt with the meat to following precise directions for prepping lactic acid bacteria and mold solutions--is for the purpose of doing what seems impossible: preserve meat without ever cooking it. With cured whole cuts like bacon, you never have the chance to introduce bacteria into the interior of the cut, where things like botulism toxin could thrive in that anaerobic environment. With sausage, though, you cut up the meat and mix it, then stuff it into casings to recreate an anaerobic environment. There is potential for contamination all along the way.

So, with some trepidation, we ground the batches of meat with the spices and weighed-out salts. The chorizo and salami got lactic acid bacteria, too, like yogurt. This not only adds tangy flavor but also offers another protection for the meat; bad bacteria don't like the acidic environment that the LAB provide.

Then it all went back in the fridge while we prepped the sausage casings. Which, hey, is hard! All the recipes say to soak the casings in water for at least 30 minutes before using them, which we did, but none of the recipes mention the fact that hundreds of feet of casings tend to tangle. Super tangle into massive slippery knots. That smell kind of like spaghetti. Needless to say, we spent more time than anticipated bent over the dining room table teasing out the knots.

 

Once the casings were in knotless coils, we began to stuff. This was a learning process--figuring out how full, or not full, to fill the casings, without making them burst. Burst a few of them did, but we got the hang of it and pretty soon long links were sliding into coils all across the table. It is pretty cool to watch fettucine-sized casings balloon into 1-inch-thick ropes of sausage. The only downside of the stuffing was that the sausage stuffer was too small for our purposes, and we were constantly stopping to refill it.

 

After each length of link was stuffed, I divided them into 6-inch twists and dunked them in the mold solution. The purpose of the mold solution is to inoculate the sausage casings with a good kind of mold, a harmless white kind, so that bad molds never have the chance to grow on the outside of the sausages while they hang. 

Then we laid the chorizo and salami on baking sheets, pricked the casings all over with a sterilized sausage pricker, covered them with towels, and put them on a table in our guest room, which was toasty warm at 80 degrees. Yes, 80 degrees! It felt totally counterintuitive. But this temperature gives the lactic acid bacteria a kick start. We hung up the saucisson sec immediately, as it is not a fermented sausage, in our curing chamber--the closet of our extra bedroom. We used butcher's twine to hang the links from the closet rod, a portable radiator heater to keep the room temperature around 60 degrees, and some pans of water to keep the humidity up.

 

And, besides some mounds of dishes, that was it. Most of the pork was in the freezer. Some of it was still in the fridge, packed in salt to cure for a week or so; the rest of it was embarking on its air-curing adventure. It was immensely relieving to crawl into bed with a clean kitchen and no pigs on the conscience.

From the forest to the freezer, part 1

It is hard to believe, but over two months have passed since we butchered our two pigs. I meant and meant to write about it. Really. I had it all planned: for the end of November, I would rest (because pig butchering is so much work that I couldn't think about it for a while), and then in December I would write. 

But then in December we got a puppy. Juniper.  So there was no writing in December. December was really all puppy, the adjustment and learning and training and finding a routine. It was so hard. It was not how I'd planned to spend December. 

 

But now it's January, and the puppy is settling, we are settling, and we really like her. I mean, how could we not? And though the nights are long and dark and chilly, we are hurtling toward spring. My soul, which was so ready for winter, is sensing it (in part thanks to seed company marketers, and the cascade of catalogues in our mailbox the last few weeks). So I must write about the pigs before it gets away from me. 

The problem is that I don't know where to start. With the big picture: that it was one of the hardest and most satisfying tasks Tim and I have undertaken together to date (even, the hardest and most satisfying I've undertaken myself, regardless?)? That I think everyone should plan and execute a pig slaughter with their spouse, because the benefit of working that closely together a project so all-consuming and all-demanding is not just pork to eat but immense growth in a relationship? Or with the little things: the ravens winging over the shed as I waited for the sound of Tim's shot and looked up at the sky and prayed; the ache of my arms, ugh the ache, as we scraped the first pig and couldn't stop; the picture-perfect view of sunset fuchsia on snowy mountains as I held the pig carcass steady with cramping hands while Tim sawed it in half; the calmness, the focus that came over me once we got to the butchering stage and I knew exactly how to break the carcass down into primals and carve out boneless pork chops. Thank you, YouTube. 

 

I'll start with, I guess, what people usually ask us first. How did you know how to do this? Well, we have done this once before, two years ago, with lots of chickens, a lamb, a ewe, and a goat between. But honestly we mostly learned by self-study, starting this summer, via books and YouTube and diagrams of pig primals. Beginning in September, we sat down every week or so for a pig meeting, to talk through every little bit of the process from start to finish, discuss our supplies list, create butcher cut sheets, consider charcuterie projects. On non-pig-meeting nights, Tim sharpened our growing collection of carbon-steel knives, I scaled recipes and scoured Craigslist for 50-gallon barrels, and we both made a lot of lists. My project manager side got a serious workout. 

 

The YouTube videos were helpful, but it was really these pig meetings that prepared us, that ensured that on slaughter day we were ready, on the same page (read: had argued through everything already! but seriously!), and confident that we knew what we needed to do. 

It was also essential to make a comprehensive cut sheet—the list of specific cuts we wanted to end up with—because we sold one half of one pig to my parents and aunt and uncle, who chose what cuts, sausages, and bacon they wanted; turned two halves into freezer cuts for ourselves; and used the final half almost entirely for charcuterie. It was so hard for me to visualize beforehand, how to get what we needed and what our buyers wanted from an unknown end amount of meat—what would the pig halves weigh?!? I was sort of obsessed with trying to guess all that out. But in the end, it meant that during the process, we didn't have to make decisions. We just had to follow the cut sheets, the scaled recipes, the plan. 

 
 

 

So we had our plan. Get two live, muddy, gigantic pigs into neat white-butcher-paper-wrapped packages on the freezer shelves. The doing of it, well, it followed the law of projects: it always takes longer than you think. And it was harder—physically and mentally—than I ever imagined it would be. 

Day 1

The day we chose, November 17, was forecast to be the first day of the fall with temperatures falling decently below 40 degrees at night; when you hang a pig carcass overnight, you want it to be above freezing and below 40 degrees. So it was a chilly gray morning that we started up the jet propane burner and filled a 50-gallon drum with water to heat for scalding the pig. This was our first hiccup. Do you know how long it takes to heat a 50-gallon drum two-thirds full of water to over 145 degrees? We had not known. I danced to Etta James on Spotify while I monitored the temperature, and Tim assembled tools. Okay, and at one point we brought the cat out to dance. 

 

Over two hours (two hours!) later, the water was good to go. The next part was what we were both most nervous about: the shot. Tim used a borrowed 20-gauge shotgun. As we'd planned, we set out a tub of food and water and donned our ear protection, and then I left the shed (to watch the ravens and wait, well out of range of any shot), and Tim went about the business of shooting a pig. One of my favorite books we read leading up to this is by Brandon Sheard, of Farmstead Meatsmith, who we knew a little on Vashon. He writes so very aptly about the entire slaughtering process, with much respect for the pig and wit, about the job, and he cautions that you must be patient when shooting a pig. That it is okay to take 45 minutes, that the key is not the clock but timing: the pig in the right place, your mind ready and confident. 

 

 

I don't remember how long Tim took—it felt like a long time, as I paced and watched the ravens and heard nothing inside the ear protection. But it was maybe 10 minutes. Then the shot, and we were all action. I dove to hand Tim the sticking knife and take the shotgun, empty now, and set it aside. Tim stuck the pig, which had fallen without a sound or twitch. Then the anxious moment as the blood coursed into the dirt and mud, and the pig convulsed and we held our breaths. It was fast, and she knew nothing. That was a relief. 

I washed the blood off the knife under icy water from the garden hose while Tim started up the tractor. As we had assembled all our tools during the planning stage, I kept thinking how different it all would have been if we were doing this a hundred years ago. Mainly that we wouldn't have been able to do slaughter day with two people—not with hauling a 400+ pound pig to the scalding tank on the agenda. The tractor did this job for us. Tim cut between the tendon and bone on each trotter, and we strung up the legs on the gambrel. 

 

We had to heave to hook the gambrel to the tractor bucket, as the pig didn't fall close enough for an easy hook. Then Tim lifted the tractor bucket and the pig flopped and swayed over the feeder and out of the pen. I don't think Tim ran into anyone as he drove up to the lane and then down our driveway to our backyard, which was probably for the best. 

Once the pig was in our backyard, we hosed off the carcass and transferred the gambrel from the tractor bucket to the chain hoist, which we'd set up attached to a sturdy cedar branch above our back patio. 

This pig was huge. She barely fit in the barrel, and the scalding water sloshed our arms as we lowered her in and swished her around. So we had been the most nervous about the shot, but the scald caused us the most trouble. Apparently if you get a perfect scald, the hair and scurf will fall off into your hands, but if you don't, well. We mostly did not get a good scald, and the why remains a mystery. Thermometer not correct? We did calibrate it. So, gosh. Who knows. What followed was so very painful I cringe to remember it now. Hauling the pig in and out of the barrel with the chain hoist, hand over hand. Scraping the hair with our bell scrapers, downward stroke after downward stroke. Singeing our hands and arms with the hot water. Cursing the water, the scald, the hair that did not fall out into our hands but did, in the end, cover our clothes and skin. 

It got worse. We were nearly done when one leg of the propane burner folded in on itself, and the 50-gallon drum tipped oh-so-slowly over, sloshed most of its precious hot water onto the ground, and then stopped halfway to the ground, steadied by the pig's legs. I'm not sure I can describe the despair of that moment. This was our whole plan. The pig was not all scraped. The hot water was all gone. 

But we had to keep moving, no time to stop and deliberate, or cry. We finished scraping what we could and then gutted the pig, which went quickly and almost without hitch. Let me correct: Tim gutted the pig, and I assisted where I could and felt in awe of him. I'll say here that the kitchen side of this affair—the butcher table—is where I felt most in control and confident. The slaughter, I am out of my depth entirely, and Tim knows exactly what to do and does it well. 

You begin by cutting around the anus and then tying it right—you don't want any poop to come out and contaminate the pig. Next is the ever-deepening slice down the belly to the rib cage, a careful slice because you definitely don't want any of the guts to let loose their contents via a wayward cut. Then, with some gentle scooping, most of the innards come out in a single slippery rush. 

One final thought on guts. It is really amazing how big everything is, the red slabs of lung and burgundy livers and probably miles of white intestines. 

Then, with freezing cramping hands I held the belly open while Tim split the carcass in half down the spine. It would have gone a lot better if we had sharpened our bone saw, which hasn't gotten a tune-up recently and wouldn't go straight. Halfway through Tim switched to a metal saw, and that did much better. 

One of the YouTube videos we watched about butchering pigs was by this British guy, Scott Rea, and his catchphrase is "and then I'll trim it up"—which sounds so much more melodic with his accent than it looks written down. But the idea is that you can always trim and tie up any cut of meat to make it into a beautiful roast. Suffice it to say, once we got to breaking down the loin of this pig, we deboned it and, ta da, beautiful pork chops. You would never know the cut down the spine was crooked. 

Back to the pig halves. Our plan had been to kill and gut both pigs on day one. We knew now, as the light changed and the air chilled, that the plan was out the window. It was time to regroup, eat hot enchiladas, drink cold beer, stand under scalding hot water in the shower, breathe. 

After an hour, we were back at it with a revised plan: to butcher one half of the pig, and leave the other half to hang overnight. To kill the second pig the next morning, and then butcher the three remaining halves in the afternoon and evening. 

This was where the slaughter-day tension left me. It surprised me, because my only real pig butchering experience was vicarious—watching from my wrapping station on Vashon, watching from my computer screen in the weeks leading up to this—but I felt somehow in my element, an element I didn't know was within me. Two fingers from the aitch bone: the bone saw, then the knife carved off the ham. The fifth rib: the bone saw, then the knife sheared off the shoulder. A line along the spine: the bone saw, then the knife split the loin and the belly. Short, careful strokes of the knife peeled the skin and a triangle of ribs from the belly: bacon, a 15-pound slab of it. Similar knife strokes along the spine and ribs pared the loin and rib chops from the bone, for boneless pork chops sliced an inch thick with my favorite knife, a long curved pirate-esque blade. The ham went into the fridge to await pounds of salt to start the curing process; it will be prosciutto (well, the Skagit Valley equivalent!). Tim deboned the shoulder and prepped it into one-inch cubes for sausage. 

Somehow, though the process seemed to go quickly in the chilly kitchen, and the work was absorbing, it was past midnight when we truly finished all the cleanup and fell into bed, cold and sore and off the deep end of tired. I was so cold that I couldn't fall asleep and Tim kept getting up to retrieve more blankets to pile on me. I admit I quaked at the thought of the work ahead. 

Day 2

When we woke up in the still-cold house the next morning, I cried a little. Another pig to do seemed like too much to comprehend pre-caffeine. But after eating breakfast and praying and prepping our tools and talking through the day, I felt up to it. 

Our new plan ditched the scalding barrel entirely. We would skin this pig; thankfully, just the week before Tim had watched professional butchers skin our landlords' pigs and he knew what to do. (The scald v. skin deal is that scalding preserves the skin and therefore all the fat, key for many charcuterie projects and also all-around better for cooking and using the whole pig.) 

The second shot was as clean as the first, and the stick better, and we tractored the pig to the back patio. We left the gambrel hanging from the tractor bucket rather than using our chain hoist, and went to skinning. I was glad for the practice the night before with skinning the loin and belly in the kitchen. And we blasted some tunes, and I hummed and sang, which made the work speed along. It was a breeze compared to the scald, though not as simple as peeling the hide off a deer (or so I hear). Pigs have skin like us, not a hide, so you must pare it away with short knife strokes, starting at the feet and always working down and out to keep dirt and debris off the clean white fat you expose. 

At this point, our first help arrived. Because we hadn't settled on a date for the slaughter until a week before (due to the weather forecast), and because I guess an invite to a pig slaughter isn't most people's idea of a not-to-be-missed get-together, we had borderline not enough help. Well, especially on the first day, obviously. But the help we did have—our friend Kassie, my mom, and my dad—was indispensable, and I'm pretty sure we would have had to work for days longer, just the two of us, if they hadn't rescued us. 

Kassie and my mom came in the late morning. It is a funny thing for people to show up while there's a half-skinned pig on your back patio, and you're slimy and bristly with pig fat and  hair. Oh hey, how's a goin'? Luckily Kassie grew up in a hunting family and my mom is a nurse, so they seemed unfazed. 

First thing, Kassie (look away if you're squeamish) helped me saw the jowls off a warm and bloody pig head, a bonding experience we will not soon forget. Then I got started butchering the second carcass half from day one. We got an assembly line of sorts going, with me and Tim breaking down the cuts, Kassie trimming up roasts, and Mom handling the wrapping station. 

 

We did boneless chops again, packaged in fours for our buyers, and various shoulder and ham roasts. This was the hardest half to butcher, because we had to parse it out and keep track of weights, and I wanted to be really careful about giving everyone what they'd asked for. But it was also a fun one to butcher because I cut it into primals entirely by myself, bone sawing and all, and because I deboned my first ham. 

The ham is a unique part of the pig. It's a beast to debone, from the odd-shaped aitch bone to the hip joint buried deep inside, though really once you begin, all you must do is carefully follow the bones with your fingers and short knife strokes, and let them reveal themselves. From there, it's up to your imagination. The ham is made up of five different muscles that are all sheathed with fascia. Do you want small roasts and steaks? You can pretty much separate the muscles with your fingers, pulling hard, and then piece them into the size cuts that you want. Big roasts? Leave them huge and tie them up with twine; later we did two big ones, over ten pounds each, labeled Christmas ham and Easter ham. 

Evening, and Dad came. We paused for dinner—I had frozen a ton of meals beforehand, thank goodness, and only had to remember to thaw and heat them. We did add pig heart to the menu! Tim pan fried it, and it was surprisingly delicious with Dijon mustard on toasted bread. It tasted just like pork, which, of course it is—a muscle like the other muscles we eat—but I had never thought of it like that before. 

And we went back at it with the second pig. 

 

It is surprisingly hard to get a 125-pound pig half off a gambrel and into the house. Several people have to lift and steady the half while another person (me) climbs the ladder and maneuvers the gambrel hook free of the hock, requiring a confusing stream of "lift!" "no, lower, lower" "oops, back up, steady, down a little"... The night before, Tim and I were getting down the first half, him lifting and me maneuvering the gambrel—and as soon as the trotter was free, the entire upper half, from neck to belly, folded over on itself and came smashing down on his shoulders with a crack of snapping spine. Nothing that a little trimming up couldn't fix, and by that point in the day it just made us laugh, but we made sure that it didn't happen again. 

 

 

Then—we were really in the zone. Five people makes for an easy butchering session. I did the belly and ham, Dad did the loin, Tim did the shoulder (he became a serious shoulder expert; I actually didn't do a single one! Next time). Kassie and Mom trimmed and wrapped. 

 

 

 

(Note the down jackets. Does Eddie Bauer want any of these shots for marketing purposes? We didn't have a fire any of the work days to keep it cold in the house.)

By nine or so, we were done with the half and cleaned up. But not done for the night. We decided to save the last pig half for the morning and spend some time prepping charcuterie. The charcuterie has been one of my favorite things to tell people about because it is, for most people, not just a lost art but a huge question mark. It was for me too, to an extent, before we began this project. Most people are familiar with salami, pepperoni, prosciutto, and other cured meats (though I've found upvalley people are more likely to look blank when you say "prosciutto"), but don't even begin to know how to explain how it's made. And when we say "we're hanging a 30-pound ham in our extra bedroom for a year," a lot of people seem wary. You're what? Is that safe? Around the question marks is a lot of fear, and I think the FDA is responsible for much of that fear. 

After doing a ton of reading, we decided to go wild on the charcuterie—it is hard not to when you've read Michael Ruhlman's amazing book Charcuterie and have a pig and a half at your disposal. Our goal was to make about 20 pounds of dry-cured bacon, a dry-cured coppa, about 40 pounds of dry-cured sausage, and a dry-cured ham. So, a lot of meat hung in the balance and we went off the deep end to make sure we were going to succeed. 

That night, Tim and I spent a while getting maple and savory freezer bacon, cured bacon (air-dried), and the ham going. Each of these processes begins with a refrigerator cure time during which the meat is submerged in a whole lot of salt (kosher salt, as well as pink salt in the case of the bacons) and spices. The cuts sit in the salt in tubs or ziplock bags for a week to ten days, depending on their size, to allow the salt to permeate the meat and start to draw out water. This is a key step in making the meat an inhospitable place for bacteria. For the dry-cured bacon and ham, you want to pull out a lot of water, so we weighed them down: ten pounds per slab of bacon and fifteen for the ham. 

 

 

And that was it for day two. Bed had not ever felt so good.