2013 I lived in Ypsilanti from March until October. Miguel got piglets that spring and fed them all summer. I moved back to the farm in October and would sometimes go with miguel in the van as he drove the pig milk down the road to Jake’s where his pigs were kept. I remember it was December 26th when he finally shot and butchered those pigs. There was deep snow on the ground. I had started feeding round steaks to the pigs because I felt awful that they were still alive with nothing to forage, no hay, no grain and minimal milk to drink. I distinctly remember an argument with miguel where I was defending my position, trying to get him to understand that I was thrilled to participate in butchering but I was obviously NOT able or willing to initiate the activity. I don't use guns. He bought pigs and fed them all summer while I was living and working 90 miles away from the farm. I remember being so frustrated and confused in that situation, day after Christmas and he’s dragging his feet to butcher the pigs, making vague comments about how I should do it if I think they need to be butchered. This was the beginning of a ride that I have been so confused about. This fall, 2020, I was so anxious about discussing and planning the pig butcher with miguel that I arranged to have a mediator present. What he made clear in that conversation, was that I needed to allow him to get in the right frame of mind to butcher the pig.
Now I know. Now, after 8 years of the same situation, the same arguments, the same confusion, I can see and it feels good to have clarity. I am a good farmer. I am able to look at the whole picture and evaluate pieces of information that inform a reasonable decision. Then I make a decision and follow through with it, taking full responsibility for my actions and the outcome. I learn from the parts that go well and the parts that don’t, and I keep it all in mind when I’m evaluating the situation the next time it arises.
This post is a follow-up to the 11/19/2019 post "Pig".
So 2013 I remember clearly and 2014 there weren't pigs to butcher because they died during the summer. I don't remember details of '15 through '17 but I remember 2018 was the year he, by his own description, didn’t sight down the barrel and then proceeded to cut the foot off the pig while it was still alive, causing it to scream.
2019 - Pig - already written about
2020 - A week before Thanksgiving, I made a casual comment to miguel that made it clear I thought the pig could / should be butchered before Thanksgiving. He heard me and said something, so I clarified and confirmed my thoughts. He did not comment. In order for things to be ready, I cleaned the side porch where the pig hangs after butcher. I trained the pig to calmly enter, and then be locked in, the kill pen for his milk every day while the other two pigs followed me to the other side of their pasture for their milk. I was ready and I felt strongly that the pig was ready and I didn’t have words for it yet. The clarity came later.
Four days before Thanksgiving I was feeling strong anxiety about continuing to feed the pig when I didn’t know how long it would be before it was butchered. I knew that the pig should be harvested at its peak but I didn’t have that language for it. I also knew from my past experiences here with miguel that him deciding to butcher the pig would be an uncomfortable, confusing struggle and it would happen later than I was comfortable with. On that particular morning we were out in the pasture locating the cows and bringing them up to the milk house. Miguel was furthest to the East and he headed back West to where I stood with two of the three cows we are milking. He started moving the two cows towards the milk house and commented that he didn’t know where Judles was and that we’d have enough milk without her. It was obvious to me that she was to the East, he just had chosen not to continue walking far enough to see her. This confirmed my suspicion that he was avoiding thinking about, or considering the fact that there was a pig to be butchered. If he was literally leaving a cow out of the milking and saying that we had enough milk with out her, then he and I were thinking completely different things about the pig. I knew it had reached its peak and was ready to be harvested. By leaving Judles out in the pasture, he was actively cutting the amount of milk available for the animal. Normally I would have just written him off as the guy who didn’t feel like walking that far, turned around, and gone East myself to get her. But this was the perfect moment demonstrating what I knew to be true. He had put the pig out of his mind and was not thinking about the fact that it needed to be butchered. The pig was not an issue for him. The pig was real for me. I was feeding it every day, knowing that it was ready to be butchered, knowing exactly how much milk he was getting compared to what he used to get, and understanding the whole picture which includes the lower temperatures at night and the condition of the pasture this late in the season. I knew from his current behavior in the pasture along with his behavior in the past, that miguel had pushed the pig out of his mind and was refusing to consider his role in the whole reason for that pig being on our farm.
So I walked along with him and the two cows and felt it was the right moment to express my anxiety about feeding the pigs. I knew that if I continued to feed the pigs, it would allow miguel to continue not thinking about the pig. I knew that the pig was ready to harvest so I did not want to continue feeding it. If miguel thought that the pig was not ready to harvest, then he was welcome to feed the animal. I don’t want to participate in something I don’t agree with. So I told him as we walked through the pasture with two cows, I am having anxiety about feeding the pigs so I want you to start doing it. He said what’s so hard about feeding the pigs, and I said its not hard, I am having anxiety about feeding them. He never asked me why or what it was about and I didn’t offer that information because I knew he didn’t care, as he displayed by not inquiring. Let the defensive pattern surrounding pig butchering begin, every year we go through this dance.
Later in the house I asked him to please answer the question I brought up earlier. He refused to feed the pigs. He told me to get a WWOOFer to do it. I knew that I wanted him to be conscious of the pig and how much it was getting to eat so he would have to consider his own behavior of putting off the butcher. Getting a WWOOFer to feed the pig didn’t address the issue at all. Here we go again.
At some point he mentioned that in years past we butcher when the ground was frozen and did I want the pig to be flopping around in a bunch of mud when it was shot. No. And:
The purpose of the pig on this farm is, during the warm months, to store extra milk from cheese and butter making. A pig on this farm can forage and drink milk and grow fat, meaning, it is making food for us with its physical body.
The purpose of the pig has been fulfilled when it stops making food for us, when it stops growing fat. This happens when there is not excess milk and the temperatures turn cold. The pig stops making food for us and begins using its body simply to stay warm.
When the pig’s purpose has been fulfilled or completed, it should be harvested. It should be harvested at its peak, or at the beginning of the time when it starts using its physical reserves just to stay warm.
So miguel was writing off the decision to butcher the pig simply because the ground was not frozen. I had looked at the 10 day forecast and saw nothing indicating that the ground would be freezing. Its been such a mild fall, who knows when the ground is going to freeze? That is a ridiculous parameter to lead the decision about when to butcher an animal. Totally consistent with what I’ve seen from him in the past. Its taken me this long, how many years, to finally gain clarity and language about when the pig should be butchered. I know for sure back in 2013 that the ground had long been frozen well before that snowy December day when miguel finally got up the gumption to shoot the pigs he had purchased and fed all summer.
I am so glad I finally learned that it doesn’t have to be some weird, twisted head game. There is a time when the pig is ripe, like a grape on the vine. Just pick it.
A friend of ours needed to learn and miguel made a plan with her to butcher, when I would be away at church. He told me clearly, twice, that he didn't want me around for the butcher. I decided to stay home from church because its important to me to be present when food for my family is being harvested. I am a farmer, this is my home, that is food that I helped raise and my child will eat for the next year. I will be present when it is harvested. I have integrity. I will not be intimidated away from my own home and my own food.
Yesterday I put a thick layer of leaves inside the kill pen. I brought the milk and calmly, easily, skillfully led the pig into the kill pen. miguel shot the pig. It fell. It kicked and its hide did not get muddy because the unfrozen ground was covered with leaves. miguel got the chain on the foot and I had already gotten up on the tractor when he told me to raise it up. I was present and able to anticipate what needed to happen. I am good at butchering and my contribution makes things smooth. The pig died well. Its over for this year.
Ultimately I do appreciate all of these experiences. They are painful to go through but I do know and Love that it is how I learn, its how I practice presence and listening. I want to learn all this stuff and I am grateful that the intense learning is over for a moment and I can breathe easier for a bit.
I am letting go of all the confusion. I am letting go of feeling bad because someone else is trying to put their junk on me. I am an intelligent, thoughtful person and I have gained clarity about raising pigs and no one can take that away from me. He can blame me for not allowing him to be in the right frame of mind and I can finally see through that and know that I am ok, that he has issues, as we all do, and I am not going to accept any negativity from him. He can offer it and I will just be still in my own peace. I know when to harvest a pig and that feels good. I am sorry if you haven't let yourself learn when to harvest a pig, but that doesn't change the wisdom I have gained in my own life.
I love being a farmer. I love learning and adjusting things year by year. I am good at it. This is my bliss and I am thriving here. I appreciate him trying to drag me in to his confusion, it makes my own clarity so much the sweeter.
Had we practiced leading the pig into the small pen together, it would have gone differently. I was doing it by myself for the week leading up to yesterday and I always put a bit of milk in the big pig's pan to keep him quiet. Because you chose not to participate in the practicing, you didn't know, and were unable to anticipate, the big pig trying to follow me with the bucket of milk to the other pigs' pan.
