The Secret Ingredient

A love story for the generations

June first of 2023 we officially became pet owners. Or perhaps animal owners is more accurate. But then what defines a pet? An animal companion who is fluffy, fuzzy or otherwise adorable, who brings joy to its owner, who needs to be fed in order to grow big and strong? My son tells me a key component of the definition of a pet is an animal you aren’t going to kill. So that would mean on June first we became animal owners because these fluffy, joy bringing, food eating balls of fuzz were bought for the express purpose of killing. For food.

In the early afternoon Morgan arrived home with one hundred twittering, cheeping, tweeting chicks that we intended to raise to feed our family. Our kids were instantly attached. It was love at first cheep. The chicks moved into the brand new chicken coup Morgan had built, all shiny red and looking like the quintessential barn. Our new life of daily animals chores had begun. The kids fought over who would do the chores. They had spent a year dabbling in chores that weren’t their own here at the farm and they were yearning for their own animals to love and feed. It was a magical moment in parenting to see them so heartily invested in these little critters.

Our children took such care on arrival day, moving each individual chick into the brooder where they would stay warm under heat lamps. As they were transferred, each chick’s little beak was dipped into water to teach them where to drink and they were lovingly placed at their food. The tiny creatures are truly helpless when they are so small yet they grow to independence remarkably quickly. Within three weeks they were nearly fully feathered teenagers and moved outside into the chicken tractors.

The chicken tractors are designed to be moved. Everyday the water and feed trays were pulled out and the tractors were dragged by a rope, rolling on their wheels to a new location. The chickens required a bit of learning to figure out that squawking at the back would mean getting rolled over. For the first while one of the kids would have to shoo them forward so we didn’t end up with crushed chicken nuggets. The new tractor location daily offered the chickens fresh forage and grubs to satisfy their pecking delight and complimented the feed they received. When the chicks were still small we had to lay pieces of wood along the outsides to cover any holes exposed due to the uneven ground. It would take a bit of time some days to discover if we had missed any escape routes but the chicks never went far if they found their way out, likely not having realized that their search for that one fat grub would lead to such isolating independence on the other side. Yup, if you have ever been name-called a chicken, you may wonder if you’ve demonstrated a certain lack of gumption.

Shortly after we brought home our chicks, we officially adopted four piglets. Called weaners, as they have weaned from their mothers and are reliant on feed, these four were of the group I had castrated in the early spring. Is that a story for a different day? Piglet castration is on my resume now too. It’s quite straightforward with a steady hand and sharp scalpel: slice, squeeze, hold and twist and rip. Those details will suffice. We bought two barrows (castrated male pigs) and two gilts (female pigs who haven’t yet carried a litter) from Ryan and Alanna to try our hand at raising ‘em up ourselves.

Now I could be glib or quippy about the feeding of these animals with the end game of filling our freezer but that wouldn’t do justice to the story because the truth is that June was the beginning of a love story between a boy and his pet, two boys rather and their animals whom they loved dearly. Every good and true love story is rife with grief and heartache and this love story is no different.

All you need to do is look at those ears and you understand where this particular love story begins: in a forest pasture, wild roses, leafy aspens and green grasses, with four gentle pigs and one young boy. One of our sons was in charge of pig chores and the other chicken chores, so each grew particularly attached to the animals under his care.

In our tiny house, the morning wake up routine for the kids begins with me turning on our morning playlist. The kids are stirred to life by the smell of baking as the sound of gentle song nudges them from their dreams. So poetic, eh? Some mornings it’s poetry, others it’s “FIVE SONGS IN AND YOU’RE STILL NOT UP!” shocking them out of sleep. Truthfully though, the spring and summer months when the sun is squeezing over the horizon by 5 am, it’s mostly poetry. Sitting here in January when it’s -44 outside at 6am, that playlist could go for an hour or two and I wouldn’t see hide nor hair of them, they wouldn’t care how many ‘You are my Sunshine’s floated their way. *Ahem* Summer poetry…

The skies would be honeyed and pink as the kids pulled on their overalls and chore boots. Eyes not quite open yet beckoned by the faint chirping and grunting from the pasture they would roll out the door. Obedience has gone out of style these days but evidence of its virtue was apparent on days when the rain fell or the wind blew or the night previous had been late. Each day they went out, obedient to the love they had for these creatures who depended on them.

How does a boy love a pig or a chicken? Their hearts are tender and their imaginations magnificent! The chickens were soldiers, knights, maidens, queens, loyal chicken wives, or rowdy towns people. Princess Pegasus, above, sits on a soft sweater nest atop the table, royally roosting while two boys serve her. The pigs, once they were big enough, were most often horses. And all of the above, chicken and swine, were cuddle buddies. Did you ever think to cuddle a pig? Me neither, but they are remarkably friendly and gentle. The breed we raised were a Kune Kune/Berkshire cross and they are full of personality and as individual as any family dog. It was not unusual to find our son chatting with his pig friends, while laying next to them on the fresh straw he’d forked out.

Meet Laura. Slightly skittish and guarded when she was young. Laura came to trust the boy who fed her and would eventually take pets and sit for short chats. Each of our pigs was unique though I am certainly not the one to give account of their perks and quirks as it was only on occasion when I interacted with them. Truth be told I’m more skittish around animals than Laura ever was around humans. The weeks the kids were off at summer camp I made sure to be up and have feed trays filled before the animals were even awake just in case anyone thought to try a cuddle.

The spring blossomed into summer and we fully embraced the slow pace of the homesteading life. It’s hard, really, to describe the pace of homesteading. The list of tasks that are necessary to accomplish in a single day is actually impossible to complete in the hours the sun provides and yet we are not busy. Life is slow. I was unaware prior to moving out here that busy is a state of being, not a to do list.

It was mid August when our first batch of chickens were ready for harvest. This day was a challenge for our youngest son. It was a page in his love story that he really didn’t want to write. He cried so many gut wrenching tears as he handed off his birds to his dad, bidding each farewell by name and begging “Please dad, is your knife sharp? Make it quick.” He has learned that a swift death is the most kind.

Hung upside down chickens are quite calm so this set up where their head and neck hang down through the cone makes for a peaceful bird. The buckets will catch the blood which can then be fed to other animals or used to fertilize the garden. A bit of water in each bucket prevents the blood from coagulating.

The chickens, once dead, go into the scalding pot to loosen their feathers and then into the plucking machine to remove them. Another style of chicken tractor can be seen in the background.

The chickens are gutted, cooled, dried and bagged. A quick dip in hot water and the bag vacuums onto the chicken and there you have it, looks just like the chicken you’re used to roasting!

This story doesn’t end here but each of these stories we are weaving ends in the same place, at our family dinner table, so lets head back to the farm yard before we come to the place where a meal is shared.

The summer soon flowed, warm, golden and green, into the ambers and crimsons of fall. The leaves reminding us that the hibernation of the season was approaching, that death comes in cycles and we must fall into step with the rich earth that sustains us. Harvest time means taking life to sustain life. It means ripping plants from their roots, taking animal lives and turning all of these into our own life blood. Imagine us, having been created so that the only way to sustain ourselves is to take. What are we to offer in return? We can’t ever really match what we’ve been gifted. The love that created us is great indeed! So tearing a plant from its roots, slitting the neck of a chicken, firing the shot to kill a pig, all must be done in prayer. I believe it’s best we can offer for what we receive.

In this place of deep gratitude there is also grief. For our boys, the grief was intense this season. They truly loved these animals. When it was time to harvest the pigs our older son had his turn of anguished tears.

Eleanor is dipped in the scalding pot. Gently moving her around prevents any part of her from sitting against the steel and possibly burning.

We harvested each pig on a different weekend, one in October and the remaining in November. Once dead, each pig is hung so it can be dipped in the scalding pot which loosens the hair follicles, then the pig is raised out of the pot and scraped to remove the hair. The scalding and scraping is an art. Water temperature is a critical component but the success of the scraping also depends on the outside temperature, the length of time in the water and how fast you scrape. We had four pigs to learn on this year and we were much more successful by the last one.

This October morning it was t-shirt weather for butchering, by November it was much chillier and snowy when Morgan rolled out of bed at 6am to get started.

We always shoot, scald, scrape and eviscerate in the late afternoon and hang the pig overnight to chill. The following day Morgan is up early to start butchering. I wrap cuts as they come in, labelling each package with the name of the animal whose gift it holds. This piece is really important to our children, the naming. Kill day is emotionally taxing whereas butchering and sausage day feels like a celebration. There’s a palpable gratitude that manifests in sparkling eyes and laughter. This day is the substantiation of many months’ effort, the nourishment for our family. Sausage making especially seems to bring full circle the love of each animal. We spice, mix, and fry up test patties before stuffing and spinning the sausage. The secret ingredient here being love, woven incredibly deep into the fibers of our food.

Our capacity for gratitude has increased through the processes of raising, killing, butchering and preparing the animals who nourish our family. The day I roasted our son’s favourite chicken our meal was like a celebration of life. The blessing of our meal was followed by a tearful remembrance of the life of Broadchester and we ate with a joy and gratitude that can only come when grief is held in the same space.

We have this little sign in our kitchen that says “The secret ingredient is always love.” As a child, I knew this. The tradition of real, homemade food prepared with love was familiar and invariable. So many of my memories are built around food. For my own lineage, this deep weaving of love is not yet lost. It’s perhaps a bit clouded by decades of modern convenience but I can still pick up the phone and listen to my Oma tell stories of the animal harvests: the scalding and scraping, the butchering, the smoking, the roasting, the carving, the gathering, the praying, the feasting. Just like that. Just like we are doing now with our children. The complete circle: life, love, death, grief, gratitude. Love.