Emily Garrity only had to shoot one pig before she figured out that the best way to kill them was publicly, in front of all the other pigs at the trough. I thought it sounded barbaric on the face of it but, she told me later, it’s actually not so bad.
In the beginning, when she was teaching herself to slaughter and butcher, she sequestered the animal before delivering a bullet to its brain. She thought it would be more respectful to let it face its end privately. Plus, there were the feelings of the other pigs to consider. What would it do to them to see one of their own go out by gunshot?
It turned out that being alone with the doomed animal just made both Emily and the pig nervous, like an awkward first date with a homicidal conclusion. And, they say, adrenaline isn't good for the meat.
Emily, who is my wife's cousin, lives in Homer, Alaska. I'm from Anchorage. I've been coming to Homer every summer since I was a kid, but I've never lost a visitor's appreciation for it. To get a sense of the natural setting, picture every postcard you've seen from Alaska. Eagles swooping over a sparkling ocean. Glaciers cascading down snow-capped mountains. Otters cracking oyster shells. In Homer, you see all that on a five-minute walk. Sometimes I get so scenically saturated I think my eyes can't absorb one more wild, gorgeous detail. And then the sun goes down, a full moon rises over the water, and the air turns herbal with spruce sap and pushki weed.
People don't end up in Homer the way they might end up in Cleveland or Minneapolis or even Anchorage. There isn't one big economic draw. My mother, who has lived most of her life in Anchorage, says Homer is a place people go to manifest dreams. It sounds New Agey, but she's right. There was a time when all of Alaska was like that; I'm sure my grandparents felt that call when they drove their Buick up here from Illinois fifty years ago. Some of the state's frontier glow may have faded since then, but in Homer, it's been preserved. I can't think of a Homer person I know who is not right at this moment industriously manifesting. Pottery. Books. Peony farms. And so many dreams in the community seem to revolve around food: In this town of 5,000 there's a brewery, three from-scratch bakeries, two coffee roasting companies, a robust fishing industry, oyster farms, a lush farmers market, and a dozen restaurants, many of their menus seasonal and local. (...)
As a town, Homer had a great affinity for the culture and cuisine of Louisiana, and last month my family and I were heading down from Anchorage for Emily's boucherie—a big, weekend-long pig-butchering party very loosely modeled after community-wide parties held in the Southern state, at which people dispatch a pig together and cook up the whole thing. As my wife and I hustled our two boys out of the car, a fog had settled over the vegetable field, and I could feel winter in the September air. We were late to the slaughter: by the time we arrived, the 330-pound hog called Juvenile Delinquent, Joovy for short, was already deceased, subject to Emily's revised pig-killing protocol.
Pig meets pistol according to size, Emily explained, and size is influenced by personality. Alpha pigs, the pushier ones, get fatter quicker. Joovy was the second-pushiest in the pen, after Big Bertha, who Emily had already slaughtered and sold earlier that year. Two more hogs, Lil Red and Lucy Patch, were still happily snorting around in the mud past the field.
Of all Emily's pigs, Joovy was the only male, and she liked him best. He got his name because he was curious, always biting her tools and knocking over the water bucket. He had a thing for head rubs. "I liked his spunk," she said. "I would have kept him forever if I thought I could handle a year-round 700-pound hog."
She told me that before she shot him in the pen, she'd given a little speech about him to the assembled people who came to help. She'd carried a pistol out to the middle of the pig yard as a friend filled the trough with sprouted grain and a little molasses. All the pigs came running and buried their faces in the mush. She moved in.
"I set my intentions really sturdy first," she told me later of her process. "I say a little prayer, and then I shoot it in the head and thank it for what it is doing."
The emotional constitutions of the other pigs remain intact, she explained. In fact, they don't even flinch. "They just go right back to the food trough," said Emily. "And they're like, ‘Sweet, we get more food now.'"
In the beginning, when she was teaching herself to slaughter and butcher, she sequestered the animal before delivering a bullet to its brain. She thought it would be more respectful to let it face its end privately. Plus, there were the feelings of the other pigs to consider. What would it do to them to see one of their own go out by gunshot?It turned out that being alone with the doomed animal just made both Emily and the pig nervous, like an awkward first date with a homicidal conclusion. And, they say, adrenaline isn't good for the meat.
Emily, who is my wife's cousin, lives in Homer, Alaska. I'm from Anchorage. I've been coming to Homer every summer since I was a kid, but I've never lost a visitor's appreciation for it. To get a sense of the natural setting, picture every postcard you've seen from Alaska. Eagles swooping over a sparkling ocean. Glaciers cascading down snow-capped mountains. Otters cracking oyster shells. In Homer, you see all that on a five-minute walk. Sometimes I get so scenically saturated I think my eyes can't absorb one more wild, gorgeous detail. And then the sun goes down, a full moon rises over the water, and the air turns herbal with spruce sap and pushki weed.
People don't end up in Homer the way they might end up in Cleveland or Minneapolis or even Anchorage. There isn't one big economic draw. My mother, who has lived most of her life in Anchorage, says Homer is a place people go to manifest dreams. It sounds New Agey, but she's right. There was a time when all of Alaska was like that; I'm sure my grandparents felt that call when they drove their Buick up here from Illinois fifty years ago. Some of the state's frontier glow may have faded since then, but in Homer, it's been preserved. I can't think of a Homer person I know who is not right at this moment industriously manifesting. Pottery. Books. Peony farms. And so many dreams in the community seem to revolve around food: In this town of 5,000 there's a brewery, three from-scratch bakeries, two coffee roasting companies, a robust fishing industry, oyster farms, a lush farmers market, and a dozen restaurants, many of their menus seasonal and local. (...)
As a town, Homer had a great affinity for the culture and cuisine of Louisiana, and last month my family and I were heading down from Anchorage for Emily's boucherie—a big, weekend-long pig-butchering party very loosely modeled after community-wide parties held in the Southern state, at which people dispatch a pig together and cook up the whole thing. As my wife and I hustled our two boys out of the car, a fog had settled over the vegetable field, and I could feel winter in the September air. We were late to the slaughter: by the time we arrived, the 330-pound hog called Juvenile Delinquent, Joovy for short, was already deceased, subject to Emily's revised pig-killing protocol.Pig meets pistol according to size, Emily explained, and size is influenced by personality. Alpha pigs, the pushier ones, get fatter quicker. Joovy was the second-pushiest in the pen, after Big Bertha, who Emily had already slaughtered and sold earlier that year. Two more hogs, Lil Red and Lucy Patch, were still happily snorting around in the mud past the field.
Of all Emily's pigs, Joovy was the only male, and she liked him best. He got his name because he was curious, always biting her tools and knocking over the water bucket. He had a thing for head rubs. "I liked his spunk," she said. "I would have kept him forever if I thought I could handle a year-round 700-pound hog."
She told me that before she shot him in the pen, she'd given a little speech about him to the assembled people who came to help. She'd carried a pistol out to the middle of the pig yard as a friend filled the trough with sprouted grain and a little molasses. All the pigs came running and buried their faces in the mush. She moved in.
"I set my intentions really sturdy first," she told me later of her process. "I say a little prayer, and then I shoot it in the head and thank it for what it is doing."
The emotional constitutions of the other pigs remain intact, she explained. In fact, they don't even flinch. "They just go right back to the food trough," said Emily. "And they're like, ‘Sweet, we get more food now.'"
by Julia O'Malley, Eater | Read more:
Image: Marc Lester
