Invitation to a Slaughter
My Medieval Farming Life, Part 2.
This series My Medieval Farming Life comes from real, personal experience. It is about farming as a job, but without electricity, gas, machinery, fertilizers, indoor plumbing, or other important inventions that Industrial Revolutions brought.
See part 1 here for manure picking, part 3 for a year of no importance, and Intermission for variety of life. See full series here. Happy Black Friday and belated Thanksgiving to y’all who celebrate.
I was advised to place a trigger warning for livestock / animal death.
I had a peculiar hen: she would not scatter or startle like other chicken when I cleaned their houses. She’d stride around me, chirping and clucking. After I finished cleaning, she’d be the first to fly into her renewed habitat. Her freckled feathers and crown-shaped tail stood out to me, and I decided to name her “Chicken Stew”. I even fed her more.
“You named a hen? Really?” Lucy laughed. We were picking manures together in late Spring.
“You name your pigs. What’s wrong with naming my hen?”
“I stopped doing that.”
“Really? Why?”
“You ever saw –” I never got the answer, because Mey and Nib came running, announcing that the manure collection wagon had come. We better hurry to tell the collector where the wet goods were.
That afternoon when I cleaned chicken coops, Chicken Stew wandered off. The next morning when I collected eggs, her place was empty: for the past year and half, she laid an egg every day. But when I put out bird food, she still came flying and helped herself to mighty meals. I kept feeding her extra, and she gave me eggs two or three times a week.
One day early Summer, Mey and Luke dragged me away from fixing chicken coops. They wanted me to join the wedding feast of Mey’s brother.
We arrived at a yard squared by three brick parapets, and one dim bungalow roofed with terra tiles and straw layers. But there was no wedding couple, only a wooden bench. Some adults were stacking wicker stools in a corner. In the middle of the yard lay a pig: a well-grown white sow with wrinkles and contours on her body. I helped Mey haul an empty bucket out of the bungalow, and set it at one end of the bench.
The pig must have seen the bucket. She stood up and trampled on the dirt, then ran past me. Five adults dashed after her. She charged towards the gap between parapets, but the butcher was there already. As if releasing a paper kite, he threw a long iron hook at the sow, before she could stomp past the gap.
The pig wailed. Twisting, twirling, but her throat pierced by an iron hook, she could no longer run. Her blood dripped a trail, as the butcher dragged her to the bench.
The same adults who had hopelessly chased the sow seconds ago, swarmed onto her. They held her down on the bench at her shoulder, back, and rump, exposing her soft belly and pulsing teats. Blood dipped into the bucket under her head.
She screamed and struggled. But the adults kept her down, while chanting an ill-coordinated melody.
A metallic rhythm rose above the screams and chants. Luke was sharpening a heavy knife. I remembered he was the butcher's apprentice.
“Are you scared?” He asked, after he presented the knife to his master.
“Not yet,” I said.
The butcher took the knife and kneeled next to the pig. Patting on her head, he murmured something into her ears. Then the knife, glistening like white silver, drove in at her throat, accompanied by a sharp cry that erupted like smoke from a volcano. The blade came out red with blood gushing into the bucket. The cry wavered, tottered, crumbled; then a hush fell.
We bowed our heads. When I looked up, the adults brought in buckets of boiling water to soften and remove hog hair. Mey gave everyone a big slab of wax.
“Save the wax for night illumination!” An adult shouted in a teasing tone.
“It’s my brother’s wedding! We don’t skimp on weddings!” Mey shouted back.
“I mean: save it for his wedding chamber lighting!” Everyone laughed.
As the butcher cut apart the hairless hog, I noticed his eyes were almost closed, but the cleaver never bumped against a bone. I asked the butcher how he did it.
“I don’t cut through bones,” he said, “But into spaces between bones.” Then he cast me a sympathetic look, while throwing some leg meat to a kitchen helper: “Luke said you got education. But you need to learn how to grab a chicken.”
Years later, I’d realize the butcher quoted Zhuangzi on cutting between spaces.
Back then, I thought he insulted me: I was too weak to grab chicken with my hands.
Through Summer and Fall, I perfected the art of bare-hand chicken-catching. If a rooster terrorized hens, I restrained him and threw him into a cage. Chicken Stew watched on and chuckled occasionally. My extra feed made her chubby, but she hasn’t laid an egg for days. Then days became weeks, weeks became months.
Before Fall ended, I invited Nib to compete with me on rooster-catching. Luke and Mey watched us and laughed. Then I heard that rare and honored guests arrived under our roof: a relative and his pregnant wife were visiting from afar.
Local customs required that we treat honored guests to meat, even if we were short of it ourselves.
It was also said that an old hen’s meat was the most nutritious for pregnant women.
It was known that Chicken Stew was the oldest hen; that she hasn’t laid an egg for months; that we must preserve bird food too.
I opened the chicken coop and took out Chicken Stew. I held her between my hands under her wings; her veins pulsed against my fingers.
Her soft and warm body would turn to a pale and cold mass. Her freckled feathers would be plucked from her torso, and blood drained from her veins. Later, I’d cut her and pull out her ribs, guts, and gizzards. Then, in a couple of hours, in salt, ginger, moist, and heat, her body would be tender and warm again. She would become flavorful, then chewed, savored, and digested by adults and children. All of us, we’ve been hungry for some meat for some days.
Chicken Stew rolled her eyes, before fixing her pupils on me – or perhaps I was imagining it. Unlike a scared rooster, she wasn’t trying to run or hide.
“Thank you, Chicken Stew. Thank you. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” I muttered, and clasped her closer in my grip. She giggled and turned her neck to look around. Our honored guests were waiting. The setting sun, from among the distant trees, gleamed in my eyes. Nib grabbed her wings and held her neck. Mey moved a bucket between me and the hen. Luke put a cleaver by my side. They were starving, too.
I reached for the cleaver.
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My deepest gratitude for the patience of Pedro and Roselyne. Thank you for hearing me talk about this experience, and proof-reading the written version.
What a viscerally powerful story! Thank you for sharing the truth about the price of eating animals, Helen.