I'll paste this in from a post a few months back on the same subject. . .
I'll just share a story my uncle tells about my grandfather (born Christmas day, 1904), a man as true and dedicated a husbandman as an animal could ever know.
The first tractor did not arrive on the farm until the early forties. Up until then, as you'd suspect, horses did the pulling, and Grandpa spent his youth and some years after on the reins behind them. In those years and up into the early sixties, theirs was a dairy operation.
He farmed on shares with his father and, when the tractors arrived in the mid-thirties, he argued for the horses to stay on the farm. Not a decision my great-grandfather was eager to buy into. Grandpa learned to weld only so he could build his own sulky, and would work the horses at the jobs they could do pulling the new implements designed to be hauled behind tractors. If nothing else, they could rake hay and pull the turd hearse.
It was some number of years, and three of the horses had reached the ends of their lives.
The fourth, and last, was Polly, and the story my uncle tells is about the day she had to be put down. Grandpa, of course, knew the day would come but he didn't put it off for his sake. He did what was right for Polly. My uncle tells of having someone come out with a backhoe to dig a grave for her out in the 20-acre piece where the wheat had already been taken off. Come the day, they put her down humanely on their own, with Grandpa insisting on firing the shot. When it came time to move her into the hole, my uncle has said that Grandpa's words, "Be careful, don't hurt her," still ring in his ears. I recall hearing that story several times before I was old enough to appreciate what it said.
I tell that story by way of getting on to your question. I didn't grow up "on" that farm as my mom had. I spent all my summers there up through high school and a few after. But, when I got old (read "big") enough, I began to go up for a week each late winter to help Grandpa with the butchering. Typically, that would involve one steer and a couple of hogs. Different scenario from Polly's end, obviously, but it was during those visits that I came to see what my uncle had been trying to convey with his story.
These were animals that Grandpa had gotten up every morning to feed before his own breakfast, saw that they were fed in the evening before he came in for his own supper, and checked on every night before he went to bed.
The steers were generally docile and less dramatic but it was was rare for the hogs to go where they were told for the "event." It was not unusual for it to take the old canvas-flap paddle and much "sooey"ing to get them where they needed to be, but nothing they hadn't experienced before. Still, I saw in Grandpa on those occasions what my uncle was talking about.
It was some years after I started helping him every spring that Grandpa decided to hand me the gun. We hadn't talked about it beforehand. He just handed it to me, told me where to aim, and imparting in his own way the importance that I make one shot of it. He actually said very little, but knowing him to the extent that a kid can really "know" his grandfather, it was all understood.
The care he and my grandmother took of then butchering and putting up each of those animals speaks to a way of life not a lot of folks anymore are exposed to. It was not selfish, as in making sure the freezer was the fullest it could be. It was a matter of respect -- putting an animal you had tended to the fullest use for which it was raised.
I did come to see the ritual in it that you speak of. Some of it somber, some bordering on the comic. (The latter as in Grandma coming down over the back stoop with a paring knife and two bowls. She'd be keeping her distance and watching from the house as the hog was dropped, scalded and scraped but, as soon as we'd dropped the paunch of a hog into the #2 tub waiting to catch it, she'd sail down over that stoop, apron strings fling behind her, and be right there. She would dive in up to her elbows, working blind, and have the sweetbreads out and in the small bowl before she'd go back in and come up with the whole liver and the heart.) As the quartered creature hung in the winter air, we would move on to trying out the lard. It made for a full day. Typically with the reward of one of the tenderloins for supper.
Butchering is not a pretty thing, and the killing is obviously the hardest part. But my take on it is that the pride that you can rightfully claim in raising a healthy animal to that point will translate into appreciating them having served their purpose. That anyone should take pause about the enterprise . . . the need to pause speaks well of their character.
I'll just share a story my uncle tells about my grandfather (born Christmas day, 1904), a man as true and dedicated a husbandman as an animal could ever know.
The first tractor did not arrive on the farm until the early forties. Up until then, as you'd suspect, horses did the pulling, and Grandpa spent his youth and some years after on the reins behind them. In those years and up into the early sixties, theirs was a dairy operation.
He farmed on shares with his father and, when the tractors arrived in the mid-thirties, he argued for the horses to stay on the farm. Not a decision my great-grandfather was eager to buy into. Grandpa learned to weld only so he could build his own sulky, and would work the horses at the jobs they could do pulling the new implements designed to be hauled behind tractors. If nothing else, they could rake hay and pull the turd hearse.
It was some number of years, and three of the horses had reached the ends of their lives.
The fourth, and last, was Polly, and the story my uncle tells is about the day she had to be put down. Grandpa, of course, knew the day would come but he didn't put it off for his sake. He did what was right for Polly. My uncle tells of having someone come out with a backhoe to dig a grave for her out in the 20-acre piece where the wheat had already been taken off. Come the day, they put her down humanely on their own, with Grandpa insisting on firing the shot. When it came time to move her into the hole, my uncle has said that Grandpa's words, "Be careful, don't hurt her," still ring in his ears. I recall hearing that story several times before I was old enough to appreciate what it said.
I tell that story by way of getting on to your question. I didn't grow up "on" that farm as my mom had. I spent all my summers there up through high school and a few after. But, when I got old (read "big") enough, I began to go up for a week each late winter to help Grandpa with the butchering. Typically, that would involve one steer and a couple of hogs. Different scenario from Polly's end, obviously, but it was during those visits that I came to see what my uncle had been trying to convey with his story.
These were animals that Grandpa had gotten up every morning to feed before his own breakfast, saw that they were fed in the evening before he came in for his own supper, and checked on every night before he went to bed.
The steers were generally docile and less dramatic but it was was rare for the hogs to go where they were told for the "event." It was not unusual for it to take the old canvas-flap paddle and much "sooey"ing to get them where they needed to be, but nothing they hadn't experienced before. Still, I saw in Grandpa on those occasions what my uncle was talking about.
It was some years after I started helping him every spring that Grandpa decided to hand me the gun. We hadn't talked about it beforehand. He just handed it to me, told me where to aim, and imparting in his own way the importance that I make one shot of it. He actually said very little, but knowing him to the extent that a kid can really "know" his grandfather, it was all understood.
The care he and my grandmother took of then butchering and putting up each of those animals speaks to a way of life not a lot of folks anymore are exposed to. It was not selfish, as in making sure the freezer was the fullest it could be. It was a matter of respect -- putting an animal you had tended to the fullest use for which it was raised.
I did come to see the ritual in it that you speak of. Some of it somber, some bordering on the comic. (The latter as in Grandma coming down over the back stoop with a paring knife and two bowls. She'd be keeping her distance and watching from the house as the hog was dropped, scalded and scraped but, as soon as we'd dropped the paunch of a hog into the #2 tub waiting to catch it, she'd sail down over that stoop, apron strings fling behind her, and be right there. She would dive in up to her elbows, working blind, and have the sweetbreads out and in the small bowl before she'd go back in and come up with the whole liver and the heart.) As the quartered creature hung in the winter air, we would move on to trying out the lard. It made for a full day. Typically with the reward of one of the tenderloins for supper.
Butchering is not a pretty thing, and the killing is obviously the hardest part. But my take on it is that the pride that you can rightfully claim in raising a healthy animal to that point will translate into appreciating them having served their purpose. That anyone should take pause about the enterprise . . . the need to pause speaks well of their character.
