A Deeper Reverence

On Raising Our Own Meat

The pigs left last week. Well, they didn’t actually leave on their own, say like when they were nine weeks old and had me chasing them both throughout the woods across acreages of multiple neighbors for a good five days. Rather, they were killed, gutted, and taken away by a young man with a white box truck and a big black dog to a locally owned abattoir, where the meat would get cut and wrapped into the portions and weights we chose.

It was hard.

After all, they were super sweet, and loved getting their spotted pink backs rubbed and their thin ears stroked. It was fun to watch them play with one another and bound over the increasingly turned up hill within their pen. They grunted happily when we fed them their meals and scraps from our kitchen (even though—or because of—the evil eyes our hens gave them when doing so).

Still, they were there to fulfill a purpose, and that purpose was to feed our family with pork that was GMO free, soy free, and mRNA free, having been raised in a clean and…