A few weeks ago I traveled to Tivoli, New York to photograph and participate in a hog butchering workshop presented by The Greenhorns.  The workshop was presided over by Bryan Mayer, a butcher with The Greene Grape in Brooklyn New York.

As the busy day of butchering ended, those who drink bourbon were entitled to their sips.  Sips turned into larger sips and those sips turned into songs and poetry and stories about Henry Hudson and the Catskill Gnomes.  A fire maintained through a little lingering drizzle as people kept nibbling from the tables full of pork.

There was a ragu with trotters, braised belly with apple cider and tenderloins melting in their dishes.  And there were people from the city connecting with the farmers and the farmers connecting with their butcher.  It was an introduction to food sources that will continue beyond the empty bottles and fire warmed feet, beyond the apple orchard and the muddy ruts.

The next morning it was back to work on the pork, cutting up the remaining pieces and getting the fat ready for sausage making.  Fat was also rendered for frying apple fritters and doughnuts, greasy little snacks that went well with the monotony of grinding the sausage.

When the work was done I took the train back to Manhattan, carrying a package of sausage for a friend in Jackson Heights.  We ate some for breakfast the next day.  At that point I was at the pork threshold and could eat no more.

Last week I traveled to Tivoli, New York to photograph and participate in a hog butchering workshop presented by The Greenhorns.  The workshop was presided over by Bryan Mayer, a butcher with The Greene Grape in Brooklyn New York.

Day one for me was actually the day before the workshop.  I arrived at Smithereen Farm via an Amtrak train out of Penn Station then via a car ride with Severine and Anne from the Greenhorns project.  Our first stop was an antique farm store called Hoffman’s Barn Sale, a large, wood-stove heated menagerie of rusty farm implements, old style canning jars and mid-70s classic rock albums.  It was like a flea market except the store was filled with useful shit, not just beat up boxes of doll parts or piles of messed up Dokken tapes.

The mission at the Barn Sale was to pick up some last minute cooking implements.  These implements included – what was described to me at the time – a pot big enough to fit a pig’s head.  Not in itself all that interesting until you start to talk about what that means and why it means what it means.  Yeah, we’ll just boil this pig head for awhile, you have a problem with that?  It reminded me of a page from the Sandor Katz book The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved about processing pig heads -

We found that pot along with a giant stock pot, some Pyrex casserole dishes and a Dutch oven.  Scattered among the purchases were the echoes of Severine shouting from every corner – “Anne, we need this.”  Not having been in this dynamic before, I wasn’t sure if this was just how shopping with Severine was or if indeed we did “need this”.  Severine also reminded us that her mother always told her to buy Pyrex when she could.  So we did.

Back at the farm it was a breakfast of fresh eggs and coffee and toast with plum jam.  It was playing with kittens and listening.  It was coloring salsa labels and organizing stuff.  It was digging a pit and splitting wood for the slow roasting of a pig side.  It was getting the first sniff of a weekend’s worth of wood smoke.  It was meeting new folks and trying to be a talker.  It was a warm wood stove and giggles from grown ups.

It was the start of a pretty immense undertaking, this crash course in butchering and sausage making.  I ended the day tired like I usually end my days, but this tired was an out-of-town tired. I didn’t worry about it much and prepared myself to go to sleep late and wake up early, getting back to work and getting back to tired.

One of the benefits of living in Chatham County is the access it provides to workshops, classes and visits to sustainable farming and other operations.  Debbie Roos, our extension agent for sustainable and organic agriculture, is the force behind many of these opportunities.

Last week I was able to attend a free field day about pastured poultry at Perry-winkle Farm.  After wiping our feet in a bleach bath to eliminate any chicken diseases we may have inadvertently brought with us, we walked to the brooding house where up to 125 chicks are raised for three weeks before going to the pastures.

The chicks are fed a non-medicated feed mixed with molasses, garlic, olive oil, comfrey and cayenne pepper.  After they start laying, the chickens are moved to 17% protein feed to supplement their pasture diet of grasses and bugs.

Perry-winkle averages 250 laying hens in three movable chicken houses.  Each house has a couple of roosters in the mix just to make it interesting.  A dozen or so roosters are needed to get any sort of good fertilization, so a few roosters in a pen may be more of a protection for the flock than anything else.

The first house we visited contained two year old hens that were laying well.  The second year is the best laying year for the hens; after their third laying year they usually end up in stew.

Mike Perry, our host for the field day, said that reusing trailers and campers for chicken houses had mixed results.  He recommended starting with a flat wagon or trailer unless you wanted to add to your work load.  The chicken camper holds 65 birds at a time.

The original idea for the chickens was to get them into the gardens before planting.  The largest chicken house (the Egg McMansion) is situated among the farm beds.  Planting of crops comes behind the chickens.  The Egg McMansion holds over a hundred birds at a time.  As a general rule, one nest box is required for each five laying hens.

The roosters kept busy with their noise during our visit.  One rooster almost fell over every time he crowed just from the extra effort he seemed to be giving for the crowd.

The chickens are kept behind non-electrified poultry netting during the day.  They return to the mobile coop each evening and are closed in to keep them safe from predators.

While at the farm I checked on the pigs that I photographed on my first visit to Perry-winkle.  The pigs were down to three in number, and soon they would all be processed.  They seemed happy and oblivious to their impending change from playful dirt diggers to packaged human food.

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: Hero Fest!

Be Your Own Hero Festival Now Accepting Submissions

The 2nd Annual Be Your Own Hero (BYOH) Festival will be taking place in Wilmington, North Carolina September 27th and 28th, 2008. Submissions for workshops, info sessions, skill shares, and musicians are currently being accepted until August 15th, 2008. Volunteers are also needed to help out on the day(s) of the event and/or to join the BYOH Fest Planning Squad.

Please send workshop submissions to herofest@gmail.com with your name, email, phone, organization/collective (if applicable), proposed workshop title & short description, materials needed, and time needed. All other ideas, volunteer availability, and inquiries may also be sent to herofest@gmail.com. We welcome all subjects and we encourage all people to apply, especially those who do not fit neatly into the status quo!

In 2007, Wilmington NC was home to the first Be Your Own Hero Festival, an all day radical Do It Yourself (DIY) Festival held at the Soapbox Laundro Lounge. The Festival included a Really Really Free Market, potluck, workshops, info sessions and live music. 2007’s workshops included: DIY parenting (a radical concept), Basic Bicycle Repair, Truth in Recruiting / Promoting Peace, Social Activism & the Info-Radical, Radical Menstruation, Food Politics, Trans 101: Becoming an ally to transgender people, Unconventional Action: Organizing against the DNC/RNC, and DIY DJ Workshop. Bands included: The Brothels, The Nothing Noise, Gator Country, Prize Winners Collective, NED, and Ghost Mice.

For more information on the Be Your Own Hero Festival and Collective, visit www.beyrownhero.com or contact herofest @ gmail.com.

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Be Your Own Hero Fest Workshop Submission Form

Email to herofest @ gmail.com by July 31, 2008

NAME:

EMAIL:

PHONE:

ORGANIZATION / COLLECTIVE:

PROPOSED WORKSHOP TITLE:

DESCRIPTION:

MATERIALS NEEDED:

TIME NEEDED: choose from 45 minutes, or 1 hour and 45 minutes