Forty years have gone by since I arrived in Vermont full of vinegar and enthusiasm to live in a “Let The Land Sustain Us” mode.  I was really into it.  Blessed with a good set of muscles, relative youth and boundless vision, I soon hacked out and planted an enormous garden in what had previously been fifty square feet of witch-grassed prairie, the weeding and maintenance of which took all my waking hours of spring and summer, the harvesting, drying, freezing and canning of which took all my waking hours of autumn.  I didn’t care.. I was PROVIDING for my family of seven and I was obsessed and happy to be living here.

We had a five acre field and a good barn.  We bought a horse for the children to ride – a horse which strongly objected to having anything on its back and so spent all of its days, thereafter, eating and luxuriating in the field.  We raised a few sheep and we  raised a few pigs. Eggs we had, in excess, from a dozen hens.  We even, briefly, had rabbits wandering about in the barn whose numbers gradually and mysteriously declined. They were not missed when they were gone

One day, fired up into an accelerated “Feed The Children” mode, and to save money, a woman friend, named Susan ,and I purchased half a steer from the local slaughter house which we intended to portion up, package for ourselves and stash for the winter in two of Levi Cole’s rental lockers.

The gargantuan thing arrived on the back of a pick-up truck early one morning, bloody and already of interest to hovering blue-bottle flies.  And we were ready for it – Suze and I. We hefted it off the truck and dropped it, with a “thunk” onto a plastic shower curtain liner in the middle of my kitchen floor.

I had assembled, lined up like surgical instruments, every saw, hatchet and sharp knife I could lay a hand on.  I had even fashioned two aprons from 10 mil plastic sheeting with holes cut for heads and arms and with duct tape ties at the waists.  Suited up in our butchering outfits we certainly looked a sight – I can tell you that !

So…standing side by side looking down at the daunting thing on the floor, we fingered our knives not quite sure how to begin.  I said “How about if we each start at one end and meet in the middle? Or, better still, how about if I make us a coffee and we  just watch it for a while?”

“No time for that” said Suze, a strong and resourceful woman who would later build herself, practically single handed, a cabin on a wooded hilltop, “Hand me the hatchet…no, not the little kindling chopping thing…let me have the really big one”.   Raising her arms above her head she brought the wood-splitter with the three foot handle down onto the carcass – a mighty blow.  Nothing happened beyond a big bounce off the backbone.  This was obviously MAN’S WORK.  We switched strategy and set to work with the saws.

All that day on our knees we sawed through bone , hacked, sliced, tore apart, separated  and portioned, wrapped and labeled.  A huge quantity of suet rendered noxiously on the stove in an enameled turkey roaster. Quaintly, as if we knew what the hell we were doing, we had open for reference the page from a cookbook diagramming and labeling “Cuts of beef”.  Ribs, of course, we recognized, although ribs of such monumental proportion gave us pause.

Saw, chop, slice, slap and wrap became the order of the day.   A revolting pile of innards and unclassifiable viscera accumulated on one corner of the shower curtain.  “What’s this?”  my friend asked, holding up a long, meaty slab she had cut free.  “Beat’s me”  I answered, “Call it a tenderloin” . The slab was wrapped, so-labeled and tossed onto the pile.    Now, I don’t know much about bovine anatomy but ten tenderloins from half a cow?  I don’t think so.

“Where’s the rump?” Suze muttered, rummaging around amongst the packages strewn  all over the floor, “I was looking forward to a sauerbraten..This animal doesn’t seem to have a rump. Is that possible?”

“It probably walked it off “ I suggested..thoroughly fed up, by that time, with the whole beastly business.  “Or perhaps we called it a tenderloin ..Lord, will this never end?”  Gobbets of gristle, little lumps of fat,  bone chips and blood , splattered the kitchen floor, our forearms and our plastic aprons.

Eight hours of strenuous labor it took us to finish the job and we staggered to rest with a cup of tea. “I’m thinking of becoming a vegetarian”  I said  “No comment” Suze replied, wiping her knife on a greasy hand-towel.

Why do we do this to ourselves?  All over Vermont, although in numbers diminished somewhat from the 1970’s I think, there must be new arrivals –  panty-waisted greenhorns as we were, who had seldom lifted anything heavier than a pitcher of Sangria, who fall in love with the earth and what She will produce for our needs.  In my mind I was experiencing an epiphany,  a joyous leap back into a place where everything was real and true once again.  To my Vermont neighbors who genuinely farmed and expertly gardened I was, of course, “That flatlander  dubbin’ around”

No matter.  Forty years have passed.  I raise no more animals towards that heart-breaking and inevitable day of slaughter and I have learned how to grow a plant or two.  It’s enough for me.