Welcome to May MEMOIR!
Day 19
For the entire month of May, I'll be sharing part of each chapter from my memoir, Ca va? Stories from Rural Life in Southern France.
When I was a child, my father and uncle used to buy a butchered cow straight from a farm. I have fond memories of the whole family participating as we unloaded the packaged meat from the back of the old Chevy station wagon into the freezer. While Christophe and I have not found a farm to buy meat from directly, we have profited from the market’s annual “Pork Fair”. It’s an event where we buy full sides of pork chops, whole hams, or shoulders in tack. Buying this way helps us avoid buying full price at the supermarket, but it means we need to cut and trim the meat ourselves before we bag it for the freezer. It’s a popular event with agricultural roots signifying the beginning of the preparation of winter. “The Pork Fair” is a day full of emotions – always tiring, something a bit shocking, occasionally funny, and always full of surprises.
Chapter 18: Pork Fair
I am calm once everything is in the kitchen. We put the other groceries away and then organize for the pork. It is heaped on the kitchen floor into piles and has created quite an obstacle course. Christophe starts to enthusiastically sharpen a few knifes and I get out the freezer bags. He starts with a side for pork chops and tries cutting through it with a large kitchen knife.
He raises his hand and with a large “umph” brings the knife down into the meat, but it gets stuck. “Hmmm…”, he mutters with a little frustration. He wiggles the knife around a bit, dislodges it, and tries again. He brings the knife down with a “thud” and getting the same results, gets more visible frustrated and mutters something louder. He once again dislodges the knife out of the meat and puts it down. He turns around and heads for the ax that is hanging on the wall next to the chimney.
“An ax?” I am startled about the hillbillyness of it.
“Well, a knife isn’t going to cut through the bone and we don’t have a cleaver. An ax is just a big meat cleaver, but less precise.” He says as he washes the ax and starts back at the meat.
“When my uncle used to cut meat like this he’d have some white wine. He always thought he cut better with it, but, if he missed on the first cut, he would miss on all of them.” Christophe raises his axed hand and brings it down forcefully to the side of meat in front of him; he misses and hits bone. “Damn –it!” He looks frustrated. I see he’s thinking about how to successfully cut the meat so we don’t find ourselves with enormous hunks of meat that need to be cooked whole and sliced for sandwiches so we don’t lose the savings we just made.
Then after a pause he asks, “Is there wine in the fridge?” He opens it, finds a bottle, and pours himself a glass.
“That’s better.” He says and raising his axed hand once more in the air, brings it down with such precision that a perfect chop just about falls off the side. He smiles at me mischievously; I smile back, pick it up, and start wrapping it up for the freezer.
About an hour later, we hear the soft tinkling of bells outside. First, they are far away, but then slowly get closer. The sound crosses the square and then stops in front of our front door.
“I know that sound”, I think to myself. The joy this quaint sound brings me is quickly squashed as I realize where it is coming from.
“There are hunting dogs at our door!” I cry.
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