a chat with a butcher

May 7, 2012 at 7:55 pm (adventures in houston, the barry farm)

today was another one of those days that i would have never thought i’d have living in houston.

it started with farm chores at the barry farm early so we could load up the 3 red wattle pigs that needed to make a trip to the butcher. geoffrey and i talked on the way there the best way to load them. we decided we really did need another person. thankfully a call to his dad yielded us the help we needed. you never know when you a need dad 🙂

of course, by the time we arrived to the butcher it was their lunch hour! they close and all leave for the hour…so, we drove around a bit to keep the pigs cool. we love going there. the butcher is an interesting old man and you never know what we will talk about. this was the most we visited with him. we talked about how many pigs, their breed, customer names, how the meat was to be cut… the normal things you would expect to talk about with your butcher.

he was VERY surprised when i, “a young lady”, “aren’t you a city girl?”, asked for some of the lard! he had questions… he said i might be the first person to ask for it in years!

“what did i think i was going to do with it?”
“do i KNOW what to do with it?”
do i know someone to ask?”
“how old is your mom?” … “oh, she’s too young!”
“do you still have grandparents alive to ask?”

i wanted to say, “mr. fischer, have you met google?” 🙂 but i didn’t. i assured him i would do research and ask around. he is old school and i didn’t just want to blurt it out. (i left that one of his employees later on in the conversation.)

i told him i was confident i could figure out how to get it done. he couldn’t tell me just how much lard they could get me. i was sensing he would just give me a little bit. but, i was sure to let him know that if they got 15, 20ish pounds it wouldn’t scare me…so, bring it on! we’ll see how much we get… we had a conversation with old black man, who was an employee, that remembered seeing it done and he reminded mr. fischer how they needed to prepare it for me. i am getting excited! i told mr. fischer i would bring him some biscuits made with red wattle lard. but, he requested an apple pie. crust made with lard.

we also talked about life. we talked about kids. farming. raising kids while running a family business. kids being raised with responsibilty. kids being raised by their parents and grandparents. kids who think meat comes from the grocery store. (oh, and he remembered someone telling him to put a potato in while rendering lard to keep it nice and white!) we talked about being a dairy farmer’s daughter. we talked about how is wife was a beautician by trade. years ago he couldn’t keep up with his 2nd slaughter house and asked his wife to manage it. yes, his wife who was a beautician that had her own shop! she of course she replied she didn’t know how to run a slaughter house. he told her there was a phone there and she could call him with questions:) i missed visiting with her today. she is a sweet lady.

this was the longest we had talked with mr. fischer. it was a lovely visit to his slaughter house. i think he thought we were nuts when we told him that we took our pigs off corn and soy and onto a NON GMO feed! he’s been around for a very long time doing what he does. they smoke in-house and don’t use nitrates and came highly recommended by farming mentors! until geoffrey can cut up pigs himself (which he’d love to do), we’ll go visit mr. fischer.

i am looking forward to our next visit and to see how much lard they saved for me! until then, i have some research do.

just another crazy day in this crazy, beautiful life i live with the love of my life!