We Accidentally Bought Two Pigs
Then, we had no choice: We had to make sausage
Last fall, my husband and I accidentally bought two pigs. “This would only happen to you guys,” friends said when we announced our dilemma. “Not true!” we protested. It seemed like a common enough marital quandary — Alex said yes to George, I said yes to Drew. Only instead of party dates or hand-me-down patio chairs, we were talking about two full-size pigs, butchered and ready for a place in our suddenly puny-looking chest freezer.
We often buy whole animals because it’s the most affordable way to eat the kind of meat we believe in: meat from healthy animals, raised by people we know, close to home. We usually split a pig or a cow with friends. Our portion fits neatly into the same chest freezer where we house extra summer berries and crushed tomatoes.
“What are we going to do?” I asked Alex. George is a lifelong farmer and an old friend. Drew is a few years younger than me, a former co-worker just getting started with pastured livestock. I tried to imagine telling one of them we didn’t want the animal he’d spent six months raising for us.
“We’re going to buy a second chest freezer,” my husband said.
A week later, Drew brought over 279 pounds of pork, and George delivered 283. We forked over the equivalent of a…
