Treasures New & Old: Barber, Barber, Shave a Pig!

The nursery rhyme goes;

Barber, barber, shave a pig!

How many hairs will make a wig?

Four-and twenty, that’s enough.

Give the barber a pinch of snuff.

I’m guessing that this nonsense is three or four hundred years old; that’s when rich people wore wigs.

I also guess that there never was a time when any one pig could furnish enough hair or hairs for even one wig. But when did nursery rhymes have to be factual?

As promised last week, a hog, or pig if you prefer, met its end yesterday.

I had pictured this creature as Mr. Porker, a generic swine, just a pig. Therefore when our swine appeared and was clearly a Hampshire sow, I had to adjust my thinking and nomenclature.

She was already dead and her throat had been cut. It was a gory sight but not as gory as I expected. At least I was not repelled as much as I thought I would be.

The carcass was laid out on the ground on a sheet of clean plywood. The old, leaky porcelain bathtub had been filled at dawn with water which on the orders of Manny, the more knowledgeable butcher, was nearly at the requisite 165 degrees.

Towels were fetched, saturated with the hot water, and laid over a part of the carcass.

This was where the Barber and Pig scene came in: The steaming towels softened the hair which the men scraped off inch by inch over 45 minutes. Only small areas were steamed, the hot water gently and sparingly poured onto the folded towels. At no time was the carcass actually put into the hot water.

It was a perfect summer day, if you like your summer days on the very cool side. The sun shone brightly, there was no wind, and somehow insects were nowhere on the scene. It was cool enough to discourage spoilage, and I never saw a single fly all day.

After the shaving scene, the butchers neatly opened up the carcass throat to tail and without rupturing the intestines, removed them from the carcass and bundled them into a wheelbarrow, conveniently standing by although already holding some dust and dirt.

This was the most astonishing part of the whole operation. The amount of entrails was simply astounding.

Just as the teacher said in fifth-grade science class, there were large and small intestines.

The small ones were about what I would have expected if I’d thought about it, after seeing photographs in science text books.

But the large intestines were as big around as my arm. How that many guts had been packed into that one hog carcass was hard to imagine. Whew!

They looked like exhaust pipes from the plumbing of a 20-story building.

One of the workmen had brought three of his children. The two boys were ten and six, the girl eight.

They were all willing to work and were given small tasks and errands.

At that point, the boys took the wheelbarrow off into the woods to dump the intestines, as Manny said, for a party for the coyotes that evening. Nobody worried that the coyotes might get more dirt with their party refreshments than would be good for them.

All the children seemed at home around the work. They had been with their dad on other butchering excursions and knew not only how to be helpful, how to wait patiently during the slow phases of the process, how to handle the tools and knives, some of which were pretty dangerous, but how to behave in the company of adult strangers in someone else’s house.

They also knew how not to fight, whine, get into things, or nag to go home.

A band saw was set up in the shop and the carcass, all cleaned of hair, was hung from a rafter inside.

Manny and his fellow expert set about making recognizable cuts of meat from that point on. The older children were designated runners to take them up the drive and into the house where a couple of adults were doing the wrapping and labeling.

This sounds more official than it was. Among the assembled adults, two were scholars there for “entertainment” and to have a new experience. Ah, yes, it was a new experience.

I could tell just how new by seeing the any-old-which-way they wrapped the meat.

Nothing was wrapped in the classic drugstore fashion, which would have saved time (fewer strips of tape needed) and freezer space (unneeded wads of paper crunched around the meat, adding bulk).

The wrapping was done with a lot more enthusiasm than skill.

Did I volunteer advice? No. I dreaded hearing, “Okay, you can do the wrapping.” Oh, well.

All those who received parts of this hog are in for many surprises: The meat-cutters could not precisely name the cuts they were sending from the shop to the meat-wrapping counter.

The amateur meat-handlers were guessing what to write on each package. Many lumps and handfuls of meat were labeled with big question marks.

What does this lack of certitude mean for the menu-planners and cooks in the coming year?

Maybe knowing that this package is pork and that one is beef is going to be the best any of us can do.

The butchering of a 250-pound hog is a rather messy process, yet all the meat was packed away in one freezer or another and the kitchen, shop, and yard cleaned up by 12:30.

That night, did the coyotes fall upon the guts pile, smack their lips, and say to each other, “This is our night to howl!”?