Stirring the Cauldron

New Moon Newsletters from Jessica Prentice

New Blood Moon

October moondark kitchen notes
from Jessica Prentice

The moon is new! We have just entered the lunar phase known as the Blood Moon in 16th Century England. The name comes from the fact that small farmsteads would slaughter meat for winter in the fall. It was the time of year when hogs would be fat -- having benefited from harvest season and all the other richness of the farm's agricultural year. That year was nearly at an end -- the grain was reaped, beans were dried out and packed in barrels, whatever vegetables and fruits could be stored had been piled into the cellar, and the slaughtering of hogs and processing of their meat was the last big job to be done on the farm before settling in for the long winter.

Hogs have been an important part of small-scale farmsteads in many parts of the world throughout much of history. They are omnivores and will eat almost anything, so they are perfect for converting food that isn't quite good enough for humans -- skimmed milk, damaged or extra vegetables, fruit, nuts, grain that hasn't been winnowed, bugs and grubs, wild forage, and even moldy leftovers -- into food that is utterly delicious and satisfying to humans. Although they like to have a bit of pasture to graze on, they don't require expanses of pastureland like ruminant animals do. They are economical animals to keep -- using space efficiently and fattening up on what might otherwise be considered garbage.

The meat of pigs lends itself wonderfully to preserving in endless ways -- smoking, brining, salting, rendering, and freezing -- so was the ideal food to eat through the seasons of cold and ice. Bacon, ham, a great variety of sausages, lard, headcheese. . . These were all made at home by farmsteads that kept hogs and slaughtered them annually around the Blood Moon. Every part of the hog was used for something delicious that sustained the family or community through the winter.

Those of us who eat from local farmers markets most or all of the year have begun to reconnect with the annual seasons of fruit and vegetable harvests. We have come to expect to eat asparagus in spring, corn in summer, apples in autumn, and rutabagas in winter. We have come to love the expectation of these yearly culinary pleasures (yes I do consider rutabagas a culinary pleasure!), get our fill of them when they are widely available in the markets, and move on to the next thing when the weather has changed and they're done for the year. But we do not always include animal products in our awareness of seasonality -- our farmsteading ancestors had no choice but to do so. Wendell Berry, in his short story Watch with Me (set in 1916) gives us a glimpse of that reality:

That would be the Egg Moon, which falls around April -- a very different time of year from the Blood Moon. To Tol and Miss Minnie, eating seasonally was not looked at as a bourgeois choice, but was simply a part of the natural cycle of life on earth.

Laura Ingalls Wilder gives us another glimpse. She opens her famous Little House series of books with a charming and comprehensive description of Butchering Time (aka the Blood Moon) that is much too long to quote in its entirety, but I recommend highly to anyone who wants to know more about how they used every part of the pig on a farmstead. It can be found in Chapter 1 of Little House in the Big Woods. It starts with:

And ends with:

Of course, the sad truth is that today the vast majority of pork eaten in this country is not from pigs that ran wild in the big woods. Currently pigs are among the most inhumanely-treated animals in our factory farming model. They are terribly crowded, abused, and deprived of sunlight and fresh air. Those of you who haven't had the chance to see the wonderful web-based video "The Meatrix" might want to take a moment to watch it. You can find it at themeatrix.com. But there are farmers out there who are raising hogs humanely and who genuinely care about their welfare. One organic hog farmer writes:

As much as I love bacon and ham and pork and sausages, I can't enjoy them thinking about those pigs that never get to experience the earth. I buy pork when I can get it from a farmer who raises heritage breeds that get to forage on pasture. And this year, for the first time, I've reserved part of a hog in advance that will be slaughtered this Blood Moon -- thanks to a friend who shares my commitment in humane animal husbandry and organized the purchase from a local, free-range rancher. We are looking forward to our own version of Butchering Time -- rendering lard, making sausages, and even trying our hands at headcheese. I hope sometime soon to go and visit the farm myself -- I want to take a look at the snouts on those pigs, and I'm hoping to see dirt up past the eyes!

On the Blood Moon I am sending out a prayer that all the pigs on earth may live lives with plenty of sunshine and mud to wallow in. I am imagining hearing each and every pig making mellow sounds punctuated by boisterous good-natured sounds. I am wishing you all the happy expectation of a winter well-provided for, complete with a full belly filled with old-fashioned nourishing things. And may your hearts be filled with the assurance that factory-farming is indeed unsustainable, and will soon be one of those things of the past that we are not sad to leave behind.