AgriCulture: Old Man Pleasures

With my legs still sore from the slopes and my arm throbbing after my second COVID vaccination shot, my friend Steve looked me in the eye and demanded we commit a murder: “We have to kill Vernon!” I had just returned home from a ski trip to the Adirondacks with Eric, succeeded by a trek south to the City for my jab. I left the farm in Steve’s inexperienced-but-enthusiastic City-boy hands. I was tired, chilled, headachy, and really needed a hot cup of coffee. “Why not take pity and just kill us both?” I asked.

Death would really be an act of mercy for my aged Ossabaw Island boar, he argued. “I love Vernon,” Steve insisted, “But I worry that his arthritis makes it hard for him to even stand! What life is that?! The other morning, he slipped and fell on the ice. I was freaking out!” New to this, he doesn’t appreciate that the warmer weather makes a temporary stay of execution a smart move–for now. Vernon emerges whenever the sun shines, ready to enjoy his feed and to bask, joy in his steps and snorts. I expect he will thrive this spring and summer, and is maybe even anticipating it, just like the rest of us. Steve, however, still argued that forcing Vernon to endure another winter would be cruel. “He’s all patchy on one side and trembly and bony,” he said. “He looks like Iggy Pop after 40 years of heroin!”

It’s not as simple as he thinks. For one thing, Steve knows nothing of this pig’s august history. Vernon was born on the Mt. Vernon Estate in 2006, bred as part of a project of Mt. Vernon Ladies Association to perpetuate the breeds raised by George Washington himself. But really, it’s the fond memories I associate with Vernon that matter.

I recall driving to collect a puppy-sized Vernon in my battered little white pick-up truck with the jerry-rigged cage on the bed in 2007. I embarrassed my friends Craig and Rosemary (a judge and a government official) by parking this wreck in front of their well-manicured Washington, DC home en route to picking him up. On my way back, passers-by at rest stops were thrilled by this charming piglet’s antics in the truck bed. Always affectionate, he’d push his head against the fencing for scratches at feeding time. There was one entire weekend I spent with him in that pen, plucking festering maggots out of the deep wounds Vernon suffered after a vicious fight with another boar. We seriously bonded.

This isn’t the first time Vernon’s life has come up for consideration. At least five or six years ago, it was I who put it in question. Raising pigs was just proving too unmanageable for us, and I insisted to my late partner, Peter, that we get out of the pig business. Initially, he resisted. I threw down with “either the pigs go or I do!” He responded, “Let me think about it.” But then, when I prevailed and we sold off or slaughtered 28 of our 30 hogs, leaving just Vernon and our sow, Possum, I just couldn’t let Vernon go. That meant we had to keep Possum, of course, so Vernon would have company. (If she realizes she owes him her life, she has never expressed any gratitude.)

After Peter’s death my nephew, Troy, was trying to help me transition out of farming and made contact with a fellow who could come to the farm to shoot both Vernon and Possum. Again, I couldn’t bear to follow through.

Steve didn’t know the depth of the resistance he’d meet. It’s not just the length of my relationship with Vernon–four times as long as my friendship with Steve. Also, always be mindful when you tell one old codger that it’s time to euthanize another. After all, here I am, soon to be 70, freshly returned from a ski trip, my first time on the slopes in over 40 years, blood and endorphins still pumping–and wanting more.

I was once a proficient skier who skied in six different countries, but I was concerned about this trip: Could I simply resume where I had left off? To my surprise, however, I kept most of the muscle memory, if not all of the muscle.

I was, to be sure, skiing in more of an “old guy” manner, far more cautiously than I did in my youth. I didn’t accompany Eric down those black diamond runs I once sought out and he still revels in. I avoided crouching to barrel down straight-aways at high speed as I once might have, opting instead to steadily create a rhythm of transverse turns. Like the senior skiers I used to admire (because I couldn’t imagine anyone so old skiing at all), I was unashamed about taking my time and focusing on technique rather than speed.

By the second run of the first day, I recaptured that freedom and joy one inevitably takes from downhill motion. That feeling of one-ness with nature you find by conforming one’s body to the contours of a mountain. Moments when the sun came out and the wind died down and Eric and I had the slope to ourselves were transcendent.

If Vernon can find a fair number of transcendent moments (of the porcine variety) as spring and summer proceed–if there are a few more days with that kind of joy in the sun ahead of him–I strongly suspect that given the choice he, too, would opt to continue the slog. Even if there are only a few. At least for this summer.

WHAT’S AVAILABLE THIS WEEK

Cheese pumpkins, $1/lb

EGGS: production has doubled, feel free to order, $5/doz

MEATS:

CHICKENS: They were quite uniform in size, all just around 6 lbs, a few under. These frozen freedom rangers are what you want them to be, deeply flavorful. T $6/lb. Separately, bags of chicken livers, also $6/lb.

FARM PICKUPS:

Email us your order at [email protected], and let us know when you’d like to pick up your order. It will be put out for you on the side screened porch of the farmhouse (110 Lasher Ave., Germantown) in a bag. You can leave cash or a check in the now famous pineapple on the porch table. Because I’m now here full time, we’re abandoning regular pick-up times. Let us know when you want your order any day between 10 and 5, and unless there are unusual circumstances we’ll be able to ready it to your convenience. If you have questions, don’t hesitate to call or text at 917-544-6464 or email.