Zabijačka

Czechs call the daylong process of killing, butchering, eating, and celebrating the life of a pig, Zabijačka. Our day had just begun.

We killed Frank on a mid-October morning. I held a bucket of food to his face and scratched his rump as the butcher, Mira, brought a pistol to the top of his head and clicked a round into his skull. Frank’s body seized up and fell to the ground. I tried to hold his kicking legs, attempting to calm him even though I knew he was already gone. Mira cut his throat and the blood came out hot to the knife, gurgling like a meadow spring into a ceramic bowl. 

Czechs call the daylong process of killing, butchering, eating, and celebrating the life of a pig, Zabijačka. Our day had just begun. 

All two-hundred and forty pounds of Frank were carried by four of us to the necky, or wooden trough, where we placed Frank to wash him and remove his hair. 

Before our work began, Nick passed out shots of homemade plum liquor and we toasted  Frank. Light rain drummed on the tent borrowed from Olda who works as a handyman at the local carpenters’ shop where we pick up bags of wood shaving and sawdust each week, used as bedding for the chickens, ducks, geese, and Frank. This carbonic material soaks up smells and excess nutrients from the manure, is then composted and wheeled to the garden where soil life transforms it to vegetables in which we feed ourselves and a small community of friends and neighbors.  

Olda’s generator is powering the keg we got from Petr and Tomaš at the micro-brewery, a stone’s throw up the hill from the farm. Just about every morning for the last three years, I roll a wheelbarrow up to the brewery for the kitchen scraps that are set aside in a bin for us, often bringing a couple crates of mixed salads that are sold in the restaurant. The old bread, dumplings, bits of meat, and spent grain from the brewery  supplement our animals’ diets. Frank grew from 40 to 240 pounds in four months from food that would have otherwise been rotting in a landfill. We were encouraged to take materials out of the dumpster during the brewery’s reconstruction. The pig house, the floor of our teepee, and the roof of our kitchen are all made from the brewery’s discarded hardwood floors, engraved with generations of weddings, dances, funerals, and baptized in spilt beer. 

Mira, the young butcher, when not preparing salami and sausage, is a trumpet player in a band. He sprinkles and rubs dried spruce sap over Frank’s skin, so the hair comes off with less effort. He wears the traditional butcher’s attire; black and white checkered coat and trousers, his hat the pattern of the only venomous snake in the Czech Republic. An old wood-handled knife sharpener sticks out of his right boot like a dagger which he swiftly removes and pulls his blade fluidly across it as soon as the edge begins to dull.  We pour hot water over Frank’s bulk, then run two chains with rings on either end under his body, pulling as a team, back and forth, which quickly leaves him naked. Krešo, from Croatia, who with his girlfriend Diana, helped us around the farm or building our home more times than I can count, takes turns with me using the metal bell-shaped cone to finish scraping the rest of Frank’s fur off his legs. 

The water is heated in a large, homemade, wood-heated boiler, or kotel, we borrowed from an old farmer in a nearby village. Chickens, ducks, and geese scattered as we pulled the truck up to the barn to load it. The old farmer told us the story of his family, how his parents had built what Czechs would call a statek, a Slavic take on the Roman villa. A large house with various barns and cellars, a courtyard full of poultry, a vegetable garden, and out back a fruit orchard with sheep and cows. They cared for that land for generations until they were forced off during the Communist’s “collectivization.” The land was returned to him after the revolution. He took the time to show us around the chicken coop and the barn where in the past cows, sheep, and pigs spent their winters. We were led to his processing kitchen. Nothing too new or high-tech, lots of reused materials and old, but well-made tools. He told me with a wink not to mind the smell, just some freshly harvested marijuana drying upstairs. Potatoes, pumpkins, and a jar of Frank’s fat paid our debt. 

The necky Frank rests in is Ivo’s, a neighbor and arborist who taught Lucie and me how to prune fruit trees. He brings the hay he cuts to our field that we use as mulch for potato beds. Ivo and his wife, Marcela, invited us for dinner a few times, once to eat a wild boar shot in their garden. Ivo climbs up the metal stand of salvaged scaffolding that will be used to hang Frank’s body. He grins like a kid, swinging on it a few seconds, certifying its strength. 

In the outdoor kitchen, Bětka and Diana are busy chopping vegetables for the gulaš and potato-pumpkin soup while  preparing a garlic quark cheese spread for Bětka’s homemade bread. Bětka and Nick live in a small house in the nearby village within Prague, Hlubocepy. Like us, they’ve treated rented land as their own, investing time and care into transforming their small street-side patch of yard into a beautiful garden, full of flowers, towering kales that resemble palm trees, and a row of small fruit trees and berries. The picnic table on the deck Nick built is often full of friends, many times singing along as he strums the guitar. Diana is from Syria and puts up with Krešo’s antics. She’s smart and spunky and you’d be likely to wander into a lively conversation with her about architecture, landscape planning, or the run-of-the-mill insanity of our world. 

With Frank clean and the stand set, we put two meat hooks through his ankles and let a small electric crank connected to a car battery hoist his body into the air. This low-tech, low-effort system was set up by Zimek. Zimek is one of a kind. I mean that in the metaphorical sense, but also that his actual name is Střezimír, which translates to, “guardian of the peace,” and he is the only living Střezimír in the Czech Republic. He often brings us leaves, grass, and branches for the chickens. He understands tools and machines and how fix them. He taught me to sharpen a chainsaw correctly and crafts wooden bowls from trees he cuts down on the job or found on the side of the road. He and his wife, Katka, hosted us for dinner a few times to eat the fish Zimek caught in Norway. He was the first person I called to help me kill and cook a wild hog hit by a train, struggling in the creak beside our house. He grows enough potatoes to feed his family of four for the year on a garden plot about the size of two parking spots and he likes to remind me that sprouted potatoes should be treated as delicately as eggs.  Zimek’s quick to laugh, loves to joke, and can talk for long stretches ranging from composting, the future of energy, or Czech history. At a birthday party last summer, I watched him pump beers from a keg and hold a lively conversation with a guy from Liverpool, despite not speaking a word of English. 

Zimek sets up a homemade cooking stove made from a salvaged oil drum. He starts a fire and begins to prepare his now famous guláš with a few pounds of onions boiling in Frank’s fat. 

A group gathers around Mira to watch him work. You don’t need to know anything about butchering to recognize the skill, speed, and precision of his craft. Mira cuts, slices, and occasionally chops Frank into pieces. In less than an hour Frank is transformed from a pig to pork. Lucie stands, belly now swollen with our baby, sorting and labeling the various cuts. Most of the organs and some fatty pieces from around the knee are placed into the big boiling pot of water for half an hour. They are then scooped up by ladle, sprinkled with salt and left out on a big cutting board for the first course of the day, called ovar. Parts of kidneys, liver, brain, heart, and pork knee, are taken, sometimes with a slice of bread, more often just with hand. 

Much of Frank’s fat is brought to the outdoor kitchen where Marta, Lucie’s sister, and her mom, Olga, along with Marta’s husband Milan, cut it and cook it down in a large pot on the gas stove. I’ve grown to like the rinds, crispy crust and buttery middle, like tasting instant energy. They’re put out in a big wicker basket. The fat, or sádlo, is poured into jars that we use for cooking and as gifts. No person of sound mind would prefer the taste of a French fry fried in vegetable or seed oil over one fried in pork fat or beef tallow. 

Nick and Bětka are off to the concert to celebrate the release of Nick’s new album. They depart with a small glass of slivovice just as Pavel and Hanka arrive, presenting Lucie and me with tubs of homemade coleslaw and kimchi, as well as a horseshoe to give our new house good luck. Pavel is a beekeeper, woodworker, scythe wielder, medicine cream maker, wood splitter, church bell ringer, and all around great guy. He works at the lumberyard up the hill from us and often gives us “cracked boards,” some of which I’m still looking for the cracks. Hanka is humble and kind, and regularly joins Pavel to help us scythe and rake our field. She’s one of the few people able to keep up with him. In no time she has the group of kids running around braiding crowns of hay that they wear atop their heads the rest of the day. 

Marek, the architect, teacher, craftsman, and neighbor arrives. Our newly reconstructed house wouldn’t have been built without him. Or perhaps it might have, but it would have probably resembled the chicken coop rather than the beautiful wooden home it’s become. We’ve spent many hours together since May, sawing wood, drilling holes, and pounding in boards. We mostly focus on the work, but sometimes I’m treated to stories of his role as a young architect student after the Velvet Revolution, charged with cataloging and restoring the furniture and interior design of the Prague Castle complex, often meeting with then President Havel. Other times, I listen to stories of visits to ancient cities carved out of stone in Turkey, or his travels to Italy, South Africa, and the Holy Lands, or how modern architecture is making us unhealthy.  Every summer evening Marek takes his bike to a nearby pond to go for a swim. He’s told me on several occasions that in his previous life he was a sailor, probably French. If you’re lucky enough to visit his house he built himself, you’d go under the trellised grape vines, heavy with sweet fruit, through his front door, complete with a submarine’s circular window. Marek’s wife, Bara, is a sweet, thoughtful lady, a skilled architect, and very adept in dealing with the bureaucracy that comes with it. Their daughter, Zuzka, comes once a week to weed our garden, leaving it spotless each time. 

Ilia, an engineer who designs solar panel installations, arrives late to avoid the butchering. He doesn’t eat meat, a point of many conversations we’ve had over the last few years, usually while working on various off-grid solar projects or over a couple glasses of burcak, what Czechs call the bubbling fermenting young wine. Born in the USSR, but lived most of his life in Israel, I always appreciate Ilia’s Semetic directness and sense of humor. I can’t help but smile when I pass him and Diana standing in the yard, commiserating with each other about the horrible traffic of the Levant. 

The mid-October day is gone in a flash in our deep valley, a microcosm of village life, in Prokopské údolí, surrounded by the bustle of Prague. The day is filled with work, feasting, drinking, chatting, and throwing bags, an American contribution to this very Czech day. The evening is spent gathered around a fire pit telling stories. 

The description of how Frank met his end might seem gruesome to some, even those who eat meat. The day of Zabijačka serves as a reminder that the burgers, steaks, ribs, and wings we eat come from very real animals that lived and then died so that we can live on. This is the simple, yet somewhat tragic fact of life, things must die for others to live. 

There was no cruelty in the life or death of Frank. During his life, he was fed good food, got his belly scratched, had shelter and fresh water, and was given space to fulfill his instinct to root around in the soil as all pigs should. In death, he felt nor knew nothing. 

Did we need to kill Frank to survive? That’s a question that can only be answered in spring, but I hope killing Frank isn’t a matter of life or death. For us, that is. After all, Frank died. 

What I believe is a matter of survival for most of us in “developed countries,” is whether or not we can once again nurture culture from the ground up. Agriculture, from ager, or ‘field,’ culture, as in, ‘cultivate.’ Culture has morphed to the abstract in the modern era. It has become a decoration, some vague notion of going to a play or art gallery occasionally. Real culture requires something for us to cooperate in, something to talk about, to do together. Culture can’t only be consumed, it must be cultivated. 

The remnants of communities of neighborhoods, towns, and villages, and their knowledge, wisdom, and ways of life are withering away before our eyes, swallowed up by inhuman corporations and  “the market” with its  insatiable need to waste in order to grow and it’s insane directive that it must keep growing, forever. The now failing global economy has largely succeeded, in the last two-hundred years, in replacing communities that from time immemorial relied on trust, thrift, mutual obligation, intimate local knowledge, shared identity, and ethics encoded in stories and parables. The last few years have accelerated this decline like no other time in our history, an ongoing tragedy inviting ruin. We’re missing the story of the place, people, and creatures in which we live, and this lost connection is wrecking our planet and crippling our souls. 

Zabijecka, and similar traditions around the world beckon us back to our ancient customs of sacrifice, celebration, sharing food, storytelling, and giving thanks. There is sadness to be felt in the death of Frank, just as there is guilt in the fact that we are forever in debt to the community of friends and family that support our living. The more I mull over these feelings, however, I return time and again to the realization that the only appropriate response is gratefulness. I’m grateful to Frank for what he’s given us. We have a year’s worth of meat in our freezer, in which the meals-to-be are nothing short of sacramental. Frank allowed the continuing of a tradition that spans millennia and a reason to gather together and share the harvest, a chance to give back to those we love, if only in some small way. 

Our community is built from the ground up in the actual sense of the phrase. Our care and dedication to a small piece of land that we rent from the city of Prague brought people that live and work nearby together. Some value local organic food, many want their children to understand where food comes from, others just like to be outside and get their hands dirty. They’ve invested in our success which is hugely motivating as well as humbling. 

The future of agriculture will be human and animal powered and its produce will be eaten nearby to where it is grown. This future has the decisive argument in its favor, that we cannot continue the current global industrial system of feeding ourselves in an energy contracting world. This “future” of agriculture is in fact the past and present reality of how most of the world feeds itself. Peasant farming is the most common profession on the planet and it is a practice of the most valued of arts - how to make a living on a small piece of land without destroying it. No doubt we’ll miss the global economy and its many conveniences. But how much do we stand to gain by rediscovering where and who we are in our history?

Community, like farms and forests, take time to grow, mature, and bear fruit. Our brief industrial intermission is ending. Time to start cultivating.