Sorting through old photos recently and came across this one… which brought back so many memories of our years (late 70’s and early 80’s) working the land here on our farm outside of Assisi….
Photo taken Jan, 1976 at our farm at Pian della Pieve, Assisi. Left to right. Sagra, our dog, Adamo, the butcher… me – our friend Renato, our farm neighbor Marino – my husband Pino in front of the now-deceased Zsa zsa.
Zsa-zsa was turned into prosciutto, barbozza, capocollo, salami, sausages, bacon, coppa, lard … (do my eyes look red?) I was in the house with my head under a pillow when Adamo, our farm neighbor (as well as pig butcher-in-Dec/Jan) shot her – pellet right between the eyes… no sound then but the pig squeals (as Zsa-zsa had done) when they drag her out of the stall via a noose around her snout… I never named our pigs after that first butchering….
She and her sister, Fo-fo were our first 2 pigs – I thought Zsa-Zsa had a “luscious” sound to it – and “Fo-fo” was named after a piglet that someone had given to Pino in Palermo as a child… as his family was very poor, there wasn’t enough money to buy feed for her but she would rub up and down against their tangerine, lemon and orange trees to knock the fruit down to eat. One day, 9-yr old Pino returned from school to find her being loaded onto a truck: his father had sold her for meat .
We raised them from piglets – when I was heading up to the “back 40”, long scythe over my shoulder (dressed as in the pic), to scythe clover or alfalfa for the rabbits, I’d let them loose to come up to the fields to graze (the farmers always said that good fresh grass would “clean out the liver”) …they’d come trotting up the hill after me, kicking up their heels now and then… bouncing… their ears would wobble and wag …and they’d grunt with glee if they unearthed any acorns under the new grass around the oak trees.
…and if they ever found any truffles, they kept the secret to themselves…
