Monday, December 3, 2007

Butcher for a day (some pictures might be disturbing)

This Friday me and Danijel went to the village Sefkerin again. A small village, maybe 30 km from where I live. Danijel's cousin Goran lives in this village. Here he has a farm together with his family. The tree guys doing most of the work is Goran, Tata (father) and Deda (Grandfather, this is the name all old men in Serbia get).
Deda and Baba (grandmother). To put old people in an institution is considered an offense. When we arrived at the farm around 1045 Friday morning, Tata and Deda had already consumed a lot of Rakija (Serbian liquor) and they where in a particularly good mood. Deda (whom I never met before) greeted me with tree solid kisses on my cheeks, the Serbian traditional greeting.

Most of the animals on the farm is walking around rather freely. The hens like to stay in the hay. Where most of the dogs also stays (I think there were about 5 dogs).

There is a decent amount of mud in the yard, but that doesn't stop no hen from doing his daily exercise.
The cats were watching us most of the time. Its amazing which places they manage to get to.
One of the buildings on the farm. Second floor is full of corn. The yard behind the building on the right is where it happened.
Danijel has attended or viewed this kinda work since he was a kid.
For me it was the first time. Take notice of my T-shirt for the Norwegian peace core (Fredskorpset) which I'm representing in Serbia.
Goran, the main guy with his tools on the table. Goran attended a bible school some years a go, and is often seen preaching in different churches around in the area. But that doesn't make any difference from his occupation. Once a farmer, always a farmer.

Tata got a pig after we had discussed what kinda size we where looking for. I was trying to tell that all of this action would stress the pig and the muscles would be filled with adrenalin which makes the taste worse, but my words seemed to be some of the funniest and most crazy thing they had heard for a while.
First we have to weight the pig to figure out if it is the size I need and the price of the pig.
Goran, Deda and Tata are trying to agree about the weight of the pig in the bag. It was screaming a lot and not very quiet by the way.
The chosen one... I've decided to not put pictures of the execution it self, but I will describe how it goes. I was a little bit excited in front of this event, and I didn't know what to expect. The pig was conscious all the time. It was held upside down, and Goran put a small knife in the throat and cut some major vein. The blood where flooding out for about 10 seconds before the pig fell silent.

Some might wonder how people can treat animals like this, but like Danijel told me. First we need to take care of the people in our country, before we start worrying about how to treat animals.

The hens and dogs were enjoying the fresh blood on the ground.
Next step is to get all the hair of the skin. You put the pig in boiling water and the outer skin starts falling of.
You have to scratch of what you can very fast. For this work we use hands, knifes and spoons.
While the rest of us were working Deda made himself a whip, just to show us how good it could be when it was really long. Remember that he had himself some Rakija this morning. On one occasion he actually managed to whip of his hat, and most of the times he didn't even manage to produce a sound... But he was a really cool guy anyway.

Danijel took himself a break and played with the dogs for some minutes.
After taking of hair with hot water there are still some leftovers. They have to be burned away.
This is the result after burning all the hair away. Soon this pig is ready for roasting. But one important step is left. Not everything inside a pig is eatable, so some have to go.

Testrils, kidneys, heart, lungs and other internal organs have to leave the body.
And then we have to clean it well to get all dirt and leftovers away.

And then the pig has to dry up. We slaughtered two pigs that morning.
Then we took the bus back to Pančevo. During the ride we played the famous game "Guess how many pigs I have in my backpack".
Then we went straight to this guy who roasted the pigs. One was roasted whole, and the other rolled into some kinda big sausage without bones. Soon we were ready for celebrating!

2 comments:

Britt Eva, Kjartan og Ingvill said...

Kjære Torsten... e du klar over hvilket dyr som ble skadet på disse bildene???????

mvh, Britt Eva

Prince Williams Mawanda said...

Hey man, kordan gaar det med deg i Serbia, so great to read your blog esp that its in English; u see iam almost forgeting my norwegian after six months form norway hehe;)

anyway keep up i enjoy de blog; u make a great journalist coverring every moment of the slaughter. hehe

prince williams
Uganda