[This entry was originally posted on December 13, 2020 — almost exactly five years ago, and during the height of Covid Communism. It’s a reminder of the small pleasures we had during that awful time.]
SAMUEL added our order up on an old, battery-operated calculator. He wore a serious, business-like expression, as if to say, “I’m used to these money transactions.” Samuel was only 13. Surely, this must still be new to him.
That was the first time we went to his family’s farm in Lancaster County] to buy meat, milk, cheese and a few other things. We’ve been there a number of times since Lockdown America began, but yesterday was only the second-time that we were waited on by Samuel. He again pulled the calculator out of a drawer in the battered, metal desk and performed his accounting.
“I’ve seen you before,” he said, now less the businessman and more just a curious, skinny, brown-haired boy in muddy boots and pants. He walked with us out to the gravel parking lot.
“Would you like to see the animals?”
We would. Samuel began an impromptu tour of his kingdom of fields still green in December and the farm’s shabby, well-used buildings. Here was a realm so far from shuttered businesses, hand sanitizer dispensers, stolen elections and even inventions like the automobile as to seem like another planet.
Samuel is Amish and his father prides himself on not running a large, factory farm. There is no electricity or tractors. The cows eat grass and roam around outside even in the winter. There are also chickens, pigs, rabbits and ducks. Goats, sheep, camel and water buffalo — all adding to the products sold here — are raised nearby. Vegetable gardens surround the large farm house in season. We passed a pony named “Glider” in a field and one of the family dogs. We headed to the pig barn.
If you have ever thought pigs do not richly deserve their reputation for being — well, pigs, I advise you to visit a small-scale farm like this. About 15 adult pigs were in a pen outside the barn, wallowing in thick, black mud and grunting loudly. You would think they were in a bed of liquid chocolate, not dirt, so happy and busy did they seem in their brown puddle. Samuel explained that they actually eat the mud. And some were indeed pushing the mud around with their unattractive snouts and shoveling it into their mouths. So this is what makes bacon taste so good.
I asked him if they ever were aggressive with each other. They sure looked scary and he said, yes, pigs do fight and sometimes kill each other. Charlotte’s Webb does not tell the whole story. I never want to meet a pig in a back alley.
We went into the actual pig barn where there were at least 100 more pigs, the full grown ones separated from the small ones. The smell was overwhelming — argument enough, I would think, for the faint of heart to be vegan. I asked Samuel if he got used to the smell, and he said matter-of-factly and without complaint, “Not really.”
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