Podge and Rodge swiftly became an integral part of our family. Every day around 8 a.m., Bento and I walked up to their shed and fed them. Watching Bento tottering along the line of the fence, observing the pigs with increasing fascination, I couldn’t help but think,
How did this all happen? I never expected to be a dad. I don’t think any of my friends really did. Oh, sure, somewhere in the back of our minds most men have assumed it might be a nice idea to maybe have children one day, but that just means picturing oneself throwing a football on a summer afternoon. There’s a tremendous distance between that happy fantasy and the reality of two years spent up to your elbows in baby shit, getting up before dawn to make oatmeal, and standing here, in a field in Ireland, feeding two pigs with your son and feeling like your heart is going to explode every time he says “Daddy.”
A few weeks after I picked up Podge and Rodge, I was walking near their paddock and noticed how big they were getting, and that’s when I had the idea for the Great Pig Feast. I wondered if it would be possible to get my entire family, who I’d seen a few times but still missed terribly, to come over and enjoy a totally homegrown feast. Not just my own pork, but also my own potatoes, spinach, carrots, and lettuce. Even the crumble could be made with apples from the garden.
With Podge and Rodge settled into the paddock, I launched into an orgy of planting. I put down tomatoes, zucchini, peas, carrots, beetroot, spinach, garden rocket, lettuce, leeks, and pumpkins. Ultimately, I had about a 50 percent hit rate—the deadly combination of ignorance and indolence did in the other half—but the satisfaction of seeing stuff I had planted actually grow was incalculable. The first time I came home with enough spinach for our dinner, I felt jollier than the Green Giant. I discovered a therapeutic element to gardening as well. Whenever I felt stressed out about the pregnancy, argumentative because of Bento-induced sleep deprivation, or frustrated by isolation, I’d mosey off to the garden and spend an hour pinching out tomatoes and saying the serenity prayer to calm myself down.
Podge and Rodge were always destined for the dinner table. Still, it was hard to ignore their personalities. Podge was bigger, more of a bully, while Rodge was friendly and dumb. I dreaded dropping them off at the abattoir. In the end, I was in New York on assignment—energized by my gardening, I’d seen my freelance workload pick up—when the deed had to be done. (I know, how convenient!) Toby collected “the lads” and dropped them off for me. My only real involvement was getting up at 6 a.m. to call the slaughterhouse. I discussed the curing and division of my pig carcasses with an Irish butcher while watching the sun creep up Manhattan’s skyscrapers. I’d seen the sunrise in New York before, but only after all-night benders. This was the first time I’d seen it sober.
How strange, I thought, that I now get up at the same time I used to go to bed.
I got home to Ireland on Saturday. The first wave of my family started arriving on the following Wednesday, and the Great Pig Feast was scheduled for Friday. The pigs (no more names) needed to hang for a week, but in the meantime, there was the rest of the feast to worry about. Bento (utterly unconcerned by the pigs’ disappearance) and I paced the garden, and I inspected my crops nervously. My family had never mocked me for switching city life for a rural existence, but I suspected they doubted I could handle it.
I collected the meat on Thursday. Although real thrifty country types insist you can use everything but the squeak, I had requested that my beasts be returned devoid of any piggy characteristics such as snouts, tails, or ears. I kept one large leg out for roasting, and put the rest in my freezer, with the exception of 16 pounds of ground meat that my brother Josh and I began turning into sausages.
We chopped up walnuts, almonds, and cashews with parsley and sage at a table we set up on the lawn, then shoveled the whole lot into Toby’s sausage maker. It took a few split skins before Josh and I mastered the art of turning the crank just fast enough to make sure the sausages were big, juicy specimens.
On the night of the feast, there were 23 of us around the table, all 14 of the Sykes clan, plus Sasha’s family. For starters, I served a simple tomato and rocket salad. The main course was the 14-pound leg of pork, which I roasted at a low heat for 10 hours and Sasha’s father carved into wafer-thin slices, accompanied by chewy roasted potatoes, steamed spinach, and glazed carrots. We had pints of gravy. For dessert, Sasha made a pear crumble and a fig crumble. I asked people to bring wine if they wanted to drink, and I served apple juice made from Lisnavagh apples and fresh water from the spring.
I got home to Ireland on Saturday. The first wave of my family started arriving on the following Wednesday, and the Great Pig Feast was scheduled for Friday. The pigs (no more names) needed to hang for a week, but in the meantime, there was the rest of the feast to worry about. Bento (utterly unconcerned by the pigs’ disappearance) and I paced the garden, and I inspected my crops nervously. My family had never mocked me for switching city life for a rural existence, but I suspected they doubted I could handle it.
