Pasture Perfect Pork

John Denver had it all wrong! Life on the farm is not ‘kind of laid back’ well that is until you get laid back in a hospital bed from life on the farm! How dramatic does that sound?!I am currently recuperating from trying to break up a fight between a couple of my boys (read boars). Silly, silly me. I thought I was doing such a great job of it too until I landed on my bottom with a hole in my jeans, and on further inspection, my leg. Not to worry, all is healing nicely. It didn’t even hurt very much. I am very lucky to live in a rural area because that means that I got great care from the local small hospital. (they don’t like to stitch up tusk wounds immediately becuase they are a bit messy and infection is a big issue) So I reckon that my boy (boar) was just collaborating with me to give me a few days off.My big question to you all out there is… What are the best foods to eat for tissue repair? Apart from a couple of chocolates that I just had to eat so that I wouldn’t offend the lovely people that brought them, I have been staying away from all processed foods (of course), although I have to say, it can be a little hard to do that in a hostipal.Enough on that topic though. Joanne and I had a little chat on the phone a couple of weeks ago and we were reminiscing about our respective childhoods. She had asked how it was that I was able to let my piggies go when it is time as it was pretty obvious that I loved them. I guess for me it is because I was brought up eating food from animals that we had raised as a family. We had our own chooks, ducks, geese, goats and my older brother raised king pidgeons for us to eat as well. I remember the birth of a baby goat was an education for the whole street as we would run around and tell all the other children that one was on the way and there were always the oohs and aahs and some poor kid nearly fainting at the sight the delivery of a little goat or set of twins.I never really had dolls or toys but from the time that I could toddle down to the chook run, I used to gather the eggs that the clucky hen would abandon when most of the chickens had hatched. I would listen to see it I could hear the tapping of a chick and would take them and put them under my shirt against my body. I would keep them warm until they would hatch out and then give them their first feed and let them get strong before we would take them down to the mother in the night to get her to adopt them. I never really had a problem with clucky hens trying to peck at me when I would put the chicks back (I think she knew that I was there to help). These were the same animals that we would feed and care for, and yes I would play with and talk to them. It wasn’t a sad event when it came time to now I am looking for a word that is less confronting for a lot of people than kill, but that is what we did. We would get out the chopping block and sharpen the axe, but it was not at all macabre. We simply knew that this was the end of one part of the animals purpose. I don’t want to hurt anyones feelings either, but I have never tasted a chicken as good as one that I have raised, loved and killed myself.When we were growing up (6 kids in the family) we were very poor. Mum had a vegie patch that we all helped to tend and because one of my sisters was allergic to cows milk, we had a couple of goats that we used to milk every day for fresh milk. We use to tether them out every morning before school in a different area of park land or roadside. Then on the way home from school we would bring them back home. Every morning my brother would grind the wholewheat to make our porridge (which I have to say was definitely not a favourite of mine)When it was dinnertime, there was never anything left on our plates and the saying “suck the marrow from the bones of life” has very real connotations for me as we would fight over who got the shank (and thus the marrow) from the lamb roast. Is was always just a bleached bone by the time that we had gotten through with it.Now this may sound like a hard luck story to some, but as I am reminiscing about this I have a dreamy smile on my face. I am the only one in my family who is now in agriculture, but we all still eat well (whole food) and often when we get together the stories of what we did and ate (and Mums many unsuccessful recipes) are what we talk and laugh about.I am so glad that there are so many people out there that really appreciate and show thanks for the way that good food is raised.Its very nice to be appreciated. Take care and stay well. Miriam