Text: Liu Jie
Heavy snow and light snow for another year, and then to the season of snowflakes, although in the city, but still miss the winter of my hometown, when it comes to winter in my hometown, I have to talk about killing pigs.
When I was a child, I looked forward to the New Year, because there would be a lot of food that I usually couldn't eat, and my mother and the aunts and aunts in the village generally began to prepare food for the New Year in the winter month, and the first item was to kill the Pigs.
Each family in the village would feed one or two pigs, one of which would be slaughtered for their own family and one of which would be sold to subsidize the family. There is a special pig killing class in the village, and there are about three or four people in a pig killing class. In the winter month, there is no farm work, they also began to "open", first each family to the "squad leader" home to order the day of pig slaughter, and in the day of the first few, after the completion of the start of various preparations.
Looking forward to it, this day will come, my family is the first, in the winter, the night of dawn, my mother and father get up before dawn, and boil water with a pot of earth that can hold three or four buckets of water, when the water begins to bubble. The pig-killers came, dressed in very thin single clothes, full of rusty blood, and a black leather apron and high rain boots. In his hand was a shining pig-killing knife, an iron rod with a thick thumb and a long-handled iron tool with a hook.
When they arrived, they first tied five thigh-thick pieces of wood into a shelf, and then placed a wide wooden stool, and at one end of the wide stool was an identical earth pot.
When the shelves were set up, they began to shout in a loud voice: Start chasing pigs, start chasing pigs!
The father and mother opened the mouth of the pigsty and drove the pigs out with sticks. Some pigs seem to know that today is the end of their lives, they can't come out of the pigsty, and the pig killer will go into the pen to drag the pigs out of the pen when they are in a hurry, and along the way, the pigs will scream with all their might.
But the call was useless, and the father used a large bucket to pour boiling water into the earth pot next to the wide stool, and it was cold and frozen, only the earth pot was steaming.
At this time, there was already a group of spectators next to the pig killing rack, usually old people with children.
The pig killer sharply tied up the four legs of the pig, and the three of them worked together to lift the pig to the stool, two people held the pig's body, and the other held the pig killing knife in one hand, grasped the pig's mouth with the other, and then a sharp knife was stuck in the pig's neck, and every time I saw this place, I would involuntarily close my eyes, and the bright red pig blood gushed out from the knife edge and flowed into the large basin that had been placed in advance.
When the pig stopped struggling, the blood flowed. The pig killer untied the rope on the pig's leg, cut a hole in one of the hind legs with a knife, stabbed the iron rod into it, pulled out the iron rod and began to blow air with his mouth, which was a manual work, usually two people took turns blowing. Until the pig was blown into a large bulging pig-shaped balloon, and the large balloon lay on all fours on a wide stool, those who did not participate in the pig blowing began to pour boiling water on the pig.
I think, "Dead pigs are not afraid of boiling water" is how it comes from, right?
When the water is soaked, the pig killer will use a thin iron piece more than ten centimeters long and five centimeters wide to begin to withdraw the pig's hair, scraping it with a loud sound, and the kung fu pig will become white and fat in a while.
The next steps are to open the chamber, put it on the shelves, weigh it, and decompose it.
The most critical and exciting is the weighing link, where neighbors wait to see who kills how many pounds, secretly comparing with their own pigs.
After the decomposition is completed, the father and mother will transport the meat home and put it away, and the father will help the pig killer to work and collect the pig feathers and other things. The mother began to cook pig blood, stew pork, press noodles, and cook hearty pig-killing dishes for pig killers and neighbors.
After the pig-killing dish is ready, the mother will fill each bowl with a small noodle, and then scoop a large spoonful of the pig-killing dish, which contains braised pork, pig blood, and vermicelli. When it was ready, my sister and I would bring a bowl to the neighbors.
Of course, the neighbors will send us a bowl after killing the pig. On this day, everyone eats the corners of their mouths, which is really fragrant! In one bite, the pork blood full of grease is full of raw flavor, the braised meat is fragrant but not greasy, and even the noodles poured with broth are so fragrant that people can't open their mouths.
In that era of lack of material life, usually guests will eat meat, but on the day of pig killing, the villagers will still generously share bowls of precious meat with others, which is the inheritance of the Chinese nation for thousands of years.
When everything is busy and it is getting dark, my father will silently clean the pigsty inside and out, and all things have spirits, and he will comfort the creatures who have been breeding for a year in his own way.
The snow was still obscured, covering the blood that flowed to the ground after the slaughter of pigs, and the winter of childhood was especially cold, but it did not affect people's love and yearning for life in the slightest. They always believe that if they try to move forward, life will get better and better.