1) I'd still be cutting meat 16 years later.
2) I'd be having the time of my life doing it.
So what the heck has made it so fun? Cutting meat doesn't sound fun to the layman. Honesty, its very hard work. It's physically demanding work; lifting, repetitive motion, falling objects and temperature extremes. Not to mention the fact your working with tools designed to cut flesh. One of the first thing butchers do when meeting each other the first time is hold their hands up. It's a light-hearted inside joke... till a guy holds up a hand with 8 1/2 fingers. Then you cringe at some horrific story about a power saw taking off their fingers or their hand got into a tenderizer. I'm lucky. I've have only needed a few stitches to fix any cuts I've had. But over the years, I've practically ruined my elbow. It's also mentally taxing and stressful. "Burn-out" is very common in my industry. I have walked away from a couple of really great jobs, just cause I couldn't do it anymore. I have flirted, over the years, with hanging up my knives for something else. Fortunately, chance experiences have touched my soul and kept me focused and passionate about butchery.
Out of school, I spent two years working at a Mom & Pop full service meat market. It's where I got my experience, except for school, where I worked exclusively with swinging beef. I was literally the only employee. One thing I remember about that place was how people just came in to buy but stayed to watch. One old man, Mr. Jones, a retired math teacher bought 4 pounds spare ribs every friday. He knew what time we prepared the spareribs for the case. He came at that time so he got the best pick. He also loved to watch me swing the cleaver as I cracked the ribs into. I just remember that big ole toothless grin. Come to think of it, must have been good meat or him a good cook, cause he as hell wasn't chewing it.
The second job I took as a meat cutter was at a Wal-mart supercenter in Bellmead texas. It was a very busy meat market. I cut bone-in and boneless cuts with a tablesaw. I cut 200+ pounds of beef sirloins steaks a day. Half a dozen cases of bone-in pork loins, twice that in boneless loins during peak grilling seasons. This was for many reasons one of the worst jobs I have had. By the end of my time there I hated cutting meat. It was weighting on my conscience. Meat didn't look like what I was use too. All bagged primals and not carcasses. One day as I was running the tablesaw thru a top butt and I hit a "shot-pocket". If you have never heard of a shot pocket, it's a pocket of un-absorbed antibiotics or some kind of unnecessary medicine giving to animals. In this case, beef which is more common because of the scale of cattle operations and liberal use of antibiotics. They just give stuff to all of them as a preventative measure. However, in a healthy animal the medicine is invasive and actually causes infection. A nasty, stinky, puss-filled infection. This makes for quite a mess why you run a 4000 r.p.m. saw blade through it. One word, Nasty.
I have to say after some contemplation, and a fair amount of questions, my thoughts on my job changed. I began having a lot of guilt about what i did to earn a living. I'm a country boy. Ive grown up around farms and farm animals. I know how they should be properly treated. I knew these were animals were not properly treated animals. Signs of stress and over medications in the animals meat were too common. I didn't think i was a part of the right facet of the meat industry. Dark days.
I quit and moved to austin. I wasn't sure what to do at this point. I was in my early twenties and still had lot's of wanderlust in me. I didn't really think of my trade as a career, it just payed the bills. I had returned to school one week, while visiting my folks, to look at the job listing board. There was a job in my neighborhood. What LUCK. I found myself employed at a small local neighborhood grocery in the old neighborhood of Clarksville. Nothing special, mediocre-over priced foodstuffs. I did have two GREAT mentors there; Arnie Flores and Bruce Lamb Contributors to my techniques and over all approach to being a "friendly-neighborhood butcher".
I spent 6 years working off and on with the chain at two locations. Still something bothered me . I was still working with commodity boxed meat. I could walk around the back of the store and I see the signs of another era. The above rail system was in place for hanging meat. Id seen them before, and worked on them. I knew i'd never see these rails in this store in use again, ever. The butchers I worked with seemed... deflated. Like they could only reminisce about a time long gone by. They were still were incredibly skilled in the art of displaying food, crafting sausages, and cutting techniques. Now they had to setting for skinning chicken breast for ungrateful snooty customers.
Fed up over something, dissatisfaction probably, I walked. I had heard though the grapevine and there was a opening for the local granola Coop. I was unemployed for all of 15 minutes. From the time I left till I put in a application for the position I ultimately got. I found myself working for the famous Wheatsville food Coop. I finally began working with meat that had values backing it. Hell, I was giving the task to find the "best". This could have been a better deal for me. Though I hid my internal conundrum at job in the past. Now I was pleased to put my issues of animal rights and welfare to rest. I had basically enrolled in a crash course in all things sustainable and ethically treated. I was now allowed to asked the question, where does this meat come from? I began working with purpose and i felt like i was having a positive influence in my community. I had opportunities write about "good meat" in the newsletter. I was getting to touring farms and ranches, and got to meet some great people. Like tour Paul Willis's farm in Thornton Iowa.
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I was inspired to represent meat and butchery in the best light possible. Some people called me passionate. I don't know about that, but i did believe in what i was doing. This made my days much brighter. I thank Wheatsville for those opportunities.
The second eye opening event in my career happen quickly and much impact. During a 2 day seam-butchery class put on by Christoph Wiesner a master butcher from Austria and his wife.
It was a informative class, you gotta love it when you learn new thing 15 years later in your job. But it wasn't necessarily that. I had the opportunity to hangout with that austrian couple. We drank a arm full of cheap czech style beers. We talked about the importance of proper husbandry, and how it play a roll in our job as the butcher. Christoph and his wife Isabella described their farm back in austria. We talked about the problems of the US meat food supply, not safety but quality. Then i asked about his take mastery of the craft of butchery. I actually had a the same number of years on the knife. As he talked about his time as a apprentice and the journeyman years and on, i realized this all sounded rather similar. He explained that in the butchers guild in the UK a master butcher is the one who teaches. Although i would only reluctantly call myself a master butcher. I had already apprenticed several people myself. Some i just helped with there technique, others i took as a focused dishwashers and made a damn fine butcher. For the record i have nothing but respect for dishwashers, its a respectable job.
Suddenly it was full circle. Not only had I escaped the dark underbelly of the industry. That had all but turned me away from butchery. Now i have a mission.... I will be that Master butcher. So i'm going old school. Everything short of traveling to europe to work (for right now). I'm embracing all of the oldness disciplines of butchery. I've found myself neck deep in the netherworld of salume. The Italian craft of curing, fermenting and aging meat. Not to be confused with charcuterie, the french cousin to salume.
So, who buys those carcasses? Well I do. I take one animal and make many things with it. It's a much slower pace i keep now, more methodical. I use knives and a cleaver, sometime a hand saw. I have minimal waste. I use the whole animal.
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