The Provider

The Provider

I wouldn’t claim that we are a perfect family, far from it. Like all families we have our faults and bicker from time to time and on occasions father is forced to intervene to establish a sense of order Apart from that I would not swap them for all of the gold in the ground. My parents both have daytime jobs, my mother works in the grocery store and my dad drives a forklift part-time for the local stock merchant, neither of them has ever taken a sick day. During the week my brother would walk me to and from school we generally dawdled on the way back because we both knew that mother would be in the kitchen waiting to assign us chores, neither laundry or chopping wood are reasons to get excited about. Homework and chores had to be completed before we sat down for supper failure to do so would result in loss of desert and depending on how tardy we were could well have meant no supper at all, though never happened. The routine on the weekend considerably different. Our father maintained a healthy supply of fish and game which he would catch on his own when my brother and I were too young to leave the house. As my brother became old enough to learn he would accompany him and learn how to hunt and dress what he killed.   

Our day would start with me kneading dough for bread and mother using a big wooden rolling pin to flatten out pastry dough for the pies. She was impressive to watch, when she began chopping up the filling her blade swished and sliced effortlessly. After the first of the pies went into the hot oven the frantic pace in the kitchen would ease a little and she used the lull to check on the progress of the meat hanging in the smokehouse outside in the back garden. The smokehouse door was a regular size door that concealed large cuts of smoked meat hanging in a room large enough to contain full grown man.

Mmm, doing nicely. Couple more days and it’ll be ready for eating

The smokehouse had been there for as long as I could remember, it looked like a tiny version of our house complete with smoking chimney and covered wood store. Though mother spent considerable time in the kitchen during the week, weekends were especially busy. Not only would she ensure that we had plenty of food for the coming week in the larder but she would also make extra for the poor families in the region to be delivered it to our local church hall regularly every Sunday afternoon. We were not rich by any means but there was always meat on the table and hot bread in the oven. My mother always said, charity may begin at home but once it has finished there it then visits the neighbourhood. I think that’s one of the reasons they kept the smokehouse so full, it was their way of contributing to the wellbeing of the people in the town they loved.

Dad was one of the best hunters in the area, I can’t remember a time when he returned home empty-handed. He preferred to hunt with a compound bow and took pride in his one-shot kills. Nothing was off limits so if it was alive and without offspring in tow it was fair game and that included ‘long-pork’. Once the quarry had been dispatched its carcass would be dressed and cut into manageable pieces to be taken back to the smokehouse. Ours was one the few remaining families that were permitted to hunt ‘long-pork’. He told us of times past when famines were common and people were forced to waste nothing and eat what was available. The skills and traditions of ‘long-pork’ hunting had been passed down from father to son for hundreds of years until they became a normal part of life. Over time famines became less regular and the need for such skills dwindled, those in possession of the arcane knowledge either allowed it to lapse or became increasingly more secretive. The authorities at the time were fearful of the famines returning so they allowed its hunters to remain active albeit secretive. Thankfully today famines exist only in the memory of the very oldest so the widespread eating of ‘long-pork’ is rare and is sanctioned only to prevent the aged and unfortunate from going hungry.

On a first meeting with my father he could come across as a polite yet dour man, conservatively dressed and quietly spoken. However, in church he felt comfortable and was regularly witnessed smiling and joking with the other parishioners at the post-service supper held in the town hall. ‘At-home’ dad was different again; more approachable it was if invisible barriers he needed for the ‘outside’ world were no longer needed. He could lower all of them and just be our dad; kind, loving, gentle and the funniest person you would ever likely to meet. He could to reduce us to fits of laughter and sore ribs with just a couple of jokes or a funny story. My father was indeed a complex man but regardless of where he found himself he was always true to himself. Between my mothers’ generosity and fathers’ integrity our family was held in high regard by the locals.

Due in part to the success of Saturdays hunt it was unnecessary to go out again. So, this particular Sunday morning saw my brother out in the garden chopping wood, the nights had been getting especially cold lately and the wood store needed topping up before the working week started. My father was tinkering with his bow in the shed, I of course was in the kitchen with mother kneading some much-needed dough for bread. Our hands were covered in flour as we folded and pressed the gooey mixture. Her oven could bake six loaves at a time or enough bread rolls to feed a small army so I had to work hard to keep up with her so it could all go in at the same time.

 Mother paused momentarily and looked up from the floury mound she was working on and said,

Be a dear and go to the smokehouse for me and pick out a nice size piece of long-pork, the vicar’s coming over for dinner tonight and I want something extra tasty to serve him.