Honestly, this is way weird. Nobody apologizes to me here. Ever. LoL
And, honestly, there’s no need to apologize, just realize the difference between packing a kitten in a cube to make it shaped like that, and killing an animal for a meal. They don’t show such “appalachian” shit on TV here, but if I saw it, I’d say it was a bit extreme for TV.
Just my highly overrated .02.
Sam
Well, the only black people on the show were also the only ones who had any experience doing this sort of thing - Mr. Brooks the elder had grown up on a farm, and the younger Mr. Brooks also had farming experience. So they had an advantage over the other folks.
Of course, somebody will probably cry “racism!” anyway. It’s the nature of things, apparently.
Oh I totally understand the difference, dude. That was a complete mental lapse because there is no way in hell that that is animal cruelty. I really honestly can make no explanation as to why I saide it was because that is alot less cruel than going to MCDonalds IMHO.
Just curious, but had the pig not been killed on the show, what do you think would’ve happened to it? Hint: it would not have gone back to it’s office job. They did not kill it to make it more “realistic,” they killed it because pigs are raised to be killed for meat. They wanted pig meat and had to kill the pig to get it, they couldn’t cut off a sliver and let it grow back or something. I totally don’t have a problem with that and I don’t even eat meat.
OK, I haven’t watched the show, but…
:rolleyes: If I spent a whole lot of time and hard work raising a pig on a farm, I’d want some sort of return on my investment. Yes, only two scenarios would have been remotely realistic: A) Kill and eat the pig, or, B) sell the pig to someone else who is going to kill and eat it. If you’re not going to do that, why raise a pig at all?
I think that this shows you that life, even in the pioneer days, is not merely about “survival”. It sounds like they had a party and had some hard-earned porkchops.
So now we are at the point where some people (the OP) can’t handle an animal getting slaughtered for food on TV. That is fine, but it was reality in 1883.
This points out exactly why most of us wouldn’t last a fucking week back then. Sorry your sensibilities were offended, but get a grip.
The show was about frontier life in the 1880’s.
People actually killed animals back then. Yes they fucking slaughtered animals and fucking ate them.
Just like now, but we generally don’t have to kill our own food. (unless you hunt, which I do)
What is the fucking problem? I don’t know why people are whining about this. So the kids freaked. I would bet most kids circa 1880 didn’t give a shit about the pigs etc. They were simply FOOD!
How the fuck do you think the homesteaders survived, by going to Safeway? It was pointed out that roughly only one out of three homesteaders made the 5 years it took to own the land. I would bet a lot of them got starved out.
Why are you so tripped out about an animal getting slaughtered for food when it was the norm for the era, as it is now?
I don’t eat meat, but this strikes me as a more honest and straightforward way of getting food than going to a supermarket. If anyone has a problem with the slaughter of animals, it would make more sense to picket the local grocery store than to object to the fact that they showed the event (or, rather, the aftermath) on TV. It would have probably been better had the parents tried harder to keep their son from getting attached to the pig, but if the kid eats bacon, that’s where it comes from, and he should know it.
I have vivid memories of the description of hog-butchering in Little House in the Big Woods, too, Zev. That may, in fact, be one reason I don’t eat meat now (the “bladder as a football” part really stuck in my mind for some reason).
What did he name the pig, anyway? I haven’t seen the show, so I’m getting a pretty funny picture of it all in my head (“Oinky! Nooooo!!!”).
I think the only reason I’m not a vegetarian (beside the fact that I really don’t like vegetables) is the face that I can push stuff like shell’s account out of my mind. The first time I heard “Meat is Murder” in high school I gave up meat for a couple of days - then I succumbed to the wily charms of a corny dog.
I’m actually reading “The Jungle” now, which of course is about the meat-packing industry in the early days before we had all these silly regulations like “No scooping dead rats, along with the poison that killed them and their droppings into the sausage machine.” If my carnivorous leanings survive this tome, they shall be intact forever.
“And the Clunes leaving to get food from the outside? WTF? Make a bow and shoot a deer dammit.”
To be fair to the Clunes (who generally were jackasses), Pappa Clune brought a gun with him for the express purpose of hunting, but was told he couldn’t hunt because game wasn’t legally in season. The show participants may have been living in 1883, but the calendar over at the Fish and Game Department still says 2002. 
[Homer]
mmmm…fresh pork chops…
[/Homer]
–For the record, they did have fresh venison provided by the local Crow Chief (the tribe could hunt).
With the gift of a deer came a lesson about where this homesteader’s land came from, and at what price.