By: MARGARET BROWN
Margaret Brown is one of The Resident’s longest standing contributors and has lived in the Algarve for more than 20 years. As well as Country Matters, she also writes Point of View every week.
Hanging out yet another wash and looking across towards a Portuguese neighbour’s farm on a serene and sunny morning with brisk drying breeze and a hint of spring, all joy and satisfaction vanished in the scream of a pig being slaughtered.
The country ritual of wrestling a suitably fat animal to the ground by strong family men is watched by other members of the ‘clan’, vicariously enjoying the spectacle of a beast fighting for its life.
Although stabbed by an expert, death comes slowly: a diminuendo of pain and fear has all the valley dogs as a backing group.
Purists claim that to be killed at home must be less traumatic than to suffer a long journey to the slaughterhouse and they do have a point.
Perhaps the flavour is improved and the meat tenderised during a struggle, but another local farmer I know ensures an instantaneous death with no adverse effect on the meat.
Both the Talmud of Islam and the Jewish Torah have specific rules for the killing of animals for food, neither of which allow stunning and both forbidding the eating of blood.
These instructions were laid down many centuries ago brought to Iberia by Arabs and immigrant Jews, and although Portugal follows the Catholic faith, the rituals linger on and the method of slaughter has become part of its heritage.
It seems to be purely a secular affair nowadays: chouriço de sangue or morcela made from animal blood being a most popular delicacy.
When Knights Were Bold (in days of old) was the title of a play written by Harriet Jay and had its premiere in 1907 at Wyndham’s Theatre.
In real life, back in the Middle Ages, many knights that went to war suffered amputations. without any other anaesthetic than strong alcohol to drink.
We have moved on since then and no one claims it as part of human heritage to be preserved because of its historical value.
Perhaps the time has now come to allow all animals killed for meat as swift and painless a death as is possible.
Unpleasant sounds
As I write, trainee parachutists have been taking to the air throughout the day, the heavy drone of their carrier plane audible through closed windows and dominating normal country sounds out of doors.
Worse than tinnitus to which one grows accustomed over the years, the noise has unpleasant overtones of World War II when the heavy beat of enemy bombers had me breaking out in goose pimples.
If this one aeroplane irritates some people and drives the more sensitive to distraction, how shall we adjust to the obvious disadvantages of having an airport within 10 kilometres? Add to that a racetrack large enough to hold Formula 1 competitions and the Portimão-Lagos area looks set to become all concrete and no soul.
Next on the list is development of the interior that will shrink a beautifully unspoilt countryside in an already small area.
Much needed employment will result in the short term for any rural inhabitants remaining but not in the practice of inherited farming knowledge.
There is a danger that the baby will be thrown out with the bathwater.
Many people visit another country just to taste the real flavour of the place, not to chase a miniature facsimile of Las Vegas with casinos.
While I sound like a member of “The Grumpy Old Women” and certainly do a good imitation from time to time, what really bothers me is that sometime in the future, the good land and skills needed to grow food in quantity will have been lost.
Should a natural or human disaster prevent importation of basic requirements, where will a disproportionately large urban population find its food?
Again casting the mind back, shortages during the 1939-45 war were considerable but both farmers and suburbanites ploughed and dug, sowed and harvested to augment a small weekly allowance of essential foods.
That which was imported came at the expense of sailors’ lives so no garden or allotment was laid fallow and the government followed an agricultural policy encouraging rather than denigrating country skills. One farmer and several smallholders in our part of the barlavento continue against the odds to run sheep, goats and cattle.
Fields of bearded wheat, barley and rye are thin and heading up early this year, no doubt due to lack of moisture in the soil.
Radical change
Last autumn, a second crop of maize was harvested very late: the cobs maturing in traditional woven tubs stacked outside the farmhouse. These are for animal consumption but equally they can be converted into bioethanol to be used as a petrol substitute.
Rape, soya bean and other oil seeds that are currently fed to livestock could be converted into biodiesel and is likely to result in a radical change of scenery.
Biofuels already make up 40 per cent of the petrol and diesel sold at Tesco supermarkets in Britain, the conglomerate seeking to encourage British farmers to supply them with these basic ingredients.
Because the volatile end product produces fewer harmful emissions with the exception of nitrous oxide and the source is renewable, it looks to be one of the fuels of the future.
There are downsides, however, such as the smog caused by nitrous oxide, and the cleansing effect biodiesel has on older engines, which clogs up the fuel filter with loosened carbon deposits.
