WHAT KIND OF COW IS THAT?

When you move to a small town it takes a while to find out the things that no one tells you because they assume that “everyone knows that.” When I first moved here ten years ago, there were still dry cleaners in Conrad and Cut Bank, but they blinked out. When I asked around Valier for the closest one surviving, people went blank because hardly anyone buys clothes that must be dry-cleaned anymore. Finally someone told me that I should ask the butcher.

It turned out that Christiaens Meats started being a dry-cleaning drop-off/pickup when it was a grocery store as well as a meat store, and they had just continued on as a default courtesy. It finally got warm enough for me to do without my winter jacket for a week (the truck only comes through on Wednesday at 7AM) so off it went for the first cleaning since I bought it -- I dread to think how long ago. Rod Christiaens, the proprietor, joked that the cleaners turned it a different color: it left red and came back black. (It’s a reversible red fleece jacket with a waterproof black lining.)

Rod is the newest member of the Valier town council, if you don’t count the new mayor, and a valuable addition. The Valier town council is like the Heart Butte School Board: the secret of success is a balance among the descendants of the original Belgian families who came here with the help of their priest and the Great Northern Railroad -- a whole village that migrated together. One knows they had to be the most adventurous ones, but they were dry land farming which means the most focused and steady. A rare combination, but powerful. If they are properly balanced, things get done.

The newest thing among foodies right now, they say, is home butchering. Probably they don’t mean raising the cow or killing it -- more like buying a quarter and cutting it up. One of the newer strategies for “eat where you live” is to have the butcher come to the ranch and kill onsite, thus eliminating the dangers of feedlot contamination and the fat marbling from eating grain. (I’m sorry I ever read about cows having such upset stomachs from eating grain -- which they are not evolved to digest -- that feedlots are full of puddles of cow puke. I hope you’re not reading this at meal time.)

Rod cuts up his meat right there in the store on a steel-topped table. He’s been doing it for many years and has the rhythm down cold, but the room is not cold. A quarter of a cow (probably a steer) is on the table. It’s been hanging a while: the edges are black. “What kind of cow is that?” I ask, trying to sound really hip and informed.

“Kind of a hybrid,” says Rod. His knife slides around the rims, pares off fat, clips off tags of flesh. It must be formidably sharp. The last fancy cooking mag I read tells about the angle of the sharpening, what difference it makes (one angle gets dull faster than the other but I forget which angle), and what kind of steel the blade is made of. It’s not that these things are better or worse in an absolute sense, but they make a difference depending on what you expect the knife to do. So you have to have done it enough to HAVE expectations or, as I suspect is true for Rod, someone has to have passed on what they know. He’s the only one I see cutting, while the other people move around him. The place doesn’t reek of chlorine the way the supermarket butcher spaces do. When there is so much chlorine splashed around, I always wonder whether they aren’t depending on it too much and neglecting ordinary precautions.

Most of what he does is custom cutting for ranchers or hunters, almost exclusively beef and pork. There is a local pig farmer who raises “free range” hogs. I suppose the Hutterites, who run an indoor pig factory across the lake, do their own butchering. I would not buy from them -- they shrug off advice about chemicals and so on. But I feel guilty for not buying meat from Rod. Once it’s cut, he freezes some of it -- maybe he cuts some of it in shares. But most of the packages are meant for families or at least couples. I just don’t use it up very fast. Mostly I eat chickens and (if I can get it) wild fish (not farmed) or just stick to vegetable protein. But sometimes I get a wild animal craving for beef, most often eating it sauteed in strips and served on a pile of salad greens. I had that the first time at Papa Hayden’s in Portland, very fancy place, and it tasted so good I come back to it all the time.

“Butchering onsite is very progressive,” I suggest. “It would make a good magazine article.”

Rod says, “It’s an old story. We’ve been doing it for years and years.”

I wonder what I could ask him for a magazine article, not a local one but to try to get into a national magazine. I could ask whether he kills with a bullet or a bolt gun, like that one in “No Country for Old Men.” Maybe the rancher does the killing. I could ask him whether he’s ever butchered a buffalo. What about an ostrich? If someone asked him to do it, how would he about the task? I notice that he’s not missing any fingers, which is a sign he knows what he’s doing and is skillful -- doesn’t get distracted. He’s like that in town council meetings, too. “Get to the point.” The quarters of beef must weigh eighty pounds, but he’s big enough to easily handle them.

The butcher shop feels peaceful. There’s no blood slopping around. No one is angry. Everyone helps everyone load and unload the pickups that come and go. Maybe I should rethink this meat thing. I remember a health food owner in Fairfield telling me that his wife controlled her diabetes by eating mostly meat. Maybe if it were a “known cow” without a lot of injections, handled skillfully, it would be better than chicken full of saline solution.

Anyway, now my jacket is clean. Now I need to know who does Fed Ex pickup and dropoff.