Carpenter By Henry Carpenter Summary

Learning about life and death is a never ending challenge for Carpenter. In her chapter pig, she faces the challenges and heartache of raising two hungry pigs. Feeling like a professional farmer Carpenter said, “After almost ten years of beekeeping, vegetable planting, and chicken tending- and more recent turkeys raising and rabbit herding- Bill and I were going to reach the pinnacle of urban farming; we were going to raise a pig” (187). In other words, Carpenter and bill were going to grow their farm family with a pig. The pigs were purchased at a 4H auction. The auction was thrilling and confusing for both Carpenter and Bill. The pigs (male and female) were named Big boy and Little girl. Carpenter had delusional feelings about raising the pigs
In the beginning, Carpenter didn’t know if feeding the pigs second hand food would work. The only way she would know is to try it. With her amaze the pigs loved the china town dumpster food. Night after night of dumpster diving, it dawned on Carpenter, these pigs were going to get bigger. As the pigs got bigger the pigs demanded more food. Carpenter had to do a lot of work not just raising the pigs, but learning how to raise the pigs. She relied on books a lot to raise her farm. After four months of dumpster diving, Carpenter was sick of being “the pigs’ bitch”. She was exhausted, and the pigs were eating four full sized buckets of dumpster food a day. At this point foraging for them was a part-time job. Four nights a week Carpenter and Bill worked the Chinatown dumpers. One night a homeless man offered them an old dollar, because in his mind they were worse off than him. This shows how odd the couple must have looked in the trash. As bad as dumpster for pig chow was, it wasn’t the worse part. Carpenter knew one day she was going to kill the pigs in order to eat them. Different people suggested different techniques to slaughter the