Story: Lunch at the Pig Farm

Note: This story was first sent out as an email about a year ago. I post it in memory of our friend, Lenore, who was with us that day, and lost her battle with cancer this year. She sits at the head of the table in the above photo, and was a tremendous help to us when we arrived as "newbies" at the beach next door to her house in Esterillos Este.

The interesting things to do in Costa Rica still amaze me. 

Our neighbors were mentioning to Linda the other day that a trip to the Pig Farm would be fun. Sayyy.........what? 

Oh yes, lunch at the Pig Farm! The pig farmers only serve lunch on Saturdays. 

Want to go this Saturday?......Sure!

So, Saturday we were off to the Pig Farm with two sets of neighbors, Richard and Lenore, who live next door; and Nancy and Dave, who had just come down to her house down the beach from us.

Her house is beautiful, but that's another story. 

For now.........what about those pigs? 

All we know is that we are going to the Pig Farm for lunch!

Will there be live pigs where we are eating? 

Do they slaughter them right there on the spot..... squealing and all? 

Like, do we pick out our pig, like they do with lobster?

The thought of it is just too weird to think about....

Linda and I were not too sure about this, but too late now, our two cars are on the road to the Pig Farm. 

Gotta think positive!

The Pig Farm is on the road to the very little town of Las Vegas, which is in the hills above acres and acres of palm oil orchards. They harvest the seed pods, which are squeezed and boiled into oil at a nearby plant. The area south of us has a lot of these orchards.

The good old United Fruit Company built these wooden houses to create little communities to house their workers years ago when it was pineapples and bananas they were planting. 

All those have been replaced with Palms.

The houses are always in a U shape around a central soccer field, or futbol field as they say here.

The Palms seem to go on and on.You could really get lost in here... a lot of roads and hardly any signs.

And the gravel road is very noisy! Rough, but better than some we've been on. I found that it was better to drive faster and go across the top of the rocks, instead of slowly and bump along on each and every one of them.

After driving for almost an hour, we finally reached the Pig Farm. There were several buildings. The one on the right is the farmer's residence. The palapa on the left has some picnic style tables where you eat. And, the sheds in the back are where the pork is cooked and sold.

That's us, walking up to the place and greeting the woman in charge. She only speaks Spanish, but when people are trying to sell you something, they work very hard to communicate. She was actually very nice and friendly.

She's at the counter helping a customer. You can buy pork here cooked or uncooked on Saturdays. These farmers supply pork to the restaurants on the other days, and whatever else pig farmers do.

We sat down at the largest table after getting some long neck Imperials from the glass refrigerator under the palapa. Lenore did the ordering for us. The choices were Yucca (boiled or fried) and Chicarones, or Chicarones Con Carne (fried pork skins or fried pork skins with meat). She ordered a grande plata with all of it, except no boiled Yucca, just fried stuff. The carne was pretty much just mean and little fat.

The kettle was smoking across in the cooking shed. Once we ordered a lot of activity commenced. I was relieved to discover that this was not actually THE Pig Farm, just the pig farmer's casa. The actual farm was a few miles away and we passed on that opportunity to tour it. The beer was cold, but making me hungry...

The oldest son was doing the stirring of the fried pig stuff. This was the view coming out of the little bano that was basically a trough surrounded by some wood, tin and concrete blocks.

They are said to have the best Chicarones in the area. Evidently it is a favorite Tico food.

Now we're talking...Yucca, Pig, Limes and Beer! Sorry vegetarians, but this stuff was good. We used toothpicks to stab the platters in the center of the table.

While we ate, more people started coming in, some in cars and some on motorcycles. 

The lady and her son walked over to the fence to talk to a friend who had just driven up on his bicycle.

Trucks come flying by every few minutes taking their cargo back and forth. This truck in the background was full of watermelons.

In fact, on our drive home we passed a field I had missed on the way there. It was full of melons too.

We made it home in plenty of time for me to walk out our back door and capture this sunset. 

What a nice Saturday in Central America. Lunch at the Pig Farm!