Poultry and Rabbit

Chicken and rabbit were the meats that we ate most frequently at home when I was growing up. My father had a farm not far from the town where we lived and it was run, according to the practice that prevailed in Italy until well after the end of the Second World War, by a tenant farmer. He lived on the land with his family in the house my father had provided, unencumbered by such contrivances as running water, electricity; and indoor plumbing, sharing a roof with the cows and a few other domestic animals. He planted, grew, and harvested the crops, and was expected to turn over a little more than half of the proceeds of any sale to my father. I remember the periodic reckonings well, my father and his farmer hunched over the numbers on the scraps of paper that were spread on the dining table, each exercising his natural right, the one to determine the true extent of his legitimate share, the other to disclose as little of it as he could get away with.