Ohiofarmgirl'sAdventuresinTheGoodLand-where ya been? whatcha been doin

[ohiofarmgirl]

The Hog Harvest of '09 was a ROARING success!

I've been in the trenches for two days. There's still a little film of oink all over the kitchen but we are stickin' a fork in it for now.... we are DONE.

Them pigs are kizzled, hams have been delivered, bacons are chillin, the freezer to bulging, and the fridge is crying uncle at being so heavy laden.

I have at least a week of packaging meat and lard making ahead of me. But wow what a satisfying couple of days.

Right now I'm so tired I can barely type so a full overview will have to wait. Until then, a bit of free prose. It even rhymes:

Stink Eye

Oh piggy piggy piggy pie
Why is it you givin' me that stink eye?
Just come on over here with that big head
So's I can shoot you till your dead
Die pig die
So's I can hang you in the barn up high
Cut that meat and cut it right
So's I can eat it on a winter's night
Oh pig you're so much better than a cow
But givin' me that stink eye...
Who's laughin now?

 

[Quail_Antwerp]

LOVE the poem! and yumm-o on the fresh pork!!

 

[miss_thenorth]

 

[freemotion]

Did you do EVERYTHING, start to finish, yourselves? Details, girl, details! My dad insists we can do this next year, I hope he's right! Two piggies in the spring!!!

 

[freemotion]

Dear Abbie,

What is that work surface the side of pork is sitting on? Looks textured. Clue me in.....

---Clueless and Pigless in MA

 

[Dace]

Dear Abbie,

What is that work surface the side of pork is sitting on? Looks textured. Clue me in.....

---Clueless and Pigless in MA

looks stainless from here.


Ohio.....that poem is priceless.......here I sit all by myself giggling and choking on my smoothie!

 

[Up-the-Creek]

WOW, and again I say WOW!
You are a braver soul than I. We had a hog butchered last fall, but we took ours to a butcher. There is no way I could tackle such a project. I remember watching my grandpa and parents butcher hogs and it is a lot of work. Plus I worry about messing up the cuts of meat,..I am by no means no meat cutter. Thats why the deer we processed last week was turned into deer burger and sausage mostly. That alone was enough work for me. I am planning on buying two more piggies for butcher this coming spring,..gotta love that pork! Love the poem too!

 

[ohiofarmgirl]

Hey everybody! Thought Id give you the quick tour on the how tos from our Hog Harvest 2009.

Quick follow up questions:

* YES, Free, you totally can do this!
* And nope, UTC, not brave at allpossibly a little nave tho
;-)

Whats the worst thing that is going to happen if you mess up the cutting? Sausage? Heck Im all for that kinda mistake!

Plus we had our buddy come to help and he is a hog killin and dressin master. Ours were the 15th and 16th hogs he dressed this season! I keep telling him to start a school to teach folks how to do this at home.

* Dear Clueless and Pigless in MA,

The tabletop is, of all things, a stainless steel bathroom partition. Can you believe it? The Big Man used to work for a construction material company and they were going to toss it! Not fearing dumpster diving AT ALL he went in for it and voila our butcher table surface was born. I built a base for it with the $0.51 cull wood from Home Depot. We generally use it outside for all our critter dressing. But I was cold yesterday so we just laid it over the center island in the kitchen and cut the meat directly on it. Worked great. And you can hose it off when youre done! Whoot!

Before we get any further there are going to be GRAPHIC PICTURES so hide your eyes or just look away.but nothing worse than youd see on any of the crime shows. Ready?

I have to include a before picture them's those darn pigs who hated me all summer. The one on the left is a herford he came in about 270lbs or so and the one on the right is a Tamworth x herford who was closer to 300lbs, if not a touch more. Of course it rained like the dickens the day before so it was mud soup for the dispatching part of the day.

Contrary to all my big talk I did NOT do the shootin I was outmanned and outgunned (literally) but The Big Man and The Pig Man. With two big rednecks calling each other names and punching each other in the arm I was most useful up at the top of the hill just in case something went wrong or I had to call 911.

I also manned the whiskey shot table. They did the shootin then I handed them their shots. Of course I had to test the Jack just to make sure it wasnt bad. A couple of times. By the time the pigs were bled out I was singing my songs of praise loudly and badly.

We drug the pigs up the hill and in front of the barn to saw the heads off those beasts and scoop out the guts. I held the pig gut bag. Not wanting to make the same 'bucket' mistake as last year we put the guts into old feed bags. Im hopeful this will garner much better results when the burn pile time comes around. We'll see.

The men built a kind of open table out of saw horses and 2x6s. With the help of our favorite neighbor kid they hefted the carcasses up on the tables and we commenced to skinnin. Initially I got a C- from The Pig Man for my bad efforts. He had his side done in about 30 seconds and I was lagging. But I had a lot of enthusiasm and I was holding the booze so I got re-graded shortly after that. B+!

After the carcasses were skinned we used come alongs to hoist them up and hang off the rafters of the barn. Arent they lovely?

I could barely sleep a wink that night with all that fresh pork hanging seductively in the barn so we were up and at it at dawn. While I was fully expecting to go in and see one of the barncats swinging from the carcasses the big sides of meat were just fine and well chilled. The hens were particularly interested in the big meat piatas hanging in the barn and that was pretty funny. I had to employ a number of hen distraction techniques to divert their attention elsewhere.

After breakfast we got to cutting. Basically we cut the hams off, then cut the rest of the carcasses down from the hooks and brought them into the house to part up. The bacons are enormous the Tams bacons are probably about as tall as I am and I cant wait to get them back.

Well take most of the bacons, as well as the hams, in to a local butcher for smoking. Since Im so darn lazy I didnt get my smoke house built this summer but next year.. oh yes next year well be ready. We are keeping one of the bacons and will do that ourselves in our barrel shaped smoker/charcoal grill. The process isnt complicated it just takes a while and our smoker really isnt big enough for this kinda thing.

We cut out the ribs, deboned most of the loins for chops that will make your weep, cut up most of the shoulders (easier to precut for stews and such), and of course trimmed every scrap of fat.

Oh, FarmerChick, your ladies would go gaa-gaa over the fatback. At least 2 inches thick and lovely. One of the lard buckets was so heavy I couldnt even pick it up. I have two kettles of lard going right now and have a lot more to go.

And then we started with the grinding. The Pig Man has an enormous grinder that we used to make just 10 pounds of sausage. We like bulk sausage so we did not use casings. And since we use ground pork like ground beef, we opted for mostly just plain ground pork which can be mixed with the seasonings for more sausage later.

Then my favorite part of the day we made liverwurst. Let it be clear that I love liver in the wurst way oh man its just heavenly. My love for liver started when I was traveling in Germany and was served liverwurst for breakfast! Could there possibly be anything better? I think not. So we used most of the huge livers for that but dont worry I have some liver in tact for a big ol fry up.

The rest of the bits and pieces will be cooked up for the dogs and the little feathered velociraptors out there in the hen yard have been getting theirs as well. Ill save whatever bits and pieces are left from the lard making for them. They love the extra fat as the days get colder.

So except for the guts, the heads, and the skins most everything from the pigs get used. We are enormously grateful and giddy to have a years worth of food in the freezer. And so glad that our little pork experiment is going so well. And we figure that our respective grandfathers are just pleased as punch looking down on us. The Big Mans grandfather was a hog farmer all his life and mine owned a little country store. He was the towns butcher and I often helped him. In fact I was the only 4th grader who could do secondary cuts on a side of beef!

Sometimes people ask us how can you DO that (said with horror, usually) but I have to say we had a great time. No we arent out there happy to be killing something (well. ) but we are wildly happy that we can feed ourselves and that we are participating in a long and glorious tradition of homesteading, if only in our little way.

So to all the haters out there that think we are horrible and how can we do that to those poor widdle piggy wiggies. and to that yellow bellied coward garbage guy who I know wont be stopping to get our extra stinky trash this week heres mud in your eye:

 

[freemotion]

I still want more details....what kind of knives did you use to do all this cutting? Like the heads.....

How much time did it take, start to finish? (I figure I'll have to double it...)

And most importantly, how much liquor do I need to have on hand?

 

[Dace]

Great story...a little icky at the end but you did give me fair warning....maybe my tummy is just rumbling because it wants lunch.

Ironically I have a couple slices of bacon on the frying pan right now...yum!

Liquor, guns and sharp knives....good thing you were ready to call 911!