Pig Butchering Day.

We butchered two pigs recently and let them hang over night to cut and wrap the next day. I will not post butchering pictures again as my blog was tagged last time I put up butchering pictures. But we managed to kill, skin and gut 2 pigs in an hour and a half with 3 of us working (and the other adult watching the 6 kids inside) and as Papa works at 11am these days and he even had time to brew a coffee before running off to work. We cut and wrapped the next day with another couple, M & A, which made it a lot faster and funner. One of the pigs was M&A's and so we weighted each piece as it came inside and did theirs first so nothing got mixed up. The pieces all together weighed in at 238lbs!! Which means the live weight of the pig was about 310lbs. Not a bad size!! We didn't weigh the last two pigs we did but we think they were only a little bit smaller then this one. Our meat saw and grinder worked GREAT and we love being able to do all but the cured stuff. We had a few setbacks trying to figure out the stuffer but we got it going and it works great too. We made almost 100lbs of stuffed sausage, and cut and wrapped both pigs, including chops, tenderloin, and roasts. The bacon was the only thing sent out to be cured as neither of us wanted hams. The fat we froze in bags to be rendered another day. What a day though. M&A's kids were babysat out most of the day but our 4 were here and relegated to the living room, which they are used to and don't mind. They watched several movies and got to 'picnic' out on their kids table for both meals. The kitchen was a total mess. I was wearing thick socks ( I don't like shoes) but Papa and M&A all wore boots or shoes. By the end of the day they could not stand upright on the floor... it was that slimy with mess. Fat mostly. I still could as my socks stuck to the floor. We used a cheap plastic table cloth over the table for the messy stuff so when it came time to wrap up the meat we took the whole mess off and worked on a clean table for the wrapping. This way we could keep the wrapped packages clean and not have to scrub all the fat off the table every time we needed to wrap. We burned the table cloth when we were finished!! Even though we had several delays and setbacks we're happy that we got these two pigs done and got most of the kinks out of the meat saw and the process itself. 4 down 2 to go. Oh and on that note we recently ordered pigs for this spring. Last fall we found a family nearby that raises Berkshire pigs and we've ordered 6 wieners (about a 40 to 60 lb piglet) from them for April. We are planning on keeping one or two of the gilts (a female pig = to a heifer) to breed ourselves next winter and raise up our own piglets. These pigs are an old fashioned black breed which is said to have better meat taste and tenderness.

Here is Papa separating the chops from the bacon/ribs on the big pig with our new saw!! The saw itself makes a surprisingly little mess, almost all of the mess goes into a tray under the blade and NONE was on the cabinets or oven.