Continued from Part 1.
Two years and three months ago we began the grand experiment of hog raising here at our Pure Water Hollow homestead. Since then, we have built pig lots and housing, purchased feeding and watering equipment, fenced and repaired fencing, and repaired housing and repaired more fencing. We have fed and watered the hogs every day, breaking ice on freezing winter days and carrying extra buckets of water for their wallows on sweltering summer afternoons. Three of the original 30 pound piglets we purchased have grown up into two sows weighing 700-800 pounds each and a behemoth of a boar that is likely over 900 pounds today.
We have witnessed over 85 piglets entering the world here at our homestead, with the sows each having had 4 litters of piglets now. We bought a trailer to haul these animals around in and have seen about 35 castrations at the hands of our local FFA chapter. Many of those piglets were sold as six to eight week old feeder pigs at $30-$40 apiece, some died, some were bartered away and a couple even given away. Over this time we have raised 10 of the pigs to the market size of 220–250 pound hogs (or bigger in the case of “Porky”, our first hog for the freezer). Some of those market hogs sold for $100 each and some made the three trips to the professional meat markets, which cut the pork up for our freezer.
And as of today, January 21st, 2009, we still have 15 six-week old piglets, 1 six-month old 220 pound market hog, and of course the original 2 sows and 1 boar. The 15 piglets and the market hog will soon be gone and we will begin preparing for the next litters of piglets. What we do not have today that we did have a couple of days ago, are two market hogs, each weighing about 240-250 pounds. They were butchered on the 19th and carved up on the 20th. And it was all done in-house so to speak, here at our own homestead!
The next logical step in the progression of our hog raising experiment was to learn how to butcher our own pigs for ourselves. It was really too large of a leap for my pessimistic mind to grab hold of, except in that pesky realm of fantasy, for a long time. I had read the accounts of hog butchering in the Foxfire books, Carla Emery’s book, and a few other books and on-line sources. It always seemed like something other people might be able to do, but I had such trouble picturing myself ever being in on such an adventure. I had gotten fairly content with the system we had worked up of loading the pigs into the wagon, hauling them off to the butcher, and later picking up the wrapped pork at the meat market, paying the man, and taking it all home to the freezer.
The last time we performed such a maneuver was this past August. We went to the same meat market we had used last January, but this time the results were such that made us declare that a change was needed. For one thing, they had raised the prices from January without telling us. The “kill fee”, the price per pound of carcass weight, as well as the price for cured meat had all risen substantially. The owner said that new government regulations being imposed on him had raised his expenses and he had to pass them on to the customer in order to continue making ends meet. He said that he had cut corners everywhere he could, even hiring new Mexican helpers at a low wage, but the price increases were still necessary. (This was back when gasoline was selling for the historic highs of $4.00 a gallon and the prices of everything were skyrocketing). So now it would cost us between $130 and $150 to have each pig processed for the freezer, compared to just about $100 before!
The price alone might not have driven me to drastic measures, but losing meat that we had worked hard for did infuriate me! You see, these pigs “somehow” yielded up much less meat to us than the ones from January, even though these animals were actually larger than those took in January! There were also strange irregularities among the three pigs themselves. The one pig that was obviously the largest gave us the least amount of meat! All together, we got back about 80 pounds of pork less than I was expecting based on our prior experiences. We complained to the owner before paying, but there was nothing we could really do. He said we must be mistaken because everything is weighed out carefully and recorded.
We had heard similar stories about other butchers, but I thought we were being careful by using a very professional outfit. I guess the bottom line is that you can never know for sure if you are getting everything, or even if you are getting meat from your own animals, unless you do it yourself. After the negative experience with the meat market I decided that we had to do something different. If we could do a home butchering we would save quite a bit of money, know for sure we were getting all the meat that we raised, as well as learn a vital survival skill.
I began asking people at church and in the community if anyone would be willing to come to our homestead and show us how to butcher a pig. We could butcher two hogs and they could take the meat from one of them. Many people talked like they knew how to do it, but no one knew good enough, or was willing, to take us up on our offer. I finally remembered a fellow, James Carter, who had bought one of our market hogs last January for $100 and had butchered it himself. We called and asked him if he would like to butcher a couple of more pigs. We offered to bring two market hogs to his home and give him one to keep in exchange for his knowledge of how to go about the butchering process. We would watch, help, and thereby learn how to butcher a hog on our own. He jumped at the opportunity and we set it up for January 19th, Martin Luther King Jr. day.
We were set to load the pigs on the wagon and take off to the Carter’s home but Providence had other plans. The roads were bad on this particular Monday with a light snowfall and recent temperatures that had been near zero degrees. James lives out in the country way up on a mountaintop, and their road never even gets treated, much less plowed. There was no way a van pulling a hog trailer would make it up there on such icy roads.
James had the solution. He would come to our home in his 4-wheel drive and we could butcher the hogs here! I was excited, but was also concerned that we were not ready. Did we have the materials needed? James said we just needed a gun, several sharp knives, a hatchet, a hacksaw, and somewhere to hang the hogs in the air. Since Matthew, my 15-year old, has been collecting sharp objects for some time now, I told James to come on over!
Continued in Part 3.
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