Thoughts on raising your own food
We live on a small farm, and we raise some of our own food – other than the garden, this has thus far included chickens for eggs and meat and pigs for meat. Lamb will be taking its place on the list soon. We’ve also acquired dairy goats so we’ll be getting milk soon too. In time, chevon (that’s goat meat) will also be on the list.
Last Saturday I butchered one of our pigs, and today I butchered the other. I gotta say that butchering is exhausting work, but when it goes well it’s satisfying. Last Saturday didn’t go so well. To put it mildly, I botched the kill. After last Saturday, I was very discouraged and felt like maybe I should just haul the remaining pig back to the stock auction and sell it. I can think of a lot of good reasons for raising your own meat, but one of the important reasons to me is that the animal will typically have a higher quality of life on my little farm than it would in some feed lot. Another important reason to me is that when the animal is killed, it happens without a lot of fear or pain. Hence my discouragement.
However, if you make a mistake, you may as well learn from it. I was very apprehensive today, but things went well. Very clean, fast kill. Consequently the whole process of butchering seemed to go easier, and I’m feeling a lot better about raising meat animals again.
So now I have close to 300 lbs of pork in my fridge and freezer – including (so far) about 40 lbs of home made sausage, and 25 lbs of home cured hams. We even made some sausage links. Here’s a tip about making sausage links: Many references will tell you to grind the pork once, and then run it through the grinder again to stuff the sausage casings. The tip? Don’t run it through the grinder the second time. We did this, and what you end up with is VERY finely ground meat, and while the taste is just fine, the texture is NOT like the sausage you’d buy at the store. We still have more sausage to make, more hams to cure, bacons to cure, and a bunch of ribs, loin, and chops to cut up, but at least the hard work is done.
jerome said,
March 16, 2008 @ 7:30 am
Two Words: MEAT LOCKER. Why not have them process your animals for you?? I would thiink the time v money would make it more likely for you to enjoy the raising without the slaughter???
Shannon and I were talking about this. Shannon and I both know folks who work with seed/corn/animals/feed and the price of meat and all other raised food will be going up a lot in the next year or so so raising food yourself is gonna be IMPORTANT!!!
MO'B said,
March 16, 2008 @ 8:05 am
Ouch – after last years (arguable) fiasco it happened again?
Aw man – what a pain! Sorry to hear that!
Beau said,
March 16, 2008 @ 9:33 am
Well, Mike – I agree. Last year WAS a fiasco, but that was one of those situations that nobody (not even the very experienced person that was helping me) fore-saw. Who would have thought a pig could jump a fence? This year, I had a much tighter and taller enclosure. This year was all me. I just didn’t make a clean kill. For the second pig this year, I reviewed the process online (including pictures and videos) to make sure I knew exactly what to do – consequently things went better.
Jerome – There’s a couple of reasons I pay to have them processed. The first is I have a bias against meat processors. Several years ago, we raised a couple of steers and took them to get butchered. These steers were corn feed for 6-8 weeks before butchering. We didn’t get the same beef back that we brought in. Mentally, I now classify meat processors with lawyers and mechanics (probably unfair, but your experiences shape your opinions, eh?). The other reason is like you said. Time v. Money. Time I have, or at least I have more time than money!
Anyhow, I don’t mean to sound curt above. Just sharing experiences here on the ol’ blog. Good ones and bad sometimes. Maybe you guys should bring your families down for a BBQ? I’ll provide the pork ;)
jerome said,
March 16, 2008 @ 2:32 pm
I just couldn’t do the whole slaughter thing – I used to trim and cut meat in high school – but the actual butcher and remove stuff…. ughh…. could not bring myself to do that at all!
jerome said,
March 16, 2008 @ 2:35 pm
oh and do they have the videos on you tube?? I mean – what made you think – hmm let me look for slaughtering pig videos….. not that I doubt you – and I am sure they have all the deer cleaning videos, etc. on line…..
Beau said,
March 16, 2008 @ 3:47 pm
Yeah, they actually have videos of butchering on YouTube. Including the killing part. Some of that stuff I found kind of objectionable because it was just a video of people killing an animal (for butchering). But it wasn’t like it was explanatory or anything. It was like they just filmed it for the sake of watching an animal die. Other videos are more instructional…along the lines of “to do this effectively and humanely, first shoot here, then quickly cut here.”
allena said,
March 27, 2008 @ 4:30 pm
Jerome,
It is also much easier on the animal to be killed at home. They will get more stressed and frightened from being hauled than being killed quickly at thier own dinner bowl. Also everyone should understand that this sort of thing happens in the slaughter houses and processers ALL THE TIME.
By the time you send it off, you end up paying the same as what you do to buy the pork, and often around here you get an old stringy animal back. They sell your wonderful fresh animal as a gourmet meat to restaurants. It’s annoying but very common…
BUT you can have a fella come over and off your pig, skin and gut it for about $30. I have considered it…