Bounty the first

Wow. Well, it's been a bit.

Josh and I didn't get a bear; we went out for a day and then came home and killed a pig (one of Penny's first piglets, Apricot's sister) and made a whole lot of sausage. I'd told him that I do have a lot of meat so I didn't feel the need to spend a lot of time looking for more and he pretty much agreed.

So that was a 13-month Ossabaw: 97kg liveweight, 75kg after skinning and gutting. It was a perfect kill, we put down grain and he dropped her exactly and I got in with a really excellent stick/bleed. She was just the size that we couldn't lift her very high together but we could roll her into the wheelbarrow. Ossabaws really are the perfect size homestead animal.

We scrubbed and washed her a bunch, then strung her up in the new gutting station (it's down by the chicken coop instead of up by the house, it's a good place for it). It was a good gut too: I have the liver in my freezer, and I normally accidentally puncture the liver with my fingers. We harvested the jowls, took the head off, and halved her.

The quail got the head and the chickens got the stomach.

When mom was up we skinned by putting the halves in on the table and skinning each half, washing down the table, and then dealing with the meat: not while hanging, on other words. Pigs are difficult to skin since there's no clear demarcation between their fat and skin; they don't have a hide that can pull off like other animals. This time we lay the halves scrubbed side down on the table and basically cut our primals up off the hide. It worked really, really well. Everything stayed clean, there was high recovery, and it was just very straightforward. I think I might stick with this method.

Granted, we weren't going for nice clean primals because the goal was lots of sausage. We got 22kg, more or less, of a good 75% meat 25% fat sausage mix. I also took off a ton of extra backfat for soap, a ton of leaf lard, kidneys, heart, two coppas and a prosciuttini, the tenderloins, and a LOT of proto-bacon that I need to get into cure. Lungs and spleen (finally) got sliced and dehydrated for dog treats. All the bones went into the stockpot and I've canned 7L of stock and am currently canning another 1.5L of stock. I expect I'll get 10L of lard total. I'm going to start using the leaf lard for cooking, starting to replace butter in my diet, now that I have enough lard to make as much soap as I want.

I really love my pressure canner, this was its first run.

Sausages made were all basically from the Marianski sausage bible, except my Italian hot sausage recipe, except that I went down to 1.5% salt in all cases. Sausages were: hot Italian, Russian, Mexican chorizo, Argentinian(ish) chorizo, merguez, andouille (so good), polish, and mysliwska.

We mass-packaged most of the sausage, I need to break down some of it into smaller packages still and cure the meats. I also want to do a liver sausage so I'm thinking about that.

I feel very food secure right now. It's great.

Bounty the first

Wow. Well, it's been a bit.

Josh and I didn't get a bear; we went out for a day and then came home and killed a pig (one of Penny's first piglets, Apricot's sister) and made a whole lot of sausage. I'd told him that I do have a lot of meat so I didn't feel the need to spend a lot of time looking for more and he pretty much agreed.

So that was a 13-month Ossabaw: 97kg liveweight, 75kg after skinning and gutting. It was a perfect kill, we put down grain and he dropped her exactly and I got in with a really excellent stick/bleed. She was just the size that we couldn't lift her very high together but we could roll her into the wheelbarrow. Ossabaws really are the perfect size homestead animal.

We scrubbed and washed her a bunch, then strung her up in the new gutting station (it's down by the chicken coop instead of up by the house, it's a good place for it). It was a good gut too: I have the liver in my freezer, and I normally accidentally puncture the liver with my fingers. We harvested the jowls, took the head off, and halved her.

The quail got the head and the chickens got the stomach.

When mom was up we skinned by putting the halves in on the table and skinning each half, washing down the table, and then dealing with the meat: not while hanging, on other words. Pigs are difficult to skin since there's no clear demarcation between their fat and skin; they don't have a hide that can pull off like other animals. This time we lay the halves scrubbed side down on the table and basically cut our primals up off the hide. It worked really, really well. Everything stayed clean, there was high recovery, and it was just very straightforward. I think I might stick with this method.

Granted, we weren't going for nice clean primals because the goal was lots of sausage. We got 22kg, more or less, of a good 75% meat 25% fat sausage mix. I also took off a ton of extra backfat for soap, a ton of leaf lard, kidneys, heart, two coppas and a prosciuttini, the tenderloins, and a LOT of proto-bacon that I need to get into cure. Lungs and spleen (finally) got sliced and dehydrated for dog treats. All the bones went into the stockpot and I've canned 7L of stock and am currently canning another 1.5L of stock. I expect I'll get 10L of lard total. I'm going to start using the leaf lard for cooking, starting to replace butter in my diet, now that I have enough lard to make as much soap as I want.

I really love my pressure canner, this was its first run.

Sausages made were all basically from the Marianski sausage bible, except my Italian hot sausage recipe, except that I went down to 1.5% salt in all cases. Sausages were: hot Italian, Russian, Mexican chorizo, Argentinian(ish) chorizo, merguez, andouille (so good), polish, and mysliwska.

We mass-packaged most of the sausage, I need to break down some of it into smaller packages still and cure the meats. I also want to do a liver sausage so I'm thinking about that.

I feel very food secure right now. It's great.

Bounty the second

Right after Josh left I had a chainsaw training course at work (truly fantastic! We learned not just work stuff but also how to make planks and hot to (illegally) fell trees).

The next day, two days ago, felt super rushed, as office days in field season often do, and at the end of it I walked out and... Nox was having her babies. There were two already out, still wet, and I went in (and filmed!) as the next five were born. She was indifferent to my presence. Everyone else has farrowed at night so this was my first time watching. It was amazing to watch in ways I cannot explain, though I will try.

First, it was an easy birth. She got up and lay on her other side a couple times, making sure that if a baby squeaked she didn't put her weight on it but instead got up and readjusted. The babies often came in sets of 2 with just a few minutes between. They tried to walk less than 60 seconds later. Pigs don't lick their babies clean or anything like that, the babies just dry off and move around to find a nipple. They're walking in ten minutes. Her udder was enormous and she was clearly giving milk right away.

Second, I cried when the first one came out. It's so good to greet them instead of just dispatching them. It's truly amazing and wonderful how fast they turn into individuals, and I thought of the Temple Grandin movie (great movie!) where she says "where do they go?" on a cow's death. I had the inverse feeling, an immediate sense of presence. It was humbling and awe-inspiring.

Third, someone asked me on facebook recently how I keep from getting attached to my animals, and my response was that I don't: that's the opposite of my goal. My goal is to love my animals, which should drive good care while they are living and should cause the correct reverence for their death and the flesh they give me that then becomes my body. It's like someone trying not to be attached to their kid because the kid will grow up and leave. It's just not what it's about. I think love of all kinds needs to encompass separation, whether that's love with a partner who has their own private inner world and self that they sometimes don't share, or whether that's love with a parent that will include death, or, yes, with an animal that will become food. In some ways we're least separated from our livestock than from any other being: they literally become our bodies.

Fourth, this morning one of the second cohort of pigs had a single baby (she was born in Sept, so she's pretty young still) and is giving a ton of milk, that baby is going to be huge. There's one more of that cohort that looks due, I expect just one or two babies. Then we should be good for awhile. Right now we're at 29 piglets for the year, so maybe that 2nd cohort girl will put us up to 30?

Everyone is doing well so far: Nox had 4 girls (one black, the rest orange) and 3 boys (one black, one orange with a white face, and one orange almost covered in black). Younger girl had a girl.

Meanwhile everyone is molting or shedding their coats or whatever you call it. The bristles fall out, the wooly underlayer is exposed (who knew there was a wooly underlayer?) and everyone looks super different while a new overcoat grows in. I'd forgotten that Penny has spots in her wool coat; her bristles are dark red with black tips. Lotta difficulty telling who's who right now.

Anyhow, pigs are neat and I like them.