This weekend the main job on the table was the processing of a pig. We do this with our neighbor and provide him half a pig for helping with the processing. This tends to work well for both of us so it’s how we do things here.

 

I’m not going into the butchering of the actual pig because I can imagine some squeamish people out there, so I will only be going into the actual processing of the meat. In this way I can keep this more about the process and not where it came from. I do have to say thought that I love knowing what is going into my food. I get to control what the pigs eat and how they are cared for. I try my hardest to give them the best life I am to able to give them before there time comes to go into the freezer.

Once the meat comes into the house, this is what it looks like. Aarron and the neighbor debone the whole thing so I don’t have to deal with any bones. It’s strictly meat and fat. So the first thing that needs to be done is separating all the different sections so that we can trim them down and bag them to go in the freezer. We have to decide what we are going to use each cut for before it goes into the freezer so that we know what needs to happen next.

This was a fairly small pig so there isn’t a lot but for the size of him, it’s really not a bad amount of meat. Of course a couple of these bags in the door are fat so I will process those down and can them later when I have more time. I also still need to wrap all of these in freezer paper to help protect them since I ran out of the vacuum sealer bags about a quarter of the way though this.

But this is all fresh meat that tastes so much better than anything you can get from the store. I was recommend trying to find someone near you that sells fresh meat. You will never want to buy anything from the store again. This I promise you.

Have a great day!

Renee