Experience

Rachel was supposed to have 4-H archery lessons on Saturday AM. It means I wake up early to get out to the barn to do chores so we can all load up and get on the road by 7:30. Unfortunately it was canceled and at least 4 families didn't get that memo, grr! We had a full weekend planned to include a former student of Jeremiah's coming by to weed eat along the pasture fences. The electric wires were being overgrown by grass and shorting out the lines. I wanted to move the pigs out to pasture but without a working fence, that was a recipe for disaster.

The kids and I put in corn and pole beans. We're almost done with garden plating minus melons. We plan to plant those vertically this year! Well, not PLANT them vertically, but grow them vertically. One the fruit starts to develop it needs to be either suspended in a nylon stocking or slung in a piece of fabric. We're far from that point yet and I've been waiting to get the pigs out (their pen is right next door to the garden), so I knew whether or not they'd be close enough to stick their heads through the fence to chomp on the leaves!

The onions are growing like mad, as are the potatoes (we planted those in barrells), lettuce is almost ready to be harvested and everything else looks great! Just waiting on the melons. We'll put up cattle panels eventually but until they start growing, there's no rush. The peas are also up too, we put in Lincoln Peas and cowpeas, it's a little late but we'll see. I made some "natural" trellises with branches. They look kinda rustic. I also created some faux raised beds out of some old posts that we took out when we put in the old fence. It's not really for containment, it's to know where things are planted more than anything. I have a tendency to plant herbs (especially) and forget what was planted, and end up pulling weeds out along with the actual plant-lings. This year I fixed that! We put in 30 tomato plants so far. I want to get in a couple more, they were a little small to put out yet and were heirloom from seeds that I only planted a few of so I really want to put them in. The garden looks so nice and neat right now, pretty soon it'll be overgrown but the kids love it that way, they call it their jungle.

On to the "experience" part of this post. Mea Hamm, one of our piggies, began to limp again and the boar (male) pig was really getting after her which was forcing her to stay in the shelter much of the time as it would be difficult for him to bother her in there with the height, if you know what I mean. When we first got the pigs they were always destined for the freezer but it just so happened we were able to get an "uncut" (un-neutered) male and with the scarcity and expense of "weaner" (weaned pig @ 20-50 lbs) or "feeder" (50-120 lbs), I figured why not breed them. I figured if I screwed it up, the worst that could happen is we loose a pig to ignorance but it wouldn't be in vein if a lesson is leaned all is not lost. As it turns out, pigs are EASY to raise! I like pigs too. The male is beginning to be a bit too much to handle and it's not as though they can be led around like dogs (I'll tell you a story about that a little later) but they are very curious and personable and talkative and just all around nice farm animals to have around for their existence on earth.

Sunday was her day. After doing some research on butchering over the past few months, with the meat lockers (butcher shops) being full up, with the weather warming and her doing nothing but putting on weight, it was do or die. Sorry, that comment's sort of in poor taste (snicker). Yesterday morning was cool with a slight breeze and overcast. I got chores done early, Jeremiah had a co-worker who helped us do a couple goats (and has done a lot of pig butchering) come over and show us the ins and outs of cuts. I gotta say, pigs are so much easier to figure out cuts on than goats! There's just not much to those goats, which we knew but man alive, the meat on pigs!

Saturday evening we bought one of those vacuum sealer things. You buy special bags and it sucks out the air and seals the bag. Pretty nifty! Jeremiah and Keith shot her and stuck her and got her hung. Having a front loader on the tractor has made easy work of hanging and skinning, let me tell you. We aren't big fans of cracklings and I don't have time to tan a hide so the hide is pretty worthless to us. The entrails, feet and head we dispose of out in the pasture, the dogs take care of it all. I am sure that sounds just horrendous to some people but short of burning it, they will dig it up, pull it out or it will attract predators if we were to dump it elsewhere so doing what comes naturally to them isn't a big deal for us. The whole theory that if a dog gets a taste for meat or blood of a certain type of animal they will kill animals of that specie has been proven wrong time and time again here. We feed all animal parts from butchering to our animals, give them raw good meat from the freezer and they eat deer too. Never once have the dogs gone after a live goat, chicken, or pig. I think we're safe there.

After 6 hours we have 200+ lbs. of meat in the freezer and while some of it may be labeled "hunk roast" because we're not adept yet at cutting particulars like sirloins, we did get some nice pork chops and 2 BIG tenderloins. I have no idea what this girl weighed but she had a nice layer of fat on her (not too much) and was in good flesh. They say you get the most meat and least amount of waste off of a pig carcass, whereas beef is something like 65% "waste" (though it's not all really wasted, the bones and entrails, etc. go on to be processed for other applications).

After they halved the carcass, we layed it out on a plastic covered picnic table under the trees. We did tenderloins from one half and cut chops from the other (they are the same cut of meat, if you leave the loin whole you have a tender loin, if you cut it into portions, you get chops). All the ribs were cut so we got 2 nice lengths of spare ribs and baby back ribs. The hams, holy cow (!), I had to cut bags and "splice" them together to make something big enough! All in all it was a fantastic experience.

Those who know me, know I didn't grow up this way. Those who don't know me, I'll tell you, I didn't grow up this way. It's taken a lot of personal courage to come to terms with daily feeding, watering, caring for and ultimately pouring my heart and soul in to animals that I know will ultimately be put on our plates. I never thought I could ever eat an animal we raised, but in the end, the feeling of satisfaction knowing what all went in to an animal that gave its live to feed our family is gratifying and makes me even more grateful for what has to happen so that people can eat! I really feel that being grateful for food has a deeper meaning and sense of satisfaction when you have a hand in it start to finish on a scale that gives you one on one personal attachment to each individual. Commercial operations just don't do that, you loose sense of the individual and it's all lost.And while it would be difficult to come to know each individual chicken living in our shop right now, the sense as a whole of utmost appreciation for the collective beings is enough for me to feel somehow connected.

It is not easy for our children and they do, on occasion, come close to begging us not to butcher or put down a certain individual and it's no easy task to put our feelings aside as parents and do as they wish for the sake of their feelings (or our own for that matter) but as time goes by and the more and more animals that move through here, the more they are coming to terms with it and the more appreciative we see them becoming. They know what it takes to put food on the table because they are out there everyday helping. They are learning what it means to be compassionate and merciful and they are leaning what it means to set aside the humanism of how some people view animals. This is VERY important to us.

Our animals are not people, we love them, we care for them, we give them a far better life than some animals have and then we eat (some) of them. Period. All animals have a purpose here and they are productive. If they are not, it is time to move on. It does not mean we cannot love them while they are here, it does not mean we cannot enjoy them and their antics, or name them. It just means they are here for a short time and that's it. I can see that the children's hearts do not hurt for such and such goat or chicken like they do for say, Butters (the dog). It's two completely different heartaches, and that tells us that they have learned to discern one from another and they are mentally healthy and moving through this aspect of life the right way. 

Moving on...Jeremiah and I are scrambling to put together a roving coup (chicken tractor) to get the meat chicks out of the shop. The meat chicks came a little sooner than planned. They are trying to "jump ship" and get out of the round bale ring they are being contained in. Jeremiah welded a frame out of angle iron. We had some used barn tin we're putting on for the roof, back and side. Half of it will be covered, half of it will have hardware cloth (sort of like chicken wire) installed. They will not be allowed to free range as the hawks would pick them off and to be completely honest, I am in no mood to feed hawks what should go on my plate, there's plenty of snakes and vermin to feed them!

Jeremiah's last week of work is this week. He could have taken today off and worked Friday instead but it's supposed to be 92 today and he may as well get a hot work day out of the way in an air conditioned location instead of spending it here having to come inside and not get any work done because of the heat. That said, I need to get going and get the garden watered, laundry hung and close up the house before it gets too hot out.