We're in the Meat Now (with photos)

After a day of errands yesterday, Phil and I had a good day of animal processing today. The weather turned from the mid-70s and sunny yesterday, to low 40s and cloudy today. Which felt a bit chilly at times, but meant we had no flies to combat. On balance, we couldn't have asked for better weather. The trees, too, had on their orange in almost shocking brilliance.

We started after breakfast with a piglet. At fifteen weeks, they aren't small any more (suckling pigs are more usually processed at six to ten weeks), but after Phil cut the little guy's throat, we were able to carry him out of the pigpen. Phil did use the tractor to bring him the distance from their pen to the scalder.

We have never scalded a pig before, but we figured this little guy could fit in our chicken scalder. After rinsing the carcass (such a good idea, compared with the past, when we've fought a muddy body, which is no fun at all!), Phil and I dunked the guy.

The directions said that a pig is done scalding in two to six minutes. After about a minute, Phil tested the hairs around the pig's hoof, and a huge patch peeled away. In fact, it peeled away so easily that the skin around the hooves where we were holding the piglet began to pull away, and the pig slipped. I had to run to get gloves (the skin was hot) and then we moved the piglet to the table for scraping.

The little dew claws on the hooves peeled away very easily, though the main toenails stayed put.

Scraping was really fun at first. I could pull away hair on the outer layer of skin, and then with a spoon (Phil) and a canning lid (me), we scraped one side just about clean. But by the end, it was not easy going: the hair was really sticking.

On the theory that either the hoof skin was easier to peel away than the more entrenched back hairs, or perhaps that the carcass had cooled enough that the hairs were sticking, we dunked the pig again, longer. This was an utter mistake. It set the hairs, so the other side of the pig was an exercise in extreme frustration, and the carcass was not really clean (or able to be cleaned) when we gave up.

Next: cut open the body cavity. Phil used knife and saw in order to split the piglet from neck to tail. Usually the pig is hung to facilitate excavation, but this little guy was little enough, we kept him on the table.

We have done enough eviscerating, the internal organs of an animal are almost friendly at this point. Once the carcass is open, the intestines, large and small, bubble out.

The spleen on the piglet was quite beautiful.

The liver seemed a bit spotty to me.

And the light pink kidneys look just like you would expect: kidney shaped. The large white stomach, an enormous balloon even on a little pig, swells next to it.

Once the heart, lungs, and aorta were cut out, the piglet was done for today, a scant two hours after we went down to kill him. Not too bad! Our initial hope had been to attempt roasting it on a spit, but we had more to accomplish and couldn't take the time to set up the spit, stitch closed the pig, and start the fire. Another day.

On to Barred Rock laying hen processing. After a week of tracking their egg laying, the most eggs in 24 hours was three. Some days we had none. I wondered if they were eating all their production. (By comparison, the 16 white layers laid 16 on their best day, 11 on their worst.) So, having run the test of profitability and miserably failing, we killed these eight month old birds, despite their picturesque appearance next to the few remaining sheep.

I can report with satisfaction that, of the 15 birds I killed, two had fully formed eggs inside. Two had soft-shelled eggs, which have a translucent membrane around some white and yolk.

Perhaps three more had almost-formed eggs, although there was an unhealthy yellow-ish future egg amongst the normal, orangey future eggs.

And the remainder had not started laying yet, and showed little sign of doing so. Despite the fact that a bird should start laying at five months. I don't know what happened with these birds, but I expect we'll try to purchase chicks from a different hatchery in the future. As bird after bird yielded little sign of fertility, my thankfulness for this quick, weeklong test increased. What a blessing that we could process them, knowing that they were a drain on our limited funds.

The highlight of the chicken killing, though, was the last of the Freedom Ranger roosters. This big boy has been taunting Phil with his luscious weight, though his demise was not so much gleeful and sorrowful. He's become a character around the farm.

Does he not look that large to you?

The straight on view shows his magnificent thighs, and his wingspread, too, was quite impressive.

Phil laughed ruefully when he went into the killing cone. We put the birds into these cones, head down, to help them relax as they bleed out. The head and neck poke out the bottom, and sometimes we're lucky to have a few toenails poke out the top. This bird had not just toes, not just feet, not just legs, but bum out the top, too.

Our Chinese friend Jenny knows what to do with all parts of a chicken: head, neck, intestines, etc. We are giving her this bird, so we didn't do anything to it once plucked. Phil weighed it: 8 pounds, 15 1/4 ounces (if it had left on another few feathers, it would have reached that lovely 9 pounds).

Goodbye to the Big Boy. While I won't miss him necessarily, he has certainly made life around the farm more varied and interesting.

Altogether, we got through 15 birds today in about two hours, and Phil said he thought 20 birds per processing day seemed ideal. Just a few hours, so we wouldn't have to set aside a full day for it, and not quite so emotionally and physically draining. Perhaps expensive from a propane standpoint (heating the tank of scald water), but may be worth it.

While I was finishing the chicken processing, Phil went to make a gambrel, a piece of wood to hang meat on. As he finished, our friend Creigh, and his friend Andrew, came to help Phil with his big project of the day: killing Chunky.

Chunky is right about a year now (since we bought him as an eight-week old the first week of January). I think he's been losing weight gradually since we tried to take him up to the butcher in July, and his carcass was less fatty than Charles' carcass of last month. If I think about it too much, I grow frustrated over the extra feed pumped into a shrinking pig. But no matter. He is done eating on our farm, and I am so thankful for that.

While I stayed in the kitchen to make sourdough doughnuts (fried in our farm's lard!), Phil, I am told, managed the second mammal killing of the day very suavely. He had bought special, solid-tipped bullets for his handgun, and that incredibly powerful combination, shot right behind the ear, dropped Chunky very well.

With two (male) able-bodied assistants, and the marvelous gambrel, the three had the pig upslope swiftly. After washing him down, they peeled the pig with innumerable knife strokes (none of which were done by me!).

And then they opened the cavity, exclaimed over the internal organs (even touched them—voluntarily!). The bladder was outrageous: in my mind's eye, it seemed to hold about a quart of fluid, really unbelievable. The stomach was even more incredible, filling the better part of a five gallon bucket.

And so, three hours later, without traumatic mishaps of any sort, we enjoyed farm-raised sausage and eggs, with doughnuts, along with cheery conversation.

And when the guys left, Phil went to wrap the carcass with the special body wrap he'd bought at the hunting store yesterday, large enough to cover mule deer. It covered almost the bottom half of the pig, which was a funny coda to a fulfilling day.

Phil went to bed at nine. He was wiped out.