Butchering Day

Today is a sad day here on the farm because the hogs are headed to the butcher. We played with the idea of butchering them ourselves but in the end decided that we are too old to be slinging around a 200 pound pig carcass. So we compromised and decided to pay the local butcher to kill and quarter our hogs. From there we will do our own smoking and grinding and making sausage and curing bacon. It just seemed so wasteful to pay someone considering we have our own grinder, slicer, smoker, sausage stuffer and vacuum packer. 

 

It is doubly hard this year because Pork and Beans were very young pigs that we purchased off Craigslist from a local farmer. They were runts and were not in as good of health or as old as advertised. But the price was right and we brought them home and raised these pigs from babies. 

They were literally bottle fed. So sending them to the butcher is especially hard this year. But we have to keep reminding ourselves this is a farm and not a farm animal rescue organization. We bought these animals to butcher and that is what we will do no matter how hard. We eat what we grow! 

Both pigs should weigh in at around 230 pounds. One will go into our freezer and the other is a Christmas gift to my oldest daughter Fred and her family. What could say Merry Christmas more than a freezer of fresh meat to help feed my daughter and her husband and my grandchildren.  

Gypsy the scottie dog will miss them because she went out every morning and played with them : )

Sometimes farming is hard!

Blessings from The Holler

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Farm Babies

Pork and Beans the two little fattening pigs are weaned now and are eating lots of over ripe fruit and veggies not only from my garden but also from the vendor at the farmers market that lives near us. Between that, table scraps and a little grain along they are growing like mad.

Baby turkeys that just moved to the outside brooder...

We have 9 baby Buff Orphington chicks that hatched out of the incubator a day or two ago. 

And I would like you all to meet the newest additions to our menagerie.....Rocky and Bullwinkle.


This is what my 16 year old daughter drug home yesterday. Most kids drag home puppies or kittens. Not Baby O, she felt these goats needed a new home as I guess they were in a bad situation. Guess she and O Wise One will be building a goat pen for the rest of the week : ) 

Blessings from The Holler

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New Additions

Meet Pork and Beans!

These are O Wise One's new bottle babies.

How cute are they?

Blessings from The Holler

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Bacon and Hams

On a cold wintry morning this will taste mighty good with 

These.....

And maybe some of these : )

And plenty of ham for the upcoming Holidays. And the best thing about it is that it all came off this farm.

Blessings from The Holler

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A Full Freezer

The pigs were butchered November 1. O Wise One picked up our meat Friday morning except for the bacon and hams which are being cured.

And the butcher sent me extra fat knowing that I wanted to render it for soap. The butcher that owns the meat market in town is also my neighbor and owns the property next door. I was amazed to hear that he actually will give me all the pig fat or beef tallow I want because he actually has to pay to have it disposed of.   I guess no one uses it any more. 

My freezers are pretty well bursting at the seams. Lots of breakfast sausage, pork burger, pork chops , pork steaks, pork ribs and pork roasts. It should round out our meat supply  along with chicken, rabbit, fish,  and turkey. All coming right off this farm. And plenty of veggies to go with that. Now a deer should pretty well finish it out for the year. 

We have a few more chickens that O Wise One wants to butcher and then our meat supply is done other than venison. The chickens are older ones that have quit laying and will go in jars and be used for broth.

Blessings from The Holler 

The Canned Quilter

Rendering Lard

That  Scottish blood runs deep in O Wise One and following Samhain tradition October 31 was the day of slaughter. The pigs went to butcher before the butcher shop closed down to process deer which starts next week here in Missouri. 

The butcher was very generous with pig fat and sent me a whole 1/2 garbage bag of it. Already ground up and ready to render. As soon as I got it back we started the rendering process.

I started out with enough to cover the bottom of my large cast iron dutch oven and my crock pot and large roaster. Setting both to a low setting and putting the large cast iron pot on the simmer eye.  I added enough water to cover the bottom of the pots to give it time to melt down some without sticking. The water will cook out.

Once the fat starts changing color or rendering then I continue to add fat until I fill the pot almost full but still able to stir it comfortably.

 As the fat melts I dip off any scum that forms on top. Once you get a large amount of oil collected on top I start dipping off the clear fat and running it through a colander lined with cheese cloth into a bowl. With a funnel I start putting the hot liquid lard into clean sterile jars to cool. As you can see here the liquid fat will be somewhat clear and then when it cools turning white.

I continue melting and filling jars until I get to the bottom layer of fat with just enough liquid remaining to cover it. Once the remaining fat pieces start to brown I stop collecting liquid lard. I turned up the heat just a little and allowed the small amount that sinks to the bottom to brown completely and become crunchy then dip them out and run them through cheese cloth and put them on paper towels to drain.

These are cracklings which are nothing more than fried crunchy pieces of fat. These are a great addition to corn bread and was my father's favorite corn bread.

Once cool I put these in pint jars to be used in corn bread through out the year. They will go in the freezer.

The remaining lard that the cracklins were cooked in will be much darker than the first liquid lard that you collected. I put this darker lard in separate jars. It will taste a little more like meat and was what my mother used to melt and put on the top of her biscuits to make them nice and brown on top with just a hint of a meat taste.

I ended up with 18 quart jars of lard or 32 pounds to make soap with or use in baking. Also there were 8 jars of cracklins for cornbread making. In the picture above you can see the darker lard in the second jar from the left. Once the jars were cool I put on lids and all went into the freezer. The entire process took me a little over 14 hours from cooking to having jars completed. Then I let them cool overnight before freezing.
I will take them out as needed and let defrost for soap making. If I want to bake with it I put mine in the refrigerator.

 Blessings from The Holler

The Canned Quilter

Link to return to Frugal Ways Blog Hop #2

Link to Return to Homestead Revival Barn Hop # 35

Gleaning Livestock Food

Here in the Holler we keep small animal livestock. Chickens for meat and eggs, rabbits and turkeys also for meat. And every other year the pair of pigs for meat. We don't keep large stock mainly because of the lack of fence and a large barn. Also at our age we just felt we were getting too old to be running cattle and slinging hay. The small animal manures are a major part of our gardening system and keep our garden soils healthy. So we supplement what we do grow with venison which is in abundance, wild game and buy an occasional side of beef from a local farmer. With increases in animal feed back in May I posted about ideas to grow extra animal food for the livestock.

You can find that post HERE

So we planted extra pumpkins, sunflowers, some field corn and squash so that we could feed our livestock through the summer and into fall. The chickens especially loved the extra tomatoes and all the culls that we threw to them. We did have feed custom ground to supplement the vegetables.

Saturday Livestock Auction

(George and Pete)

Saturday morning started out cold with a drizzling rain. There would be no gardening so O Wise One and myself headed to the local farm auction held every two weeks in a small neighboring town. We spent the day sitting on a hard wooden bench savoring the smell of manure. O Wise One says that is the smell of money. For the next 5 hours we sat as they paraded before us every manner of cow, sheep, goat, pig, horse, donkey, guinea, turkey, duck and chicken you can imagine. We shared this show with some of the nicest, friendliest farmers you could imagine. Many our friends and neighbors. The dress of the day was pure farm attire.... overalls, blue jeans and boots hopefully without manure. Spring was indeed in the air as we watched them sell baby chicks, bottle calves and goats, baby pigs and sheep. My only rule of the day.

DO NOT sit too close to the spitoon buckets : )

We munched on french fries from the restaurant and talked farming with the Amish couple sitting next to us. We bought 6 rabbit waterers and 2 baby pigs. O Wise One bought me 2 gooseberry bushes and 3 rhubarb plants.

What a great way to spend a saturday visiting with neighbors, eating junk food and watching livestock. Sure beats sitting in the house doing housework and watching it rain. We will raise the two piglets for slaughter. One for our freezer and selling the second one to help pay for both. They will help to dispose of the excess and bruised vegetables and fruit from the garden. For right now we are calling them George and Pete. I had not been to the livestock auction in quite awhile. It amazed me when a rooster and hen pair went for 14 dollars each. Wow.

We will be returning soon to the auction to buy a calf to raise for beef. But first we will wait for the weather to warm up and improve and prepare our pens. I continue to try to talk O Wise One into a baby goat. We shall see. For now Riley and Gypsy are guarding the pigs. Pigs can be sneaky creatures.

Hope everyone has a great sunday.

Blessings from The Holler

The Canned Quilter