2019 Hog Butchering at Tangly Woods

Jason and I continue to slowly make our way through Farming While Black by Leah Penniman. Just recently in one of our morning reading times, she was referencing a section from Braiding Sweetgrass, where Robin Wall Kimmerer summarizes the sacred law of wild foraging for plants. We would have read it before but it felt particularly appropriate as I was working to prepare emotionally for our hog butchering. While this is written with plants in mind, it struck me how much of it could also apply well to butchering animals. I'd like to commit to figuring out how these principles apply to all types of harvesting (plants and animals alike) and can be lived out in our life more consistently and authentically:

• Know the ways of the ones who take care of you, so that you may take care of them. Introduce yourself. Be accountable as the one who comes asking for life.
• Ask permission before taking. Abide by the answer.
• Never take the first. Never take the last.
• Take only what you need.
• Take only that which is given.
• Never take more than half. Leave some for others.
• Harvest in a way that minimizes harm.
• Use it respectfully. Never waste what you have taken.
• Share.
• Give thanks for what you have been given.
• Gift a gift, in reciprocity for what you have taken.
• Sustain the ones who sustain you and the earth will last forever. 

The night before our hog butchering, I sent Jason to bed as early as possible since he was getting up to start the fire around 4 a.m. After getting kids settled down for the night, I found myself googling things like "how to be at peace with butchering your own animals." In addition to finding (and ordering) the new book For the Hog Killing, 1979 by Tanya Berry, I also landed upon this article in the Modern Farmer.

I'm going to share a few excerpts below that resonated the most with me as I was processing the waves of emotions as our butchering days neared. And at this point in the post, I will also include a warning for those reading: there will be some pictures of our hog butchering included below with my reflections.

"Some people get uncomfortable reading anything to do with killing an animal, and I understand this. When we knew we were moving to the farm, I decided that if I was going to continue to eat meat regularly, I owed it to myself - and the animal - to be present at its death, as well as its birth and the days in between..."

Then regarding butchering day: "It will always be uncomfortable...You know and they don't. You question your motives, as you should...But I come back to the same decision each time: I am part of nature, not above it. I choose to be within the food chain, not to stand outside of it..."

And in terms of preparing for butchering: "I hang white prayer flags in the stall, and the night before, I sit for a very short time and thank them for their good work and sacrifice. The week before, I am always agitated. I was talking to another farm friend who said it would be the day she wasn't agitated that would upset her. I know I will always feel anxious in the days leading up to the slaughter. On the actual day, it is so fast, and then they are gone...I have cried on butcher day in the past, when it is over. But now I usually have a day of tears in the week prior. It is on my mind, a conscious decision I make to kill an animal to eat it. It is a conflict to love animals, nurture them and kill them. I get it. Because I live it."

So I've now successfully shared other people's words that have connected with me, but I'm still not easily articulating my own. I'm feeling a lot more things these days than I can easily put words too. While I knew that logically there was no reason to feel differently about this year's butchering, the only hog we were butchering from our property was the mama of the piglets. It was the first time we were butchering a mammal that we had watched birth, nurse, protect and raise our first litter of piglets. I felt not only grateful to her for her life but the lives she had brought into the world. As I looked at her lifeless body and thought of her three spunky piglets, there it was right there together: milk and blood. Thankfully the lesson from last year from my dear and wise friend from the Philippines had stuck with me: I was sure to let the mama pig know that I was grateful to her. It was still hard! But what the article above reminded me of and helped me put into perspective is that it's ok for it to be hard. That maybe it would trouble me more if I was not experiencing some angst about butchering days.

There are so many things I feel grateful for around the butchering this year.

• The killing part went seamlessly, instantly and without anxiety/fear/pain on the part of either sow. I was so relieved!
• We moved the butchering down to our home this year and it was so much less complicated - so much less hauling things up and down and was lovely to get a system set up that will work well for years to come. It was especially helpful since I landed some kind of quick but unpleasant stomach bug on day 1! I was very glad to not be trying to do what I was doing, while feeling lousy, all away from the comforts of home.
• The weather was perfect for butchering - cold enough for the meat to be right for working with and no precipitation to make things unpleasant to work outside in. 
• No one got burned by the various fires going for scalding, making ponhoss, and rendering lard.
• The girls all had fun and Terah is chomping at the bit to be old enough to help cut up lard!
• What we have tested so far has been delicious!

Here's a bit of a visual run down of the main two butchering days.

The concrete pad was the center of the activity! Jason had planned ahead when doing the railing to have one section removable to make way for the scalding pot!

 Scalding is done to loosen the hair. Scraping happens before the gutting and halving.

The woodshed provided the perfect place to set up a winch for the gutting/halving. Jason was pretty pleased with this!

By the end of day 1, both sows were cut into sections and ready for day 2! Despite birthing and nursing piglets, our sow had quite the layer of lard still on her! Off of her and the much smaller female we rendered over 12 gallons of lard!

I was so very grateful to wake up on day 2 feeling better - able to enjoy and not just endure doing the morning chores. And I felt the first pangs of hunger as we got into cutting up the lard. A very good sign!

Alida had graduated to helping with lard cutting, and she had a very attentive pupil who was eager to observe and try it herself - "maybe next year" we told her!

Day 2 is the busier day that can benefit from more hands to help. Once the lard was cut up, there was sausage to grind and bag (about 70lb of it) and then kettles to tend as the lard heated up and the bones/scraps were boiled for ponhoss.

Once the lard has been rendered, then we press it and then strain the lard out and press the cracklins. That is not, however, before we throw some potatoes in the lard to cook and enjoy fresh and hot with salt and pepper!

Then the end of the day is the race against the sun (and in this case us getting cleaned up and to a CJP holiday party!): there is lard to jar up, ponhoss to put into pans and very busy taste testers!

By the time we were leaving for the evening, the jars of lard in the root cellar were starting to cool and whiten. It's so beautiful!

Speaking of lard, we used the last of last year's right at butchering time. So we have already started in on the fresh supply and I just popped popcorn for our kids and their friends (who are hopefully winding down soon for the night)! I'm ready to wind down too!

So the butchering is officially over - yesterday was the end of it with the slicing and vacuum sealing of over 44 pounds of bacon!

As soon as the butchering came to an end, we shifted our attention to making some adjustments for the living situations of our remaining pigs. The three piglets needed to move to winter quarters where they were not contained solely by electronet that kept grounding out and they kept getting out from under it. And the red adult pig needed to be moved to some fresh pasture and was very eager for company. So we brought her some. She is still figuring out if she liked our solution for company or not!

The one really nice thing about separating piglets from the mama was that we got to begin getting in with them and letting them them figure us out and us getting to know them better. Here's a short video of the three of them getting acquainted with Kali! They were enjoying tickling her and playing "ring around the Kali." We are enjoying them immensely!