Autumn arrived in a hurry. In a matter of
days the temperature, which had been unseasonably temperate, plunged into
refrigeration range. Leaves began to fall with frantic intention, and the
sky became gray and troubled. It was time for the harvest.
WARNING: WHAT FOLLOWS IS A DETAILED
DESCRIPTION OF THE HARVEST OF FOUR BEAUTIFUL AND BOUNTIFUL PIGS. THE
CONTENT MAY BE OBJECTIONABLE TO SOME - IF YOU ARE NOT OF A MIND TO VIEW SUCH
CONTENT, PLEASE DO NOT SCROLL DOWN. THE DESCRIPTIONS AND PHOTOS ARE OF A GRAPHIC
NATURE AND ARE INTENDED TO HELP INFORM OTHERS ABOUT HUMANE PROCESSES AND
PRACTICES RELATED TO SMALL-SCALE MEAT PRODUCTION.
If you are not interested in the rest of the
post, enjoy this picture of our beautiful pigs enjoying a perfect fall day in the
Yakima valley (along with their chicken friends). For the rest of the
post, continue scrolling down.
If you are still reading, I will assume that you
are along for the whole ride. The harvest day was so long anticipated,
fretted over, planned and plotted that it seemed strange to see it finally
arrive. Our hogs had grown a great deal. From their small andbutton-cute beginnings back in May, they ballooned to great size and even
greater appetite. We fed them hundreds of pounds of apples and pumpkins
over the last several weeks (even getting them a little sloshed on occasion on
account of fermented apples).
Our plan was to do the whole harvest ourselves,
from start to finish, slaughter to freezer. In preparation of this my
brother and I did some training at a seminar of sorts put on by the good folks
at Farmstead Meatsmith. My partner in crime, Keith, sketched and salvaged
and sparked together steel structures necessary for the tasks ahead.
Knives were sharpened, equipment gathered, volunteers recruited - until
in the end there was nothing left but the task itself.
Harvesting hogs in a traditional manner takes
several steps: 1) the kill; 2) scald & scrape; 3) evisceration; 4)
butchering (portioning). Each step has some special tools and set-up to
accomplish, and all steps benefit from a lot of helping hands. In this
way the process has built into it the potential for a community that gathers
around the shared labor.
THE KILL
After spending the last five months caring for
these beautiful creatures, Keith and I spent a great deal of time thinking
about this moment. We were greatly invested in making sure the kill
happened in the most humane manner possible. As with so much of traditional
harvesting, pursuing excellence in this arena is not only an ethical
consideration but is also a practical one, as stressed animals can potentially
taint the meat.
The ethical and the practical are inextricably
intertwined, a connection that becomes immediately apparent when the caretaker
is also the executioner. Our contemporary food systems sever this
connection, and we become detached consumers, not invested in the care of the
animals nor confronted with their death. For some, the moment of the kill
is the hardest to imagine participating in - for us, we could not imagine
handing the task over to anyone else.
The pigs were killed in the paddock that they
called home. They were given a meal of cracked corn and apples which they
attended to with great enthusiasm. Keith then lined up a shot with a .22
rifle at point blank range. The target is a specific spot on the front of
the head, taking advantage of a thin spot in the otherwise impenetrable skull
plate. The shot renders the pig senseless - immediately after the shot a
small team rushes in to accomplish two important tasks. The first is to
"stick" the pig, a knife is inserted at the base of the neck, angled
up to nick the main arteries and create an impressive flow of blood.
This blood is collected as it flows, possessing
unique culinary potential. It must be whisked continuously while it cools
to avoid turning to one large clot as it hits oxygen. After cooling it is
filtered into jars and refrigerated, so it can be used for blood sausage.
Collecting the blood is a part of the commitment to make the most efficient and
total use of the animal, an ethos that flows naturally from investment of time,
energy and emotion required to raise them. It is one of the most fetching
qualities of the pig - it is almost totally useful as food. Fergus Henderson's "The Whole
Beast: Nose to Tail Eating" is a marvelous introduction
to the odd bits that your local butcher may have neglected to tell you about.
SCALD & SCRAPE:
After the kill and blood collection the pig is scrubbed relatively
clean and then cuts are made at all four feet to open up access to some
amazingly strong tendons that will be used to hang the carcass during many of
the processes that follow. What follows next is sort of a watershed event
in the harvest process. There are two schools of thought on preparing the
carcass for butchering - to skin or to scald, that is the question. We
opted for the more traditional and certainly more labor intensive scald and
scrape, which entails dipping the entire carcass into 145 degree water for 5
minutes and then scraping the hair and top layer of skin off of the entire
carcass, nose to tail. The result is a clean tough surface which is very
easy to handle during transfer and butchering, since the skin remains intact.
But the process requires a tank large enough to handle a 380lb hog (that
was the size of our largest) and a means of raising and lowering the animal.
Keith scavenged an old water tank that we
estimate had a total volume of about 110 gallons. Being handy with a
plasma torch and welder, he was able to create a truly deluxe scalding tank,
complete with removable lid and a ball-valve for draining the tank at the end
of the day. A little bit of paint to cover up the rust and our tank was
ready for action. Keith is also handy with a fork lift, which had more
than enough capacity to handle the big job we were throwing at it. The
lift allowed us to easily transfer the pigs, hung on gambrels, to the tank for
scalding and to the large metal frame that Keith constructed to hold the completed
sides. Did I mention Keith was handy?
The water temp is extremely important to achieve
the best scald. A precise 145 degrees for exactly 5 minutes - there are
undoubtedly many other opinions and practices related to scalding, we found
that the formula above achieved the very best results. Mistakes made here
create difficulties later, so taking time to get it right is important.
One half of the carcass is scalded at a time, and when it comes out of
the tank after it's soak the work must be completed at a brisk pace. The
scurf (the layer of skin that gets removed) gets scraped off, a task made
easier by a unique tool called a bell scraper. Three or four people
working quickly can scrape the half down in about 25 minutes, then the pig is
flipped and the other half is done. Final touch-ups can be done with
razor-sharp knives, leaving the skin as smooth as possible.
After this the head is removed and taken away to
be cleaned up properly. There are a lot of flaps and folds on the head
that have to be attended to with razor and knife in order to render the head
ready for roasting or carving. The carcass is then transferred to the
evisceration area for the next steps.
EVISCERATION:
Next the carcasses are opened up, using knife
and saw, in order to remove the insides and divide the carcass into halves.
This is detail work requiring a steady hand - one nicked intestine can
create a micro-biological mess of your meat. Better to proceed slowly and
carefully than deal with clean-up protocols. We took few pictures of this
process - but it was attended to by my brother Alex and friend Charmaine, who
carefully divided the carcasses, harvesting all the usable bits from inside,
including heart, livers, caul fat, etc.. The rest of the insides where
bagged for disposal. What results are clean "sides" of pork,
looking an awful lot like meat - real, honest to goodness meat. But that
meat needs to be chilled before being portioned into more usable cuts suitable
for a family to make use of throughout a year. This is conveniently
accomplished by leaving the sides hanging outdoors overnight, when the
temperatures will drop into the upper 20's, chilling the meat to the bone and
firming up the skin and fat.
The frame that Keith fabricated using scrap
metal was a structure of extreme utility, accommodating all eight sides with
ease. A light dusting of snow greeted us the next morning when we arrived
to pack up the sides and take them to Keith's shop for butchering.
BUTCHERING:
There is a great deal of mystery surrounding the
butchering of meat. At grocery stores, technicians in white lab coats
pass to and fro through opaque doors, bringing out trays of portioned and
plastic-wrapped meat marked with a barcode. What goes on back there?
We usually aren't given much access to that part of our food production,
so it is easy to imagine that a great range of technical skills and specialty
tools are required to transform sides of beef, pork, or lamb into usable cuts
of meat. This is not the case. Traditional butchering utilizes a
few simple tools, consisting of a small selection of knives, a cleaver, bone
saw, bone scraper and cutting boards. That's it. By no means do I
intend here to denigrate the butcher's craft - far from it. One thing
that you learn when taking on this task for oneself is that there are cuts in
the meat that require skill and understanding that are the result of long
training and practice. Yet the harvest of a family hog used to be
realistically in the realm of household competencies and a little imagination,
optimism, and a couple of sharp knives can fully equip you for the job of side
butchery.
There are great videos at the
FarmsteadMeatsmith site on the particulars of side butchery, I encourage you to go check
it out if you are considering taking on the task. We set up the garage
with several work stations, a host of bus tubs, vacuum-seal bags, plastic wrap,
butcher paper, and enough cutlery to outfit a samurai army. Over an
8-hour day, all of the sides were slowly transformed into bacon, rib chops,
loin roasts, shoulder roasts, hams, hocks, trotters, tenderloins, and oh, so
much more. There is a kind of mysterious multiplication that happens, the
amount of meat seems to increase with every cut. The old-hat, grocery
store cuts end up being pretty boring - it is heavily marbled shoulder roasts
that fire the imagination, or jowl meat surrounded by silky fat, ready for
curing or the grill.
The end result is a freezer full to the brim
with meat of a quality that is unmatched by anything available at the local
grocer. Many pounds of pork belly now lie curing in the fridge, on their
first steps in a journey that will end in bacon and pancetta. Hams are
suspended serenely in brine buckets, slowly gaining flavor through a mysterious
alchemy that will eventually see them transformed into smoked and glazed
masterpieces. Our four pigs have provided enough stores for a small army,
and by that provision they have facilitated the function and fellowship of a
whole community as we gathered to share in the work and enjoy the fruits of
that labor. There is much, much more benefit incurred in the whole
process than simply a harvest of pork...and for that we are so very grateful.
The harvest really is a gift, one to be received with gravitas and grace.
POSTLUDE:
The whole process is a big work, as one might
expect. But it is deeply satisfying work. We have found that our
respect and appreciation for our animals has grown, as has our sense of
confidence in our own ability to gain some control over the ways and means of
acquiring the food that we feed ourselves, our families, and our community.
The experience of the death/harvest side of the cycle leads one to long
for the birth/nurture side of things, and the mind races forward to spring,
when young pigs will once again populate their big yard at the farm. And
so the end is the beginning of more plans, more dinners, more food adventures,
more farm ambitions, and, of course, more blog posts!
A special thanks to: Keith, Alex, Charmaine,
Trent, Nate P., Gabe, Bob, and Nate H.
We recently came into a significant inheritance of sorts - about 200lbs of pork resulting from the harvest of the pigs we raised this past year. Some of that meat comes in ready-made and recognizable cuts that can be used immediately in the kitchen. Others portions invite additional processing in order to bring out the best. What follows are a couple of our recent adventures in curing and smoking.
When a pig is harvested, one of the biggest tasks is to get all of that meat packaged and stored. Most of it can be vacuum sealed and stored in a freezer until ready to use (one of the great conveniences of pursuing an old task in a modern age). But other cuts can be preserved using other methods, like curing, which will not only save freezer space but will also produce some of the very tastiest stuff we associate with the noble pig. The primary text I've been using as a guide to this process is Ruhlman and Polcyn's Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing
Another great cut for curing is the ham. This comes from the hind leg quarters and can be a large cut. This can be cured in several ways, some roads leading to tender, sweet ham, other, longer journeys resulting in prosciutto. I decided to debone our hams and then submerged them in a brine for about two weeks. They sat out in our garage, protected by salty brine and cool temperatures, as they underwent a flavorful transformation. After this, they, too, sat uncovered in the fridge to dry, then off to the smoker where they were exposed to applewood smoke for about 5 hours. We finished them in the oven to 150F. These hams make a fantastic feature for a big meal, the smoke flavor is superb. You can also put them through a slicer, particularly convenient because they are boneless, and turn out your own packages of deli meat.
The quality of the product that can be produced in your own kitchen is really astounding. The flavors are amazing - this is work that pays dividends on the time and attention given to it. We are now able to find quality deli meats and gourmet bacon a few steps away from the kitchen, tucked safely in the freezer. And bacon and ham are just the tip of the porkberg, so to speak. Pancetta and guanciale are curing in the garage, developing character and flavor. After those, there will be time to try our hand at sausage making, a product that can also benefit from salt, cure, and smoke. The pigs just keep on giving! Stay tuned for more charcuterie updates as time works its magic! 
