The End is the Beginning

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. 

Primal Cuts

This past Friday I traveled to the far reaches of Whidbey Island, located in the Puget Sound, to take part in an instructional class of a unique kind.  A small number of participants gathered for several days of shared work, taking two pigs from the host farm through the entire process of harvest.  Our own pigs are fast nearing their harvest date, so this was a timely opportunity to gain critical experience.

WARNING: WHAT FOLLOWS IS A POST THAT DESCRIBES THE DIVIDING OF A PIG CARCASS INTO USEFUL PORTIONS OF MEAT MEANT FOR CONSUMPTION.  THERE WILL BE PICTURES.  IF THIS TOPIC OR THESE PICTURES PROMISE TO BE OFFENSIVE TO YOU, PLEASE DO NOT READ THEM.  INSTEAD, ENJOY THIS PICTURE OF THE MUKILTEO-CLINTON FERRY IN THE RAIN.  TO CONTINUE READING THE POST, SIMPLY SCROLL ON DOWN.

The class was hosted by the crew at Farmstead Meatsmith.  I have been lurking on their website for the better part of this past year, trying to glean from the excellent and beautiful instructional videos some of the techniques we would need to put to use as we eventually come to the task with our own animals.  Apart from the very practical discussion, you also end up getting a look at some recipes and food treatments that make it clear that those folks are foodies as well as butchers and abattoirs.  And they weave in some of their philosophical commitments that undergird their choice to get this personal with their food experience.  It is no small vision; more than an economic argument and bigger than a nostalgic look back to days past, there is a commitment to community life, to hospitality, to stewardship and to generosity.  The commitment to these values goes beyond a claim on them as the niceties of society - they are seen as vital, necessary, needful....I would say even strategic.  By that, I mean that members of a community practice these values as a way to pursue their ability to survive and thrive - and so the whole interdependent community around them does as well.

That may all sound a bit high-minded for a class on butchering a pig.  But our connections to one another, our connections to food and to the animals that we take it from, to the land that we take it from - these connections have all been weakened in our contemporary culture of commoditization.  The plastic wrapped packages of meat we buy in the store, or the neatly arranged piles of fruits or vegetables soaking under the misters in the produce aisle, these are far removed from their places and processes of origin.  Regaining a connection to our food is a way to not only regain control over the quality and economics of our food, but also a way to explore the reforging of those connective paths between our food and each other.

And now, here is a picture of a philosophical butcher in training - my brother Alex.

Alex is a shareholder in our little herd of pigs and so is also preparing for the big day.  He participated in all three days of the class, which covered topics like slaughter and evisceration, butchery and meat curing.  He also managed to harvest a deer while on the Island, a timely accomplishment considering the number of cutting boards, knives and other processing tools located at the farm site.

Our instructor was Brandon Sheard, who led us through the steps to take full sides of pork and transform them into usable cuts of meat.  The pigs had been processed the day before, so when I arrived on Friday they were already cleaned, divided, and chilled - what was left were four sides of pork.  Alex and I had one side to work with between us, and we first divided it into quarters (two shoulders, loin and side).

All of the traditional pork cuts that you might find in the grocery store can be found in these quarters, and there are some non-traditional cuts hiding in there as well.  What becomes abundantly evident early on is just how much food one pig can produce for a family or community.  Brandon made a comparison to "loaves and fishes"....with each cut, the food seems to multiply.  This abundance is part of what invites and encourages hospitality surrounding the harvest.

That hospitality was well-modeled by our host site - a picturesque farm property hidden in the deep forests of Whidbey Island, the host family provided a beautiful locale for the class.  It is hard to express just how warm the reception was - not only did we accomplish the butchering in the comfort of a large kitchen setting, we were treated to food and drink at every turn.  Homemade cheese, pickled beets and beans, spicy garden salsa, even some very local spirit distilled from apples and aged in oak.

Our quarters turned slowly, cut by cut, into pork chops, tenderloin, boston butt, picnic roasts, leaf fat, back fat and, of course, bacon.  Or at least, belly, which would eventually turn into bacon.  Or cured into pancetta.  Or roasted into delicious.  That's the thing, there are so many possibilities, one side is 150 lbs of potential - a foodie's mother lode.

The instruction was very useful, the best kind of hands-on work that I needed to feel more confident as we approach our big harvest day.  The experience gained will help insure that our own pigs' life ends in as humane and respectful way as they have lived, and that we are able to maximize the ways in which our family...and our community....will be able to benefit by that gift.