Building a legacy rooted in respect for the earth, family traditions, and shared knowledge
We processed another one of the pigs this week. With each one that I do, it gets a bit easier and more familiar. The cuts are a bit smoother, and the process goes a bit faster.
The walk-in cooler is working out fantastically for hanging the meat and for cutting the pork into traditional cuts. Since the last update, I managed to find a 3 horsepower Biro meat-cutting bandsaw. It made the job of butchery significantly easier than using hand tools alone.
We’ve wanted to smoke our own meats for quite some time, so after numerous hours watching YouTube videos and looking at other peoples’ designs, we decided to take the plunge and build a cold smoker smokehouse. It’s based off the design from Deep South Homestead’s videos and has worked great so far. We can’t wait to smoke more bacon and sausage.
We used tongue and groove cedar for the smoker box and constructed an offset firebox so that the internal temperature wouldn’t get too hot for cold smoking. It’s topped off with a metal roof (leftovers from another project around the farm).
It’s pretty crazy how some animals develop a personality all of their own. This pig (Periwinkle, I think) acts just like a dog. She wags her little tail and loves being petted. In these photos, she hopped up on top of her feeder to get closer so that I could scratch her head.
Meanwhile, while her sister (Petunia) is nice and is friendly, there is a huge difference between the two. Periwinkle is more friendly and awesome in general.
We added three additional pigs to our flock, herd, whatever you call a group of pigs. The girls have decided to name them Poppey, Periwinkle, and Petunia.
Continue reading “The three little piggies”We took the plunge and purchased our first pig today. He’s a Yorkshire boar. He’ll remain un-cut and will be used to breed the other pigs (the ones that we don’t have yet, lol).
He’s small at this point, but it won’t be long before he’s big and strong.
Even with the ride home and the change of scenery, he was still friendly towards the girls and was very curious overall. Kaylee decided that one of the weeds around the pig pen certainly tasted better than the food he had, so she should feed it to him. He didn’t seem to mind.
