the 'pulled pork' portion of this published public porcine practical post..

the day dawned cold and clear. but not too cold, no gloves needed for the work ahead, but cold enough to see your breath, you know the type of morning. anyway, variable skies, 40's, no wind. good stuff. today was the day of days for our porkers, and we were ready as we could hope to be. all the books, read, videos, watched, lessons absorbed(hopefully).. ready to see one of our livestock dreams through to it's inevitable conclusion: the harvesting of the investment that we'd poured so many mental and physical hours into, not to mention the capital needed to securely house and feed three pigs, that were now, by my estimates, over 400lbs each! 

pre-work jitters.

read on to hear and see how the weekend went, but be aware, there are some graphic photos in the post.. 

prepping the hanging station.

so the process goes something like this: shoot the pig between the eyes with a .22 rifle, which instantly stuns it and knocks it out, bleed the pig with a cut to the throat, then hang it by the back legs, and in our case, skin it, take the guts out and hang the carcass overnight to cool.

some choose to scald the whole pig in hot water and remove the hair instead of skinning the pig, but that would've been too large of an infrastructure project for our first time doing this. leaving the shin on prevents the meat from drying out as quickly, keeps more of the fat on the meat, and to some, improves the quality and experience of cooking and eating the meat. next time.

 i'm happy to say every step of the slaughtering day went exactly as planned, no stress to human or pig, no unplanned injuries, and we were done at a reasonable hour. very calm and reassuring to my sense that i'm making the correct life choices. it felt pretty good. 

saving the blood for sausage.

the pig will reflexively spasm when you take the shot, so to get a good, quick, and clean cut, it's advised to have help holding the pig still. 

runt.

moving the pigs via tarp. it took three of us to lift and move one pig.

hosing them down.

heads off, skinned.

evisceration.

l to r: spotty, pinky, runt. in these two photos, you can get a feel for their size difference..

gallows humor. finish him!

 one of our priorities from the start was to use as much of the pig as possible. blood and intestines for sausage, fat for rendered lard, bones for stock, ears for dog treats, jowls for bacon, cheeks for pan frying.. as much as possible. unfortunately, in killing them the way that we did, the brains are unusable, but i wanted to send them off as quickly and humanely as possible, so i'll accept that loss.

spotty.

as smooth as slaughtering day went, butchering day was a stressful event, with broken tools, time-consuming indecision, and ultimately, a sense that i was racing the clock all day. we'd watched all the videos, again, and read all the books we could about breaking down a half an animal, but nothing really prepares you for your first time. fortunately, subsequent butchering went much more smoothly, and i feel pretty confident in my ability to turn this:

 into this:

 and ultimately, partially into this:

lovely.

so good.

totally worth it.

next adventure: curing and sausage!