I have tried to make this title as clear as possible, so if you are clicking on this blog post, I assume that you know what you are getting into! I tried to not have too many graphic images, but there is raw meat pictured here, so beware and know yourself and what you can stand 🙂
We recently butchered our first hog that we raised from about 3 months old. This has been quite the experience from start to finish and we have learned SO MUCH! We started this journey knowing next to nothing about raising and farming pigs, and this first round of butchering was so helpful to build the knowledge and skills needed. We felt like we gained a lot by the end of the day- both 59 pounds of meat in our freezer + tons of knowledge and experience to move forward and be able to do this again!
We started the day early in the morning- Theo was up and at the store buying last minute supplies by 6:30am. The actual moment of butchering didn’t happen until closer to 7:30am, but it was all hands on deck from 8am until about 3pm. Hopefully, we will get much faster as we gain more experience!
Theo had all of us stay inside while he killed the pig, and then he let the kids come back out to help him hang it. He then began to skin it.
Skinning it was by far the part that took the longest, and will become much quicker with experience and a good set of butchering knives. After the skinning came removing the organs, which was a pretty fascinating lesson in anatomy/biology!
After the organ removal, Theo began the meat harvesting process. He cut off the fat, especially the leaf lard that is found around the kidneys of the pig. I later used this fat to make lard. He then began cutting the meat off of all the bone. This part also took a long time, and involved watching a couple YouTube videos to find specific cuts of meat.
In order to save time and since we weren’t totally confident/experienced for this first pig, we decided to only do pork chops and ground pork. We didn’t do any ribs, bacon, or ham…this time around! We just needed to keep it simple and practical for the time (and experience) that we had!
Around this point, it was lunchtime and a big storm blew in. Right then, my in-laws also arrived to spend the weekend with us – and help us with the rest of the pig processing.
It was a long process and I think that the hardest part was that Theo was doing it all solo. I was basically useless to him as I was constantly attending to the baby, or filling water bottles, or trying to help the kids out. It wasn’t very practical for me to have my hands all bloody and covered in meat and then try to attend to the needs of a newborn/small child.
Once my in-laws arrived, we got set up in some stations and it made the process go much faster- although it was still slow going! My father in law stationed himself to cut the meat into smaller chunks and cut off all the fat, Theo and the kids stationed themselves at the meat grinder, and then Theo and my mother in law set up a station putting the ground meat into freezer safe bags. I worked on making lard and taking care of the littles.
At this point, we were all pretty exhausted but there is no rest for the weary when there is a pig to process! I did, however, stop taking pictures…oops.
In the end, we had about 16 pork chops, 39 bags of ground pork (probably about 1.5-2 lds of meat in each bag) and three full mason jars of lard.
There is something very special about making our own food, and knowing the work that goes into having our freezer full of food that we raised. Yes, it is hard to kill an animal that we have had an attachment to, but I honestly feel that it is better than the alternative of being completely detached from the food that we are consuming. Each meal that we have eaten from this pig seems more special and I put more thought into both the cooking and the eating of the meal. It really is a transformative experience to raise and process our own food!
Here are some quick FAQs that I have received about hog butchering….
Q: How did you kill the hog?
A: One gunshot to the head and then a clean removal of the head with a knife to bleed it out
Q: Did the kids watch/participate?
A: Theo had all of us stay inside for the actual dying part. That part was really hard. One kid took it much harder than the others. Once the pig started to look less like a pig, they were very involved! And once we got to the meat grinding part, the kids actually did most of that! They were very hard workers and extremely helpful when they could be!
Q: Will you do it again?
A: Absolutely! We currently have two more pigs, and we plan to continue to raise pigs for meat
Q: What do you use ground pork for?
A: I use it in anything that I would typically use ground beef. You can’t really tell a difference!
Let me know if you have any other questions that I can answer. We are still so new to this that I would not call us experts, but sometimes it’s good to get knowledge from people who are also still learning, so I am happy to answer questions or point you in the direction of someone who might know the answer!