Butchering

This is Ben, and this post is about butchering. But for those of you who are made queasy by this sort of thing, you don't need to worry. I won't go into detail, and I won't post any pictures that might make queasy people queasy.

If you want to see the queasy pictures, you can see them on our picture page here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/andrea.and.ben/Butchering

Butchering takes place on two consecutive days.

The first day is the gross day, and only a few people come. Generally, if your family is getting meat, it is expected that you will send a representative to help with the gross day. We butchered three hogs, and with maybe 9ish people helping, the gross day took us about four hours. When we were done the pigs were no longer pigs anymore but had magically become meat and were ready to be processed the next day.

I don't have many pictures from the gross day, as there are not many people who would want to see them.

The second day is the processing day, and pretty much everyone comes out to help. Here is a picture of a group of us helping Jerry wash some tubs:

Butchering is very hard work.

We process the meat (that basically means we trim the fat off and cut it into cuts of meat or slices for sausage), grind and season the sausage, cook the fat down into lard, and package everything up. I think there were about 23ish people helping, and it took us from about 7:30am to about 4:30 or 5pm. We had a nice big borscht lunch to keep us going.

Nobody really likes butchering (especially not the first day), but it is nice to know how your meat is processed and to be able to control how lean it is and how it is seasoned. Plus, processing fees generally cost about as much as the pig does so doing the butchering yourself effectively saves you 50% on your meat.

There's also something to be said for being connected to the process that allows us to eat meat. When meat is packaged up in plastic in the store alongside hundreds of other things that are all also packaged in plastic, it's hard to be mindful of the sacrifice that meat requires. Butchering makes you face the fact that your diet has direct consequences for another animal. I'm obviously not a vegetarian, but I think it's important to acknowledge that sacrifice instead of trying to bury it.

I'm sure you are all wondering how Andrea reacted to her first butchering experience. Here is your answer (I'm linking instead of posting the actual picture because it does have raw meat in it): http://picasaweb.google.com/andrea.and.ben/Butchering#5274225393339249010

And here's a nicer one if you don't want to see the raw meat: