Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Fire and Steel

A couple of days ago we had our propane fireplace insert replaced with a wood burning insert.  It was somewhat cher but we hope we can recoup the costs by heating our house primarily with wood this winter.  Our old house is heated with oil.  The rising cost of diesel combined with the need to refill our propane tank every six weeks made our decision to switch easy.  The guys at Custom Hearth in Poulsbo did a bang-up job.  Thanks fellas.
Does this forty-foot ladder make my ass look big?
The new insert will hold a log up to 24" in length, which is good because that means less chainsawing.  We chose the flush insert over the type that juts out into the room for aesthetic reasons.  The disadvantage to having a flush insert is the loss of some heat that is transmitted through convection.  Fortunately, there is a good blower on this unit that should force the heat into the house.  Who says that style can't have substance?  Judge for yourself.
Jotul Rockland, pride of Norway by way of Maine.
By coincidence, our new massive grill arrived the same day.  The grill is a massive chunk of iron that will be well suited for smoking and grilling when the pigs return.  It remains to be seen if the grill will function as a cold smoker without making any modifications.

Vulcan himself would be proud of the fire-burning appliances that we recently added to the farm.
Brinkmann Limited Edition Trailmaster, not intended for children.

Fabergé egg

After many, many months of waiting, we finally got an egg from our hens.  Every morning for the past month we checked our egg boxes on the outside of the coup only to be sadly disappointed.  Why would the hens mature so much later than the roosters?  Afterall, Thomas has had no problems cockadoodling and raping the hens for the past six-weeks all the while the hens remained ambivalent in exercising their biological imperatives.
Bupkis brought to you by feckless hens.
All that changed yesterday when we discovered the first tiny brown egg buried in straw in the corner of the laying box.  Hurray!  Our first free-range, organic egg.  Now, if we could only sell the egg for $1000.00 to recoup our costs.

One is the loneliest number that you'll ever do.

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

"Post Mortem Laments" Lament

I am forced to disagree with the lamentation below.  We did not harm Lenny and Squiggy by hiring professional butchers to kill and slaughter them (if you don't count killing them as harm . . .) -- quite the opposite.  Their deaths were instantaneous and so far as is discernible to the human senses they felt no fear, no pain and no stress.  They did not squeal; they were not hauled offsite to be slaughtered some other place.

If we would have tried to kill and butcher them, we could easily have missed the mark and the deaths may not have been as quick.  As for the butchering, I'm pretty sure that if Lenny and Squiggy had a voice they would have been worried about how death comes knocking and not so worried about whether the funeral is open casket or cremation.  Plus we didn't have to buy all the stuff that you need to butcher an animal.  All in all, I think a very successful first attempt at pig raising.

Post-Mortem Laments

The pigs have been gone a week now.  Their squeals and their presence are missed.  Their empty pen remains unchanged like a child's room after she has left for college (only filled with more dung). The pen looks forlorn now.

It is easier now with just the chickens and the lambs but the pigs were the animals that gave us farm-cred.  Everyone has chickens but two fat pigs?  Not where we live.  Everyone who knew of our pig pursuit found it amusing that we would choose to raise an animal that was so visceral.  We received our share of pessimist comments like, "Oh you will grow to love those pigs so much that you will never be able to kill them".

Oh Squiggy, we hardly knew thee.
It is true that we grew to love them.  But our love was not just for their industriousness and their personalities but also because they represented an earnest attempt to raise our own food and by extension an attempt to connect with our most base requirements of existence.  Indeed, when our four-year old witnessed the pigs slaughter he wanted to know why the men were taking the pigs away after they were skinned and gutted.  (Answer: the butchering was done at their shop after at least a day of hanging in a refrigerator).

The men were able to kill, skin, gut and saw in half the two pigs in under an hour.  It was numbing the speed at which the men were able to process Lenny and Squiggy.  All the while, I watched and felt like a useless voyeur.  After all,  these were the same little pigs that we personally selected and raised over four months with nothing but the finest kitchen scraps.

It's just a flesh wound.
We owed it to them, no to ourselves, to take the time and love to kill and butcher them.  Nothing says love like a .22 to the head.  The industrial speed of the slaughter raises the question of whether raising pigs in this manner was only a small step removed from buying flesh at Costco.  The point to raising our own food was not simply to enjoy the fruit of our labor but also to learn and benefit from the process itself.

Going completely off the gird is no mean feat but that was never our goal.  There must be limits to hobby farming lest we start making plans to breed pigs and build a castration shed to barrow our hogs.  It is tough to balance true diy farming with working a job full-time.  Next year, the pigs will get slaughtered by hand and with much love.

Sunday, June 5, 2011

Dead Pigs Waddling

The pigs are going to be slaughtered in two days.  After much internal vigorous debate (I was called Pol Pot at one point), we decided to have a butcher do the deed for us.  One option that we considered was to hire a local farmer/butcher to come and teach us how to slaughter and process the pigs.  Advantages to this route included a hands-on experience and scalded pig skin .  I know, pig skin.  I bet your mouth is watering just envisioning all of that lovely chicharrón.

I wanted the skin on so I could try my hand at prosciutto.

Doing the slaughter ourselves would have given a reason to outfit our farm with the tools necessary for the task.  At a minimum, you need a .22 rifle, gambrel, butcher saw and good sharp knives.  If you want to scald your pigs, then some type of water container like an old tub, 55 gallon drum or trough and someway to heat the water.

But why be a minimalist?  Good tools make a big difference.  You might as well treat yourself and get a chain mail apron, two handed cleaver and face paint à la Braveheart.


In the end, it was easier to have Farmer George come out with his mobile slaughter unit.  We wanted the pigs killed on site to avoid unnecessary stress on them.  Poor pigs.  Poor juicy delicious pigs.
"You can take our hams but you can't take our dignity."