7125 Old Stage Road Raleigh NC 919-322-0197
Everything that oinks on the farm
Two pork chops from our pigs from our hog class. Our hogs weigh about 250 pounds before we even think about harvesting them. Typical hogs weigh half that or slightly better. The result? Real flavor, real meat, and really huge pork chops. This is a 14″ pan that can barely hold two pork chops.
Tired of dry, puny, pork chops? Forget the other white meat. Eat real pork like the Ninjas are having tonight for dinner.
After curing and smoking all the pork bellies from our class it was time to slice bacon. We had some trouble with the meat slicer that I bought. The blade wasn’t sharp which was easily solvable but the blade also wobbled on its bearings which was a problem. Miguel and I took it apart and found that the blade didn’t run on bearings at all, it runs on bushings which were worn. Great, easy to fix… if you have the parts. Oh well, we put it back together and Miguel and I went to work on bacon with a wobbly blade.
Last time I made bacon, I sliced the bacon in a huge pile, then sorted the pile into vacuum bags which ended up, after sealing and freezing, being salty frozen bacon balls. I love bacon, but salty bacon balls just didn’t make anyone happy for breakfast.
It turns out that Miguel, in his past, worked in a deli in Mexico and knew exactly how to slice bacon, or so he claimed. I guess this was before he worked as a talent agent and after his stint as a double naught spy in Her Majesty’s service. I can’t find anything he doesn’t know how to do.
So at Miguel’s direction we get out waxed paper and a frozen rasher of bacon. The blade is still wobbly but I’ve sharpened it. Miguel asks how thin I want the bacon and I say I guess as thin as you can get it, since my salty bacon balls were also chewy thick slices. Miguel runs off the first few packs of bacon and you can see through the bacon it’s so thin. I finally told him he was showing off and to thicken it up a bit. 
This is less than 1/10th what we ran in a few hours. We put over 100 packs of bacon into the freezer. I ran out of freezer space in our big freezer for bacon. I thought there was always room for bacon?! Perfect slices, perfectly packaged and put into the freezer. This is the best looking bacon we’ve produced. It’s also the best tasting bacon we’ve produced as the smoke was pretty good and the cure was a nice sugar/salt cure. Very simple and good with no chemicals or additives.
In case you think this is one big sales job on why you should buy our bacon, you’re wrong. This is verboten bacon. Illegal, contraband bacon. It’s not USDA inspected and is only for our use as a family. However if you stop by for a tour I may slip you a package to take home. Nobody said I couldn’t give it as a present. I just can’t sell it.
Now we split the sternum.
The bone saw is harder than it looks. I took a few passes to help the students out. 
Getting the anus cut out without making a mess is always a challenge. Here we are just being successful. 
The only thing we “wasted” on this pig. We did not clean the intestines and use them for sausage. We did donate the innards to the wildlife on the farm who ate well that night. 
This was a tricky bit because we were dumping the innards while trying to save the liver and kidneys and also the heart and lungs for anatomy class. 
Success! A clean cavity ready to wash out and then split.
For the cleanup of the hog I tried to do as much as possible except for the scraping. Once we got into butchery I tried to let the students do as much as they wanted. 
Here we are separating the bladder and urethra from the hog. This is a careful process because you don’t want to get peed on at this point. This part was also pretty funny because I was so focused on safety, pictures, overall impact on students, etc. that when asked if this pig was a male or female I answered female while we were cutting off his male bits. Not my smartest moment. 🙂
Separating the anus while trying to not get pooped on. This is the delicate bit. Once this is done, it’s pretty easy work.
Getting ready to gut.
Making the incision.
Miguel and John cleaning up the head while we work on the body. 
After burning off all the hair, a thorough rinse down to get everything clean.
Washing everything down.
Having scraped the hog all that we can, we now burn off the remaining hairs. This is quick and easy vs. continuing to scrape.
Getting to work
First we take off the head. It went to our friend at the Mexican farmers market, who was quite happy to have it for a gift. 
Not quite so delicate work.
The final product, ready to be cleaned up and taken to the market.
Moving the pig into the shop
Transferring from the tractor to the hoist
Inside and ready for the next phase