7125 Old Stage Road Raleigh NC 919-322-0197
Everything that oinks on the farm
Showing the walk in cooler that we built.
Demonstrating how hard it is to separate pigs just by unassisted methods. Hint, it doesn’t work. 
Intern John taking a break after a couple of laps with the pigs. We were getting the pig boards at this moment so he’s not slacking. 
Intern Brian and I, now working the pigs with our home-made pig boards. The difference in working the pigs was dramatic.
In addition to the hog killing itself, Brent Miller came and taught cooking and prep for various traditional killing day fare. The pate was yummy!
The walking tour. This is where we made it over to the cows and discussed cattle management and pasture rotation.
Owen, one of the ninja babies, came up to see what we were doing.
One of our roosters, keeping an eye on everyone.
Of course the farm dogs got into the class as well. Here’s the rat…
And Bella Cotton
Here are some pics of our students as they waited for class to start, which started with a bang. 3 bangs actually as I had trouble with the killing shot. There’s lessons in everything, especially when things go wrong. Turns out my shot was a bit low, too close to the eyes and not far enough up the head. It still bothers me but at least everyone learned what not to do.
We were pleased to have Thomas Locke from CFSA attend our class. He wasn’t just a pretty face, he was elbow deep in bloody work and earned his keep.
We had a great turnout and fantastic weather for our hog class. I’m going to post some of the beautiful pics every few days for the next week or so, along with some comments on pics where appropriate. MANY, MANY thanks to Diane McKinney for spending her entire Saturday at our house working for carnitas and not much else to get all the great pics. Dianne is an AWESOME photographer if any of you need high end photography work.
Overall the class went well. In fact, we are not only planning on doing it again, we are going to have Brandon from Farmstead meat smith come out from Washington next year and teach. We’ll butcher another hog and also get more into charcuterie. I’ve already talked to him about coming and it looks like all we need to do is pick a date. We’ll share more details as things firm up. In the mean time, how about what happened at our first class.
The star of our show. This pink pig weighed about 340 pounds. We kept our Ossabaw boar, Lemont, in the pen with this pig so he wouldn’t be lonely or upset. We also made sure they had some yummy food to enjoy the morning.
Getting the scalding tank up to temperature. We had time for a walking tour of the farm while the water came up to 145 degrees. 
After the tour, we spent some time on the history of the farm and why each of our attendees had taken our class.
We’ve received our first load of USDA inspected by-the-cut pork back from the butcher. That means that you can finally buy locally produced organic pork from your favorite Ninja Cow producer.
We have ground pork, pork chops, smoked ham, bacon, loose sausage, sausage links, seasoned meat, fatback, boston butts and ribs. I will be updating the pricing on our website later. In the meantime if you want some pork contact me at dan@ninjacowfarm.com to make arrangements
Here you have a finished ham. Cured, smoked, and ready for the larder. It’s been a long process but a pretty neat one. Now we leave the ham at room temperature for a month or so and its ready whenever we are. This winters work will be good this summer with our garden fresh vegetables.
Next weekend we have our bang to bacon class. Since I don’t have time to do the prep this week, we went ahead and killed one of the two pigs we are going to use yesterday.
Getting the scalding water up to 145. Brent stopped by in the morning to help and get organized. Also Bar-B-Jew, Darryl, and the inmates were on hand. Miguel was everywhere, including being the head chef for a batch of carnitas which fed the entire farm with leftovers. As you can see it was a rainy and cold morning.
Just finishing the scraping. Spork stopped by to help for a bit.
The Princess was very keen on doing the gutting. She had missed that part before and she had been learning anatomy in school. She wanted to see it for real. She was disappointed we weren’t going to extract the brain for her to see.
The head, before being cleaned up. Brent will be making head cheese with this one for class day.
Here I am gutting the pig. The Princess wanted to do this but I had to get the heart and lungs out intact for mom for anatomy class.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bo5hZQYVG38
Miguel got busy with his carnitas pot while we processed one side of the hog. We used the front and rear quarter for carnitas, salted the bacon, and left the loin to cool in the walk in. We will process the loin later.
Carnitas with pork so fresh it was still warm when it went into the pot. You can’t buy food like this.
And to celebrate, something to wash the carnitas down.
We will see all of you next weekend for class.
I am one of those people at a party that you don’t want to start comparing scars with. Either I am monumentally stupid, or I’ve done a lot of things. Probably some of both. Either way I have a lot of scars and with scars come stories. I have scars from bow and arrow fishing, knife wounds, getting hit by falling steel, having liquid steel dripped on me (thanks Mr K), hole punchers, table saws, bicycles, motorcycle wrecks, and these are just the highlights. However I now have a new mark that ups my street cred, such as it ever was.
What you see above is a pig bite. That’s one side of the wound, just above the knee. I can’t really see the other side. While loading the piglets into the trailer and then sorting the pigs out of the trailer we didn’t want in, I managed to get myself between Penelope and her kids. Miguel was letting Penelope past the partition and I turned my back on her to keep the rest of the pigs from running out too, something they are very good at. Well Penelope saw the opening, then turned back towards me and took a bite out of the back of my leg. I never saw her coming. Luckily I wear Duluth Trading Company firehouse work pants which are heavy and thick 11.5oz cloth. If I had been wearing anything less I would have needed stitches which would have been unfortunate because I doubt Mrs K could have stopped laughing at me long enough to sew me up.
So it turns out that Duluth knew what they were doing when they made the following commercial.
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=E73Jyf2Dzb0
Miguel spent the rest if the day laughing at me. It felt deserved.
As I’ve said before, tattoos are for people who haven’t earned their scars.
Monday we made a deal to sell all of our Ossabaw feeder pigs to Rare Earth Farms so you can buy them at the farmers market soon. I felt like I got a fair price and started a good relationship with a partner farmer.
Today I read this.
Buy high and sell low, it’s not the key to success.