Category: Pigs

Today I am working for The Princess on a school project. We are building the hanging gardens of Babylon, one of the ancient wonders of the world. We are doing it to scale so no big framing work today however we had to make an ancient water lift system to pump the water to the plants.

While this is a collaborative effort, The Princess handles all the critical jobs and design efforts. She is also in charge of all the math. I provide dumb labor and hit things with hammers.

The Princess is in charge of MIG welding while I have to handle TIG. At 7 she is not quite ready for TIG yet.

After a few hours of work, we did have to take a break to feed the pigs. Tomatoes, baby carrots, and bananas. Not a bad breakfast if you are a pig.

We will work the rest of the day on the gardens, then tonight we will be processing 4 deer that are showing up. A gift from a friend at the end of deer season. Looks like the room we made in the freezer lately from pork is getting replaced by venison. Spork and The Princess will of course be in the thick of any meat processing, as always.

So today we started the hams down their months long process of going from raw meat to smoked hams. Here you see inmate Brian salting the last ham. We had a total of 76.6 pounds in the four hams. Ham #1 is 12.4 pounds. Ham #2 is 11 pounds. Ham #3 is the big boy at 38.6 pounds. Ham #4 is 14.6. All were coated in salt and insta-cure #2. There was 3 1/8 oz of insta cure in the mix and that was enough for two complete coatings.

From Bang to Bacon

In response to customer requests, we are conducting our first ever open event. On December 7^th 2013 come out to our family farm and participate in an old fashioned hog killing. We are located 15 minutes from downtown Raleigh on 84 acres of dedicated farmland. Weather permitting we are going to host our first ever public class for aspiring homesteaders and foodies to learn how to go from a live pig to finished products such as bacon, ham, ground pork, jowl bacon, and even liver pate and scrapple. This will be a true nose to tail event and participants will be able to roll up their sleeves and get involved to whatever level they desire.

This will be a one-day event, focusing on traditional methods of harvesting and processing a single pig raised on our homestead. The day will start at 7:30am where everyone will be greeted and given a quick tour of our farm. Afterwards we will process the pig humanely, then wash, bleed, gut, scald, and scrape the pig to get it ready to go into the walk-in cooler. Once the pig is in the cooler, we’ll remove another pig, previously processed and properly cooled and go to work on butchering the carcass into its usable pieces. At the same time, we will take the organ meats from the first pig and conduct a simultaneous session in our kitchen on how to make pate and/or scrapple, along with other traditional hog killing day staples of yesteryear.

Lastly, we will traditionally process the bacon, hams, etc in our on farm smoke house.

In addition to myself, we will be assisted by:

Brent Miller and Brian Reeves who will be handling the Charcuterie, smoking, and salting portion of the class.

And of course our hard working farm interns who will be doing all sorts of things to make this event one you will enjoy.

There will be an excellent ratio of students to instructors so everyone should have time and opportunity to ask questions and get involved in each aspect of processing. Some of what we’ll be doing will be going on simultaneously so you will need to decide what parts interest you the most. I need to note that we are not professional butchers, chefs, or culinary experts. We are simply farmers opening our farm and sharing our experience. This is a wide ranging beginner level class designed to give you full immersion into farm life.

This is an aggressive schedule and will be a long day going from dawn till dark with plenty of opportunities for everyone to get involved to a level they are comfortable with.

Costs will be $95 per person and we will limit attendance to 20 people.

This will be an outside event, with time spent inside in some small portions. Be prepared to be outdoors. Heat is available during the outdoor portion so you can warm up if you get cold but wear layers so you are prepared. A bathroom is available as well.

Reservations required, payment up front will be required to hold your position.

Learn more about our farm at www.ninjacowfarm.com or at www.facebook.com/ninjacowfarm

For reservations, please email dan@ninjacowfarm.com

Anyone committing and safety violations or causing undue stress to our animals or other students will be asked to leave. This will be a fun day of learning and we intend to keep everyone safe and enjoying the day.

We will not be selling any of the meat that is being processed the day of our class. It is for use on our farm by my family only. We do have USDA inspected pork previously processed that will be available if someone desires to purchase however this will not be a sales event.

 

Yesterday the cows were on a sliver of a paddock that had pretty thin grass to boot. Inmate John had rightfully suggested I take a look and maybe move the cows early. He was right. Here they are onto their new grass. They were most pleased and went straight to work. I am really looking forward to when we can move the cows more than once per day. They really go to town on new grass.

Miguel has been doing some reconnoitering for me and has turned me onto another market for produce. This time at the Latin market. I am slowly working my way to Rednexican but my Spanish was woefully inadequate for this trip. Fortunately Miguel met me after work and he charmed El Jeffe of the market into letting us have an entire pallet of food with promises of more to come. And some apples and pineapple for the kids. And a lead on a tractor rental. I had to get Miguel out of there before he owned the stand. He is a charmer.

So this solves our dilemma of how to feed this winter since the regular market has shut down. The Latin market is open all winter so we should have a steady supply of fresh food for the piggies and the cows.