In my continuing efforts to keep you up to date on our product, I’m letting you know that we are taking hogs to the processor again today. It takes most all day to get there, unload, and get back. That doesn’t count loading the hard headed things, which at this point is nearly impossible.
You see, we had about 140 hogs on this farm at one point. We’d gotten them in an effort to supply a wholesale customer who then went out of business, leaving us holding the bag (guess what my answer is when wholesale people call me). The hogs we have here now are the last hogs on the farm from that lot. They’ve lived here for a long time, and they have watched other hogs get on the trailer, never to return. They don’t know what happens when you get on the trailer, but at this point, they know they don’t want any part of it.
And they are huge.
And they have a bad attitude.
And they are four wheel drive.
So loading is an adventure and we get what we get most days. It isn’t, get that hog over there, and this one here. If we want two, and we get two, then we are thankful. If three get on? Bonus! Only one. Ugh, best we could do.
So assuming we get two loaded today, I’ll haul them to Acre Station to get them processed. Should take about 1.5 weeks to get the original processing done. Then I haul the primals (think huge hunks of meat) from Acre Station to Dean Street to get the value add stuff done. The pork chops and regular cuts will come back home after drop off at Dean Street as they don’t need any additional processing. The stuff I dropped at Dean Street is another couple of weeks.
In the meantime, I’m picking up chicken, milk, buttter, etc. tomorrow so that we are stocked for open on Wednesday. Dunno what Christy will be able to magic up for us in the chicken department. It isn’t like we are in mid-summer and she has lots of birds on the ground ready to harvest. I expect we’ll have lean times for a bit on chicken before she has more to process for us. But know that she is doing the best she can, which is a far sight better than I could do.