When It’s Time to Go To Market – Eating Your Porker

I really don’t know where to start.

I have so much to tell you!

Let’s begin with, please don’t yell at me for eating my pigs.  We have decided as a family that we want to eat meat & bacon.  We have also decided that we want the meat we eat to be raised in a loving environment. Therefore, I have to eat animals that I raise. It’s part of the homesteader’s dilemma.  It’s a hard day, but the healthy, delicious meat is worth it for us.  🙂

This, of course, does not exempt me from being sad, miserable and wanting to complain about it.

My pigs are dying this week which has me beside myself with agony and sadness.

It’s been a while since I have been this attached to my food.  I usually do a better job of keeping the “food” at a distance.  We have giant pets like Trinka & Rosie our milk cows.  They are wonderful, I love them and they will never be on my table.  I can be as attached as I want and don’t have to worry about having to cook them.

I have other animals around here who are nothing but food, like Cornish Rock chickens, beef cows and pigs.  I know from day one that they are chicken tenders, steaks and bacon.

My layer chickens and rabbits fall somewhere in the middle.  They are not necessarily food, but I don’t mind eating them.

When it’s time to say good bye to the food, I’m usually prepared, after all, that’s why they are here.

Stupid pig is breaking my heart this year.

We bought three male feeder pigs from our friend J.  Go here to see J and all his pigs.  His pigs were not the normal feeder pigs that you get from a concrete pig farm.  They were some free rangin’, people lovin’ coddled and cuddled pigs.

Especially Porker.  I found out this weekend that his name was “Bruiser” at J’s farm.  We call him “Porker.”

He was the favorite piglet at his first home.  Translation:  he was carried, he was scratched, he was pet, he was loved… regularly.  He still feels the need to get his share of scratching and loving on a daily basis.  This usually comes from me.  The horrible person who is going to eat him.

I know, I know.  It is good.  He has lived a great life.  He has been happy and healthy.

He grew up eating raw milk, cheese, buttermilk, whey, grass, hay, canning scraps, garden scraps, and locally made hog feed.  He will be such good food for my family.  This is why we raise our meat – so we know that they were raised humanely.  It is important to me that the food I eat lived well.  Just because their destiny is pork chops and bacon doesn’t mean that their quality of life doesn’t matter.  The fact that we are going to eat them doesn’t mean that they should live in confined, indoor, dirty or other less than ideal environments.

I want happy food.  I want pasture raised food.  I don’t want to contribute to the number of animals being raised in sad, cramped, dirty environments – so I don’t eat that stuff.

If you want to help save some animals you can too, simply by purchasing pastured meats.  If people stop buying the meat from feedlots and CAFO’s, it will decrease the demand for that meat (thus decrease the number of animals being confined).

When we purchase pastured meats we are voting for pastured animals.  This increase in demand will increase the amount of animals being raised in open, grassy fields.

Back to Porker.

So, poor him and poor me.  I’ll be sure to report back after Wednesday and let you know how it went.  I would prefer to not even go to the processor this year.  I just don’t want to watch him take that walk,  ya know?  I realize this is part of the deal and saying good bye means closure and the end of the process.  So…… I’ll go.

And, someone has to decide how we want our pork packaged – no way I am leaving this responsibility up to DH.  I’ll end up with 600 pounds of bratwurst and bacon…. and who knows what else.  Not that I would mind 600 pounds of brats and bacon, but a little more variety would be nice.

It will be raining Wednesday here in Kentucky if you were wondering.  No, I haven’t checked the weather app.  It always rains when we move pigs.  So, Wednesday about 2:00 we should get a nice shower.  If your fall garden needed a little rain – you’re welcome.

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XO,

Candi