The Butchering

Once the excitement of the new pigs wore off, it was time to go to the butcher and watch the piggies of yesteryear get butchered.
The normal process is, we take the pigs to the abattoir and he then delivers them to our butcher. Normally we would then pick up our pigs, that have been butchered per our instructions, wrapped and boxed, a couple of days later. As this was our first time however, and because the butcher said we could come watch, we went a few days later and got to see the whole butchering process.

Husband and I were both a little bit nervous about how we would react to seeing our boys dead on a table, being cut up by a stranger with blood on his apron. Husband expected to get sick and I expected to cry.

Neither of those things happened! We were greeted by Bob Edwards, who was recommended to us by the people we did the course with. It was a little bit of a drive to get to him, but as this was our first time we wanted to go with someone we knew we could trust. First thing Bob did was take our piggie out of the freezer and compliment us. "One fine pig!" Apparently, we had done it allllll right. Our pigs were just the right weight, 45kg, and had just the right amount of fat layer, 11mm. High five team Partners!

After that they got to work. They divided the pig into two halves and then cut them into joints for our customers and wrapped them up individually. They explained to us which were the choice joints, where the sausages would be made from and let us ask any stupid question we had. (several) It didn't feel weird or sad or gruesome. Our pigs were brought up in the best possible conditions, and they were being butchered with similar respect. We then got to see our sausages being made, and we can be proud to say they are 100% meat. No nasty parts! They were so nice to us at Bob's that we would drive that extra distance just to know our pigs would be treated well and a product we can be proud to sell would be returned to us. It was very educational and I am very glad we did it!

So that it is, the whole process done. Yesterday we had our first "Pork Party" where we invite our customers over for a pork lunch. This allows them to taste what they are taking home and us to thank them for supporting us. Not all of our customers could make it however, so we had a couple of stand ins come join us.