Felicia’s new favorite place to sleep is at the top of the set of stairs Fred made for Spot, so Spot could sit by the window and watch the birds. It has since become Miss Momma’s favorite place to sleep. This morning, Felicia took possession of it.
Miss Momma’s opinion of the usurpation. Felicia better watch out!
I ran to L0we’s first thing this morning to buy more screws. It got dark last night before I could finish screwing the boards to the frame of the pig shelter, but we didn’t have quite enough screws to get it done anyway. Fred had planned to stop on the way home to pick up more of them, but I wanted to get my part of the job done before he got home, so I entered the Hall o’ Testosterone and bought the screws my own self. (I did have to call and ask him where the hell the right screws were kept, of course. When I’m in L0we’s I’m usually interested in the rugs, garden stuff, and vacuums, not the boring shit like screws and wood. YAWN.)
After breakfast, I finished my job as the Best! Helper! Ever! by going out and finishing the drilling and screwing. The shelter’s mostly done now – apparently the pigs don’t get windows and fancy shit the way the chickens do, maybe because they’re not going to be around as long as the chickens, I don’t know. I don’t get my pretty head involved in the planning of the structures, just do the grunt work I’m instructed to do.
And I like it like that.
After promising me that we were going to send the pigs off to be butchered so that I could convince myself that we were sending Pig 1 and Pig 2 off to live on another farm and then – COINCIDENTALLY! – receiving neatly wrapped packages of pork a few days later (no connection between the two at all!), Fred is being swayed by someone he works with (we shall call him Franklin), who swears up and down that they can do the butchering themselves, because said person he works with grew up on a farm and did it all the time.
Readers, kindly join me in making the Face of Skepticism.
(flickr)
“It would be less stressful!” Fred says. “You give them a big bucket of slop, and they dig in, then you shoot them in the head, and one minute they’re doing their favorite thing on earth, and the next – nothing!”
“And the next, you and Franklin are being chased across the back forty by a really pissed-off injured pig who has slop in her mouth and murder in her heart.”
“He knows what he’s doing! He did it plenty when he was a kid!”
(flickr)
“Bessie! He grew UP on a farm, and he butchered a million pigs!”
(flickr)
“And it would save us, like, a hundred dollars if we did it ourselves!”
(flickr)
“You don’t have to take part in it, Franklin and I will do it all ourselves!”
“Oh, I KNOW you and Franklin will do it all yourselves, because I’m fucking going out of town so I don’t have to hear you whining about how you boiled your arm off,” I said.
“Why would I boil my arm off? Oh, from scalding the pig to get the skin… well, we don’t do it like that. What we do is -”
“Nope. Don’t want to hear it. Just let me know when you’re planning to do it, and I’ll make plans to be gone.”
“You’ll probably want to be here for the second day, because you slaughter the pig and then hang it up overnight and then butcher it the next day,” he said.
(flickr)
“And I’ll come home to find you and Franklin hanging in the shed and the pigs picking their teeth with your toenails.”
He sighed with exasperation. “Seriously? You’d actually leave the house?”
“If it’s going to take two days, I’ll not only leave the house, I’ll go out of TOWN. Hey. You should do it when I’m in Maine at Christmas!”
“No, I don’t want to wait that long, I want to do it before, so we can show up at my parents’ house with a smoked ham, and I can say ‘We grew it ourselves!'” he said.
“Yes, I can see what a lovely idea that would be. ‘What’s the matter, you don’t want a great big slab of Petunia? She was a good pig. Did I tell you about how stinky she was? Sometimes I would go out and oink at her, and she totally looked at me like she understood me!'” I said.
He did not appreciate my humor.
So, it looks like I’ll be going out of town in early December. Who’s up for a road trip?!
(Note to self: Make sure Fred’s life insurance is paid up.)
Yes, I am a great big wimp for not wanting to partake of the pig slaughtering/ butchering. At least I know my limits and won’t be reeling around the back forty crying like a great big murdering baby.
We were watching TV last night, and Fred paused the show and went to check his email and check the side door to see if Maxi was ready to come inside. She and Newt generally go back outside after Snackin’ Time, and most nights they eventually come back inside to spend the night.
A moment later, Fred yelled “We have another cat!” and went running into the laundry room to get a bowl of cat food. As I stood at the window and watched, he convinced a little gray cat to come over and eat, and be petted.
He reported that the cat was an intact male, and though he was clearly well-fed, he was very hungry. He ate and ate and ate, and then he went over to be petted by Fred and then he ate some more. We talked about what to do, debated whether the cat belonged to a neighbor or was lost, or was a drop off. I thought he was too hungry to belong to someone nearby, and Fred thought word had gotten around that we were cat people, and if someone wanted to abandon a cat but make sure it was discovered and cared for, ours was the house to drop it.
We decided to leave him outside for the night, gave him more food, made sure the heat lamp in the outside cat house was on, and came back inside. Fred went out several more times to check on the cat, and the cat was very friendly and willing to be petted and picked up.
We decided that if he was still around this morning, we’d check with the neighbors before we brought him inside (to the foster kitten room, away from the other cats in the house) and made a vet appointment to have him examined and neutered.
This morning, he was nowhere to be found. Either he went home, or decided to move along. We’ll be keeping an eye out for him, for sure. He’s a cutie.
Previously
2007: We’ll be spending all day at the house.
2006: No entry.
2005: No entry.
2004: Bet I was a cold splash of water in HIS night.
2003: Poor Miz Poo.
2002: Give me a guy with a great smile any day.
2001: Yeah, I know, it’s goofy.
2000: No entry.
I’m free in December – Rick can help butcher and you and I will do FLORIDA!
Ok, I had been wondering all along about the whole pig slaughtering thing! I mean I understand the whole, we eat the meat so why should it be so hard to kill it talk, but come on, I COULD NOT KILL AN ANIMAL TO EAT IT…. yes I am a wimp….. I agree with you about the leaving while it’s done thing. Hey if Fred can handle it, then so be it…. I on the other hand would be a runnin’ for the hills!
🙁
If you’re going to start that slaughtering thing, let us know in email so we can stay away and then let us know when it’s safe to come back.
I think for health and sanitation reasons the pig slaughter is best done by the professionals.
When I was 10, I lived with my grandparents for 6 months and they had pigs. Friday was always the worst day of the week because you would hear the pigs squealing as they were getting into the truck to go to the market. Also, the sight of a dis-emboweled pig hanging up to drain? Not so fun.
I don’t think one has to be a professional to slaughter a pig healthily or sanitarily. After all, hunters routinely clean and butcher deer after shooting them.
Don’t they have travelling professionals that do it on-site? I know several here, and they’re all set up to do the slaughter and the butchering with a scalding tub and everything. I’m probably talking to the wrong Ander3on here, though, aren’t I? When I get a 4-H lamb this summer, that’s the way I’m going to do it, even farmless (boyfriend’s parent’s place will do, or they come do it at the fair grounds after the fair.)
When you launched into the visit-to-Lowe’s story, I had to stop and ask myself if I accidentally opened up “Vituperation” Then I wondered if Fred was doing a guest entry. Finally, you mentioned rugs and vacuums and I was all, “Whew…she’s back.”
It is duly noted that on this day, the 19th of February, in the year 2008, Robyn And3rson predicted that her beloved husband, Fred, on a date sometime in early December 2008, will be “…reeling around the back forty crying like a great big murdering baby.”
Please don’t leave town for it, we want pictures!!!
HAHAHA. Love the pig story, complete with expression pics! I felt like I was there! I think I hear Green Acres music! I would take “Franklin” off the Christmas card list permanently for do-it-yourself butchering idea.
Gotta love the farmer coming out in Fred though!
I still got a garage needs organizing over here…. Two days would just about get you here, so tell Fred to plan on doing other gross manly things for a week or so. (c:
Okay…. I grew up on a farm. My dad and his brother used to butcher the cows themselves. I couldn’t even think about it! I also used to raise a 4H calf each year, and knowing that Fred (real name) was getting purchased to go off to the big packing plant in the sky would make me weep for days, even though I knew all along that it was going to happen!
Please ask Fred to not do his usual detailed PICTORAL review of butchering day! ughhh!
I think we should also start a pool, and place wagers on whether or not Farmer Fred will be able to go through with it! My bet is NOT! He’ll be toting a store-bought ham, and little Stinky on a leash to grandma’s house! heh
My best friend is my utter opposite. She’s farm girl, I’m mall girl. I never really thought about it until once when I was at her house for dinner, a nice pork roast, and halfway through the meal she piped up with “…and this was Princess!”. Ick.
Oh boy. Boy, oh boy. *shakes head*
I grew up in NW Iowa almost smack dab on the Iowa-Minnesota border. My father had a sale barn, trucking operation and a gas station. He was a hard working family man. Even though he probably knew how to do it… he always had the meat locker do our beef and/or pork. I am not going to get in the middle of it but I really think Fred is a busy enough fella with his full time job in the city and running Crooked Acres with you. You are SO right when you say he can’t sit still for a minute. 😉
There is something so nice about going to the locker and picking up all your sweetly wrapped protein. Looking at it all lined up in your deep freeze. Man. I was spoiled rotten when I was a kid. As far as good steak that is. 🙂
New cat looks like he might be related to Newt!
I. am. cracking. up. at your face of skepticism. :giggles: It’s always those that grew up on the farm, that slaughtered countless millions of pigs that wind up being ever so helpful. Heh, Fred will end up getting a crash course in pig killing. 🙂 FWIW, it’s NOT that bad. My daddy to this day, kills hogs every Fall. He gets 6-8 in the Fall and kills them up until about Feburary. It’s a lot of work (but he also makes sausage and brunswick stew. Anyway, I’m excited to read about this venture & to see the postcards from your trip. 😉
I think it’s awesome that Fred wants to do this himself to spare the poor pig’s feelings. Pigs are very intelligent animals, supposedly smarter than dogs. I say go for it, Fred!
Oh wait. I’m not supposed to be encouraging him, am I? Sorry ’bout that.
I think a nice shopping/site seeing trip to Indy on Pig-killin’ weekend is in order. Let us know and we will have a pig free weekend planned for you in no time.
What a cute kitty. I certainly hope he found his way home.
So by butchering it himself he plans to save only $100? Seriously? Let the pros do it. Think about the cutting up and packaging of all that meat. If you do it yourself, then you (being 100% Fred of course) have to also package it.
What a pain. Choose your battles – value yourself and time more than that $100 bucks. Outsource. It is good for the economy, good for the pig and good for Robyn.
Sigh.
It’s not about the money — and it actually only costs about $80 to process a hog — or the pain in the ass factor of doing it myself, it’s about the pig’s well-being, and being willing to do the wet work myself if I’m going to be willing to eat the animal.
Which is more humane, to give a pig some food and kill it unexpectedly while it’s eating, or to chase it into a trailer, then drive it for 20 miles and herd it into an strange place that’s loud and reeking of blood to wait its turn to be killed?
Something tells me this is going to be a DISASTER. I don’t think Fred has the stomach to kill a pig.
I am LOVING the Face of Skepticism. Brilliant.
Pig1 and Pig2….I like your nod to Dr. Suess, but I dont remember The Cat in the Hat butchering them himself at the end of the story.
I think I’d have to leave the STATE if my husband wanted to butcher things in our backyard. I’d make such a bad farm wife.
When my husband was a kid his parents had not only chickens, goats (milkers and pygmy) and two ponies, but his Dad got it into his head that they needed geese. (For eatin’ and tallow candle making.) My husband said it was a lot of work for stinky candles and a goose dinner once in a while. (I don’t think he enjoyed helping with butchering.)
Good luck – I have to admit that nice organic pork is awesome!
That skeptical face is right on. Been there, done that. My husband is like Fred. He and his Dad did it the first time. I went to the mall. Every cow or pig we’ve had since then have been taken to a butcher.
Is it appropriate to envision Fred with a look of glee while yelling “We have another cat!”?
Thanks for the heads up on December. Must avoid Vituperation that month.
Love yall, love the cats, love the farm, love the self-reliance, got it.
And you could not pay me to touch or eat one morsel of pork from a “shade-tree” butcher. No way, no how. I should write this to Fred directly, but sorry, I’m here and I’m on a roll: FRED – DO NOT WASTE THE LIFE OF THAT POOR PIG BY HOME-BUTCHERING IT TO SATISFY YOUR D-I-Y EGO! If it were an inanimate object, like a pig shed, well that’s one thing. But you want to be SURE this pig you buy, nurture and raise does not go to waste. There is zero room for error when it comes to sanitary meat processing.
That said, what are the chances 2 non-butchers could actually professionally (and “humanely”) slaughter and dress a pig that would be safe to eat??? Not something you wanna mess around with. Even my local sheep-farming friend has his sheep professionally processed. Take your little piggy to a local USDA certified meat processing plant and enjoy the custom prepared, safely processed, white-paper-wrapped results. Well worth the $100!
Sorry to go off on Fred in your comments, Robyn. OKthxluvyabye! 🙂
Believe me it is SO worth the $100. The blood, the smell, the mess, the work, the actual killing is the easiest, it is the rest that would be not worth it.
Plus like someone said, to have it come home, USDA certified all wrapped up no muss no fuss for you guys?
Priceless.
Um, this is a pig or rather 2 pigs we are talking about. If you were all that wrapped up in their feelings you wouldn’t kill them to begin with. At the end of the day the pigs will be just as dead as if you did it when they had a mouth full of slop at Crooked Acres or if you trucked them to a professional butcher.
This is from a Chicago Tribune article a couple of years ago:
“Spanish food importer and jamon Iberico enthusiast Jonathan Harris lives in Virginia’s swine country and is familiar with the life and death of the average American porker. What he saw when he went to Spain to check out the newest methods of “processing” of the precious black Iberian pig was a much different story.
For starters, these free-range hogs traditionally spend most of their lives roaming and munching on grasses and herbs in oak forests of Southwestern Spain. Between November and March, however, they grow plump on a feast of nothing but acorns, which gives their fat a signature softness, golden hue and nutty undercurrent.
When it comes time to slaughter them at around 2 years old, the prize porkers are gathered together by family groups in comfy pens for one last good night’s sleep, according to Harris. On their final morning, he says, they are woken with “a gentle warm water bath and soothed with classical music.”
Finally, they are escorted to a small room where they are gently put to sleep with gas, so they “can float off to piggy heaven,” Harris says. “This treatment is not just to be nice but to reduce stress, which can release adrenaline into their bodies and affect the meat.””
I’m picturing Fred, the pigs, some fancy hand towels and a lot of bubbles.
No comment on the pig-slaughtering idea from me. No siree.
That is one beautiful kitty that wandered onto Crooked Acres. I think cats can sense “cat people” and this one could smell you two from a very long distance. I like it that you fed him. I LOVE it that you have an outdoor kitty house with a heat lamp. Of course, the cats can’t get TOO spoiled if room service ends at midnight. 😉
I don’t blame you at all about not wanting to be around for the butchering. I like my meat from plastic & styrofoam, or sometimes butcher paper. I could not eat meat if I had to kill it myself.
My cousin was raised in a different environment, though… they raised their own pigs and chickens for meat. She had a piglet named Pudge… my grandparents went to visit when Pudge was still a pig and not yet sausage, then later on a subsequent visit my grandfather asked my cousin how Pudge was and she said “Oh, Grampa! He was DELiCIOUS!!” That’s what happens when you’re raised by hippies, I guess… either that or you just eat tofu that was raised by kind elves.
I used to help my dad butcher deer in the fall. That was interesting on a biological level, but at least I didn’t have to gut them. Eeew!!!
Saveur magazine had an interesting article about butchering pigs… I can’t remember when but maybe you can poke around their web archives and get some info.
http://www.opaqueprintproduction.com/jbblog
I reckon you’ll be spending more than the $100 savings on the pig slaughtering. 😉
While in high school my son raised two pigs through FFA. The first was auctioned at the county fair. With the second one we just picked up the nicely packaged meat.
Not that my opinion counts here, but after all the CA slaughter house news this week, I would say the “take the pig to the USDA certified butcher” argument swings me right into the Fr3d should butcher the animal category.
Fred, couldn’t you off piggy any way you want and then drive it to a processor? Seems like that would be the best of both worlds. If you deliver it while it’s still warm, they shouldn’t have a problem with not knowing how long it’s been unrefrigerated.
I’ve seen a lot of garage butchering, and it’s not terribly difficult, but it is messy and when you are done, you have a lot of stuff to dispose of that’s unpleasant for you and your friendly sanitation worker.
Eeek- I’d leave town for the butchering too. All the blood would make me all kind of squemish. I can totally see why Fred wants to have a go at it, though- he’s definitely got to do-it-yourselfer bug. 🙂
On another note, Miss Stinky is so pretty.
The Stinker-doodle’s face in picture 2 made me laugh out loud. OMG she is precious.
Well, Fred could kill it and then deliver it to the butcher. In his shoes that is what I would do anyway. Not that I could kill an animal that is.. But I see his point.
I had a boyfriend whose dad killed and cut up his own pigs. We happened to visit one weekend when he did. My gawd I still have nightmares about it.
Seeing them all rush up to the gate that morning was so sad, wondering which one was going to get a bullet to the head and it’s throat slashed seconds after. Then seeing it strung up by a foot to bleed out (horrific) before being dunked in a tank of boiling water to sizzle the hair off. Then bringing it inside to literally hack up. I don’t eat a lot of pork let me tell you.
The ironic thing is I was a 4-H swine club member for two years as a kid and sent 4 piggies to the slaughterhouse 🙁 My father also raised a small herd. Castration day was miserable all round.
Yeah, while I think that this is a good idea..the whole humane and mostly organic farming, I myself know that I would get -way- too attached to the animals in question and keep them. What’s going to happen if Fred or you decides you lurve the pigs and can’t kill them?