What a weekend....

Here was what needed to get done: Slaughter LP; Get him into primals, and put him in the fridge. Separate Boston and Bacon from Willy in their own pen and move all the pigs to some green stuff. Unstick the truck so we can do the rest of the list. Load T-bone, and make the trip to Mom's to drop him off, pick up Shay, Ms. Piggy, and an as-yet-undetermined buck. Pick up animal food.

My daughter pointed out that I had "forgotten" her. Meaning, she had a gymnastics meet in Bartlesville, that we had to leave the house at 4:30 pm to get to on time.

Everything got done, except the slaughter LP part. Saturday was the day for getting to the feed store (they close at noon), and getting Krys to the meet on time. By the time we got up, got caffeinated, got to the feed store and back, and got the truck unstuck, we didn't have enough time to take care of LP before we had to leave to get Krys to Bartlesville since the hoist was still in pieces from being transported back from mom's in the back of the station wagon. We had to grocery shop after the meet (we got out of there at 10:30 pm, THEN had to eat), got home at about 1am.

Sunday dawned bright and sunny, but we needed a rapid infusion of caffeine to actually be able to push the "Go" button. T-bone loaded fairly easily, soon as we candy-trailed the cow food to the front of the trailer. Me? Sneaky? Nah! The trip to Mom's took a little longer than expected (and we actually surprised her, cuz she wasn't expecting us til later) because somewhere along the route, the truck started feeling like it was out of balance, and we opted for the slow route. Unloading T-bone was easy. Ms. Piggy barely noticed that she was in the trailer; she was so intent on the feed bucket she was fairly oblivious to the surroundings....until the divider went "slam" right behind her. (It's metal on metal, it makes a god-awful racket, no matter what you do...and we were gentle).

Step 3: Load Shay. Oh, boy. Yippee. If you've read my blog...this is the same cow from the Great Cow Chase of Valentine's Day. Jim was backing the trailer to the pen where she was.....and started spinning tires....Um...so, we are NOT getting stuck....again. Nope, not gonna do it. We put some hay under the spinning tire, and gave it a heave-ho from the back when it didn't want to grab traction, and get it outta there. But, the trailer is now some feet away from the pen. STOCK PANELS to the rescue! Yep, those 16' panels sure do come in handy! Jim made a lane from the gate of the pen to the trailer. Mom had one side, I had the other, we opened up the trailer, and enticed Shay into the lane. (That required moving the feed bunker in--and the goats OUT). Jim used the feed bunker to push Shay into the trailer, and when she didn't want to make the commitment of backlegs in the trailer, we twisted her tail, and up she went.

Step 4: It is very hard to have goat babies, if you do not have a buck for your does. Mom had 3 to choose from: Black Bart, Doobie, and Harry Spotter. Harry Spotter was out...he's not a very growthy buck. First choice was BB, but he chose NOT to come for the food we put out, and frankly, time being a factor, I asked Mom if Doobie was catchable. Yep, silly goat didn't even know what was going on. He just went along for the petting. Then we shoved him in a trailer with a pig. He wasn't so sure about that.

Step 5: Get home. Unload Shay into the west pasture. Gumdrop chases her around the whole damn thing, but they get over it.

Step 6: Now we have to divide and conquer. We have 1 pig pen w/ 4 pigs in it. We need 2 pens, with 5 pigs between them. We get the pens separated with the right pigs in the right place (Ms. Piggy is still on the trailer). And move the pen w/ LP, Boston and Bacon to just north of the East Pasture. Willy gets moved to just north of the old goat pen (up wind of LP), and we back the trailer down, and let Ms. Piggy meet her paramour. Yeah, that went well. Willy was SOO happy to see a girl (um, perhaps he should have had the lecture on romancing the lady). So happy, in fact, that he ran her off. She scooted UNDER the fence, and was having NO part of any of that weird behavior. Willy was RUDE. Fortunately, Jim was very close, and grabbed that escaped pig by her back foot. He held her that way while Krys and I made that pig pen a lot more stable to the ground. 8 t-posts tied to the fence will do that. Willy appeared to have learned a bit from his mistake, and waited till the fence was tied to a few posts before persuing his ladyfaire once more.

Step 7: Take Doobie to his girls. This was easy. He walked right on in.

But we now only had an hour or so of daylight, and that is NOT enough to butcher a pig. Guess what we are doing next weekend. Rain, or shine.

Pictures? Who'da Thunk It?

Ok, OK, I know I'm the worst when it comes to getting pictures up. I just hate resizing and working with all the pics I need to work with to get them up. So, this morning, thanks to my kids NOT doing their chores, I'm at home and working on a few things. But this picture is one of the ones I did this morning.

Paint is a Boer doe, and I think she's pretty.

Here Piggy Piggy........

So, for the last long while Boss Hawg has been out at Mom's helping fertilize her garden, and root up the weeds.

He taped out at 260 lbs on Saturday when we went out and did the deed. We shot, skinned and gutted the big boy, and cut him into sub-primals because we do not yet have a cold room to hang our animals, so they need to be in parts small enough for our refrigerators, and in our case, the coolers we take in order to transport them BACK to our refrigerator.

Yesterday, I went back out to mom's, sub-primals in tow, to cut him into usable parts for our family freezer. With the help of videos from Ask the Meatman, Mom and I puzzled out how to cut the big boy down into meal-sized portions. It took the better part of 5 hours, but the result was 169.9 pounds of usable parts.

This might be a good time to identify our definition of usable. The hide and head and offal from last weekend to Mom's LGDs...so, while they weren't accounted for in the "usable" parts numbers above, they certainly were "usable." Bones from boned out roasts, or steaks were put in the "Strider" tub. Strider is our LGD, and will get these as a treat. Other bones, that had significant amounts of meat left, were relegated to the "soup bone" tub. These will be used to flavor beans, and soups, and to make pork stock. All pure fat will be rendered into lard, but we only got 3.3 pounds of the stuff. That is not to say that Boss was a skinny boy, just that when I was trimming, I had to make sure there was enough fat going into the "trim" bucket for the ground meat. The "trim" bucket only contained, maybe 4 pounds of trim when I made the decision to take one of the Boston butt portions and turn it into ground meat. We like sausage, but I tend to make it as we need it, so that I can adjust seasonings depending on what we need, and also so that we aren't stuck with 25 pounds of a sausage we don't like.

So, what wasn't usable? The quarter sized part of the ball joint that I sliced off when cutting through a ham. And 2 other less-than-1/2" pieces of cartilage that ended up in the trim bucket.

What I brought home (or will, once the bacons are cured and smoked) was 169.9 pounds of dog bones, soup bones, bacon, ground pork and "regular" cuts of meat. All from one 260 pound pig. We wasted nothing. This is the way things should be done.

The other option for the offal, if you don't have dogs to give it to, is to put it in the compost pile, completely surrounded by 18 inches of carbonaceous material. 18 to 24 inches of carbon, surrounding the offal, will keep the varmints away.

So, guess what's for dinner!