Stocking up: Pigs in the Freezer

We slaughtered our pigs this week. We raised two this year. They were brothers who were happy, easy going fellows; a cross breed of Old Spot and Tamworth. We had to take what we could get this year here on Martha’s Vineyard when it came to piglets. Since we prefer to get pigs bred here by local farmers as opposed to purchasing piglets raised off-island and shipped here, we were waiting on piglets from one of the three Berkshire sows from the Allen Farm in Chilmark. The sows were bred with a Berkshire boar named Thunder, but only one took and they ended up with only a few piglets that they needed for the farm. At Native Earth Farm, two Berkshire sows were bred with Thunder but they didn’t take either and the farmers were disappointed. (My 12 year old son was exuberant regardless as he learned everything he needs to know, for the time being, about the birds, bees, and pigs through Thunder’s carryings on.)

So with a pig shortage we ended up with two pigs cross bred with Old Spot and Tamworth, born at Native Earth Farm. After all was said and done we were not disappointed. We usually get piglets in June and feed them for six months until the weather changes to cold. These were born late so we did not pick them up until mid August. Although they were small when we got them, after four months they still weighed in at around 200 pounds at slaughter. In the past, our pig’s typical diet consisted of food from my catering business, organic grain, organic corn and fallen acorns. This season, we fed them less organic grain, ($23 per 50lb bag compared with $16 per 50 lbs organic corn), BUT, due to a surplus of milk from our friend’s dairy farm, were able to finish them with over five gallons of raw milk per day, in addition to their usual diet. Our dear friends at Mermaid Farm sell raw milk. Three weeks before the slaughter, there was a slightly high bacteria count in the milk that prevented them from selling  milk to the public. Their loss was our pig’s gain.

I don’t take part in the slaughter anymore. I don’t even care to watch or be there, nor do I need to be. Our friend Fernando, and my husband Rich, manage the job fine without my commentaries. Our pigs we raised two years ago had become my favorites. I am not sure what happened. They were sisters; we normally get males, and we just bonded which is never a good idea when you plan on slaughtering them.  I had fed them often and knew their quirks, personalities and joys.  I was particularly fond of one and the night before the slaughter, I asked my husband to reconsider the slaughter of my favorite. We were not set up for raising a pig over the winter. She would need to become a breeder, (mother), in order for us to justify keeping her over the winter and one pig would certainly bond even more so with us and it seemed a most impractical decision. As we carried on with the slaughter, the deed was sad and upsetting, and I was unable to eat any pork that year.

I know better now. I don’t take part in the slaughter and instead get myself geared up for the processing of the meat. Sausage and pate and head cheese sounds delicious to me and so that is where I focus my energies. I get excited just thinking about the process. There is something enticing that takes place when animal becomes meat.  I am grateful to our pigs. We have an understanding about a quality of life we offer each other. We give them a life of delicious food and fresh water, a big open pen and a nice little hut with loads of straw and doses of intimacy; pats on their back and scratches behind their ears. And the pigs give me, my family and friends delicious meat. Perhaps it is not a balanced agreement, but I feel so grateful for their lives and am at peace with the fact that I have given them the best life possible. There is no comparison of their lives to that of a feed lot.

OF NOTE: The day we slaughtered, we heard from Allen at Mermaid Farm that their milk finally tested well for consumption and that we would not be able to pick up buckets of milk for our pigs anymore. Amazing how nature works this way…