Rancher Tristan

We have been raising 2 pigs since December. We got them at 6 weeks old and have been raising them for meat. One is ours and the other for a friend. At times they have been a royal pain - because they learned how to escape their pen and get out into the yard. Did you know a 200lb pig can jump a 4 foot high fence! That's Some Pig! Then they started getting out by going through their roof. Sigel has stated from the beginning that he doesn't like pigs - and yet he's been the one to feed them every morning :). Tristan and Sigel were very excited to kill one of the pigs!

So last week it was butcher time. Tristan has spent hours studying on the internet how to kill, gut, clean, and cut up the meat. Then he learned about brining, and smoking, and making sausage. Pretty amazing! Tristan's helpers were my mom, Sigel, and Santos. Alex and Jorge helped for a few hours. They festivities started at 4 am - they worked until 11am and took a break while the meat cooled in the coolers - and we watched the last game in the world cup. Then from 3pm to 8pm they continued to cut up the meat into the correct pieces - bacon, ham, pork loin, ribs, etc. Tristan had his instructions out and knew exactly what to do - very impressive I thought for the first time! I'll spare you the bloody details but the end result was a bunch of tired people, one less pig in the yard, and a freezer full of meat! The next day we spent 4 hours grinding 25 pounds of meat into sausage - breakfast, polish, and italian. We still have ham and bacon in the brines and will be smoking them soon in the smoke house that Tristan is making.

We will repeat the entire process in a month for our friends pig. My job throughout the entire time was to take care of Maddy and feed the crew. From my outside view - it was A LOT of work! It's a good thing the meat tastes so good - we had a pork loin one night and Italian sausage in spaghetti the other night - both were fabulous!