So I'm finally ready to post pics of the hog killin'. I think I've needed a little time to process it all and have the meat far removed from my person and in the freezer. Shew. These pictures might be a little hard to see, but I think if you're a meat eater it's important to be confronted with this from time to time. It gives you a whole new appreciation for meat, and maybe less of a desire to eat it so much, in my case. The cost of meat is very high, and when you do this much labor to put it in the freezer you begin to realize how easy we have it so much of the time.
Photo credits go almost entirely to Israel.
So we got there around 9 am, to a steaming vat of water. Two deceased hogs were in the back of Erek's truck, transported from Exchange Place. The others are in the garden and will be brought hither when needed.
You had to rock those pigs back and forth to get the water on all sides, so those bristles will come off.
Joel is jumping right in...
The scraping commences. This takes quite a while, more so on the black ones as we found out later.
Father and two sons. That's our friend Erek on the right.
Then the evisceration began. The top of the bowels have to be tied off to keep it from contaminating the carcass. Notice Aaron holding it well away. Weird to think that this is probably very similar to how our guts appear.
...notice the wedding ring. Ahem. I guess it has been in many strange places before now.
Polly and Joel were pretty hard core today too. Polly cut the tongue out of one of the heads, and removed it's eyeballs to prepare for making headcheese. She and Joel spent many hours tending a fire, scraping and searing the head and trying to figure out how people did this stuff back when.
This copper kettle was shiny when she finished with it.
Erek blew up the lungs last year, and he did it again so I guess it's tradition now. Joel joined the select few willing to taste pig blood and have this added to their bragging rights. It's amazing to see how much they inflate.
Rebekah and Aaron tackled this pig head. It was difficult to remove them and it took a lot of muscle and knife work.
She seems so happy...maybe she's just relieved it finally came off!
It took a lot of mampower to get them hitched up to the tractor. These pigs were heavyweights, let me tell you.
Aaron took care of cleaning our pig, with Israel's help. Thanks, Brother. I so did not want to step in.
Poor abandoned and eyeless piggy head, with all his charred and stubborn stubble. You can't have stubble in your head cheese and thus, there will be none. Polly and Joel made a valiant effort.
Our pig ended up being one of the nicest, as far as scraping clean went.
Those pige just kept coming, and the last one was black with a heavy coat of bristles. It took forever, and we were all so tired. Time to go get prepped for meat tomorrow.
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