But then in December we got a puppy. Juniper. So there was no writing in December. December was really all puppy, the adjustment and learning and training and finding a routine. It was so hard. It was not how I'd planned to spend December.
But now it's January, and the puppy is settling, we are settling, and we really like her. I mean, how could we not? And though the nights are long and dark and chilly, we are hurtling toward spring. My soul, which was so ready for winter, is sensing it (in part thanks to seed company marketers, and the cascade of catalogues in our mailbox the last few weeks). So I must write about the pigs before it gets away from me.
The problem is that I don't know where to start. With the big picture: that it was one of the hardest and most satisfying tasks Tim and I have undertaken together to date (even, the hardest and most satisfying I've undertaken myself, regardless?)? That I think everyone should plan and execute a pig slaughter with their spouse, because the benefit of working that closely together a project so all-consuming and all-demanding is not just pork to eat but immense growth in a relationship? Or with the little things: the ravens winging over the shed as I waited for the sound of Tim's shot and looked up at the sky and prayed; the ache of my arms, ugh the ache, as we scraped the first pig and couldn't stop; the picture-perfect view of sunset fuchsia on snowy mountains as I held the pig carcass steady with cramping hands while Tim sawed it in half; the calmness, the focus that came over me once we got to the butchering stage and I knew exactly how to break the carcass down into primals and carve out boneless pork chops. Thank you, YouTube.
I'll start with, I guess, what people usually ask us first. How did you know how to do this? Well, we have done this once before, two years ago, with lots of chickens, a lamb, a ewe, and a goat between. But honestly we mostly learned by self-study, starting this summer, via books and YouTube and diagrams of pig primals. Beginning in September, we sat down every week or so for a pig meeting, to talk through every little bit of the process from start to finish, discuss our supplies list, create butcher cut sheets, consider charcuterie projects. On non-pig-meeting nights, Tim sharpened our growing collection of carbon-steel knives, I scaled recipes and scoured Craigslist for 50-gallon barrels, and we both made a lot of lists. My project manager side got a serious workout.
The YouTube videos were helpful, but it was really these pig meetings that prepared us, that ensured that on slaughter day we were ready, on the same page (read: had argued through everything already! but seriously!), and confident that we knew what we needed to do.
It was also essential to make a comprehensive cut sheet—the list of specific cuts we wanted to end up with—because we sold one half of one pig to my parents and aunt and uncle, who chose what cuts, sausages, and bacon they wanted; turned two halves into freezer cuts for ourselves; and used the final half almost entirely for charcuterie. It was so hard for me to visualize beforehand, how to get what we needed and what our buyers wanted from an unknown end amount of meat—what would the pig halves weigh?!? I was sort of obsessed with trying to guess all that out. But in the end, it meant that during the process, we didn't have to make decisions. We just had to follow the cut sheets, the scaled recipes, the plan.
So we had our plan. Get two live, muddy, gigantic pigs into neat white-butcher-paper-wrapped packages on the freezer shelves. The doing of it, well, it followed the law of projects: it always takes longer than you think. And it was harder—physically and mentally—than I ever imagined it would be.
Day 1
The day we chose, November 17, was forecast to be the first day of the fall with temperatures falling decently below 40 degrees at night; when you hang a pig carcass overnight, you want it to be above freezing and below 40 degrees. So it was a chilly gray morning that we started up the jet propane burner and filled a 50-gallon drum with water to heat for scalding the pig. This was our first hiccup. Do you know how long it takes to heat a 50-gallon drum two-thirds full of water to over 145 degrees? We had not known. I danced to Etta James on Spotify while I monitored the temperature, and Tim assembled tools. Okay, and at one point we brought the cat out to dance.
Over two hours (two hours!) later, the water was good to go. The next part was what we were both most nervous about: the shot. Tim used a borrowed 20-gauge shotgun. As we'd planned, we set out a tub of food and water and donned our ear protection, and then I left the shed (to watch the ravens and wait, well out of range of any shot), and Tim went about the business of shooting a pig. One of my favorite books we read leading up to this is by Brandon Sheard, of Farmstead Meatsmith, who we knew a little on Vashon. He writes so very aptly about the entire slaughtering process, with much respect for the pig and wit, about the job, and he cautions that you must be patient when shooting a pig. That it is okay to take 45 minutes, that the key is not the clock but timing: the pig in the right place, your mind ready and confident.
I don't remember how long Tim took—it felt like a long time, as I paced and watched the ravens and heard nothing inside the ear protection. But it was maybe 10 minutes. Then the shot, and we were all action. I dove to hand Tim the sticking knife and take the shotgun, empty now, and set it aside. Tim stuck the pig, which had fallen without a sound or twitch. Then the anxious moment as the blood coursed into the dirt and mud, and the pig convulsed and we held our breaths. It was fast, and she knew nothing. That was a relief.
I washed the blood off the knife under icy water from the garden hose while Tim started up the tractor. As we had assembled all our tools during the planning stage, I kept thinking how different it all would have been if we were doing this a hundred years ago. Mainly that we wouldn't have been able to do slaughter day with two people—not with hauling a 400+ pound pig to the scalding tank on the agenda. The tractor did this job for us. Tim cut between the tendon and bone on each trotter, and we strung up the legs on the gambrel.
We had to heave to hook the gambrel to the tractor bucket, as the pig didn't fall close enough for an easy hook. Then Tim lifted the tractor bucket and the pig flopped and swayed over the feeder and out of the pen. I don't think Tim ran into anyone as he drove up to the lane and then down our driveway to our backyard, which was probably for the best.
Once the pig was in our backyard, we hosed off the carcass and transferred the gambrel from the tractor bucket to the chain hoist, which we'd set up attached to a sturdy cedar branch above our back patio.
This pig was huge. She barely fit in the barrel, and the scalding water sloshed our arms as we lowered her in and swished her around. So we had been the most nervous about the shot, but the scald caused us the most trouble. Apparently if you get a perfect scald, the hair and scurf will fall off into your hands, but if you don't, well. We mostly did not get a good scald, and the why remains a mystery. Thermometer not correct? We did calibrate it. So, gosh. Who knows. What followed was so very painful I cringe to remember it now. Hauling the pig in and out of the barrel with the chain hoist, hand over hand. Scraping the hair with our bell scrapers, downward stroke after downward stroke. Singeing our hands and arms with the hot water. Cursing the water, the scald, the hair that did not fall out into our hands but did, in the end, cover our clothes and skin.
It got worse. We were nearly done when one leg of the propane burner folded in on itself, and the 50-gallon drum tipped oh-so-slowly over, sloshed most of its precious hot water onto the ground, and then stopped halfway to the ground, steadied by the pig's legs. I'm not sure I can describe the despair of that moment. This was our whole plan. The pig was not all scraped. The hot water was all gone.
But we had to keep moving, no time to stop and deliberate, or cry. We finished scraping what we could and then gutted the pig, which went quickly and almost without hitch. Let me correct: Tim gutted the pig, and I assisted where I could and felt in awe of him. I'll say here that the kitchen side of this affair—the butcher table—is where I felt most in control and confident. The slaughter, I am out of my depth entirely, and Tim knows exactly what to do and does it well.
You begin by cutting around the anus and then tying it right—you don't want any poop to come out and contaminate the pig. Next is the ever-deepening slice down the belly to the rib cage, a careful slice because you definitely don't want any of the guts to let loose their contents via a wayward cut. Then, with some gentle scooping, most of the innards come out in a single slippery rush.
One final thought on guts. It is really amazing how big everything is, the red slabs of lung and burgundy livers and probably miles of white intestines.
Then, with freezing cramping hands I held the belly open while Tim split the carcass in half down the spine. It would have gone a lot better if we had sharpened our bone saw, which hasn't gotten a tune-up recently and wouldn't go straight. Halfway through Tim switched to a metal saw, and that did much better.
One of the YouTube videos we watched about butchering pigs was by this British guy, Scott Rea, and his catchphrase is "and then I'll trim it up"—which sounds so much more melodic with his accent than it looks written down. But the idea is that you can always trim and tie up any cut of meat to make it into a beautiful roast. Suffice it to say, once we got to breaking down the loin of this pig, we deboned it and, ta da, beautiful pork chops. You would never know the cut down the spine was crooked.
Back to the pig halves. Our plan had been to kill and gut both pigs on day one. We knew now, as the light changed and the air chilled, that the plan was out the window. It was time to regroup, eat hot enchiladas, drink cold beer, stand under scalding hot water in the shower, breathe.
After an hour, we were back at it with a revised plan: to butcher one half of the pig, and leave the other half to hang overnight. To kill the second pig the next morning, and then butcher the three remaining halves in the afternoon and evening.
This was where the slaughter-day tension left me. It surprised me, because my only real pig butchering experience was vicarious—watching from my wrapping station on Vashon, watching from my computer screen in the weeks leading up to this—but I felt somehow in my element, an element I didn't know was within me. Two fingers from the aitch bone: the bone saw, then the knife carved off the ham. The fifth rib: the bone saw, then the knife sheared off the shoulder. A line along the spine: the bone saw, then the knife split the loin and the belly. Short, careful strokes of the knife peeled the skin and a triangle of ribs from the belly: bacon, a 15-pound slab of it. Similar knife strokes along the spine and ribs pared the loin and rib chops from the bone, for boneless pork chops sliced an inch thick with my favorite knife, a long curved pirate-esque blade. The ham went into the fridge to await pounds of salt to start the curing process; it will be prosciutto (well, the Skagit Valley equivalent!). Tim deboned the shoulder and prepped it into one-inch cubes for sausage.
Somehow, though the process seemed to go quickly in the chilly kitchen, and the work was absorbing, it was past midnight when we truly finished all the cleanup and fell into bed, cold and sore and off the deep end of tired. I was so cold that I couldn't fall asleep and Tim kept getting up to retrieve more blankets to pile on me. I admit I quaked at the thought of the work ahead.
Day 2
When we woke up in the still-cold house the next morning, I cried a little. Another pig to do seemed like too much to comprehend pre-caffeine. But after eating breakfast and praying and prepping our tools and talking through the day, I felt up to it.
Our new plan ditched the scalding barrel entirely. We would skin this pig; thankfully, just the week before Tim had watched professional butchers skin our landlords' pigs and he knew what to do. (The scald v. skin deal is that scalding preserves the skin and therefore all the fat, key for many charcuterie projects and also all-around better for cooking and using the whole pig.)
The second shot was as clean as the first, and the stick better, and we tractored the pig to the back patio. We left the gambrel hanging from the tractor bucket rather than using our chain hoist, and went to skinning. I was glad for the practice the night before with skinning the loin and belly in the kitchen. And we blasted some tunes, and I hummed and sang, which made the work speed along. It was a breeze compared to the scald, though not as simple as peeling the hide off a deer (or so I hear). Pigs have skin like us, not a hide, so you must pare it away with short knife strokes, starting at the feet and always working down and out to keep dirt and debris off the clean white fat you expose.
At this point, our first help arrived. Because we hadn't settled on a date for the slaughter until a week before (due to the weather forecast), and because I guess an invite to a pig slaughter isn't most people's idea of a not-to-be-missed get-together, we had borderline not enough help. Well, especially on the first day, obviously. But the help we did have—our friend Kassie, my mom, and my dad—was indispensable, and I'm pretty sure we would have had to work for days longer, just the two of us, if they hadn't rescued us.
Kassie and my mom came in the late morning. It is a funny thing for people to show up while there's a half-skinned pig on your back patio, and you're slimy and bristly with pig fat and hair. Oh hey, how's a goin'? Luckily Kassie grew up in a hunting family and my mom is a nurse, so they seemed unfazed.
First thing, Kassie (look away if you're squeamish) helped me saw the jowls off a warm and bloody pig head, a bonding experience we will not soon forget. Then I got started butchering the second carcass half from day one. We got an assembly line of sorts going, with me and Tim breaking down the cuts, Kassie trimming up roasts, and Mom handling the wrapping station.
We did boneless chops again, packaged in fours for our buyers, and various shoulder and ham roasts. This was the hardest half to butcher, because we had to parse it out and keep track of weights, and I wanted to be really careful about giving everyone what they'd asked for. But it was also a fun one to butcher because I cut it into primals entirely by myself, bone sawing and all, and because I deboned my first ham.
The ham is a unique part of the pig. It's a beast to debone, from the odd-shaped aitch bone to the hip joint buried deep inside, though really once you begin, all you must do is carefully follow the bones with your fingers and short knife strokes, and let them reveal themselves. From there, it's up to your imagination. The ham is made up of five different muscles that are all sheathed with fascia. Do you want small roasts and steaks? You can pretty much separate the muscles with your fingers, pulling hard, and then piece them into the size cuts that you want. Big roasts? Leave them huge and tie them up with twine; later we did two big ones, over ten pounds each, labeled Christmas ham and Easter ham.
Evening, and Dad came. We paused for dinner—I had frozen a ton of meals beforehand, thank goodness, and only had to remember to thaw and heat them. We did add pig heart to the menu! Tim pan fried it, and it was surprisingly delicious with Dijon mustard on toasted bread. It tasted just like pork, which, of course it is—a muscle like the other muscles we eat—but I had never thought of it like that before.
And we went back at it with the second pig.
It is surprisingly hard to get a 125-pound pig half off a gambrel and into the house. Several people have to lift and steady the half while another person (me) climbs the ladder and maneuvers the gambrel hook free of the hock, requiring a confusing stream of "lift!" "no, lower, lower" "oops, back up, steady, down a little"... The night before, Tim and I were getting down the first half, him lifting and me maneuvering the gambrel—and as soon as the trotter was free, the entire upper half, from neck to belly, folded over on itself and came smashing down on his shoulders with a crack of snapping spine. Nothing that a little trimming up couldn't fix, and by that point in the day it just made us laugh, but we made sure that it didn't happen again.
Then—we were really in the zone. Five people makes for an easy butchering session. I did the belly and ham, Dad did the loin, Tim did the shoulder (he became a serious shoulder expert; I actually didn't do a single one! Next time). Kassie and Mom trimmed and wrapped.
(Note the down jackets. Does Eddie Bauer want any of these shots for marketing purposes? We didn't have a fire any of the work days to keep it cold in the house.)
By nine or so, we were done with the half and cleaned up. But not done for the night. We decided to save the last pig half for the morning and spend some time prepping charcuterie. The charcuterie has been one of my favorite things to tell people about because it is, for most people, not just a lost art but a huge question mark. It was for me too, to an extent, before we began this project. Most people are familiar with salami, pepperoni, prosciutto, and other cured meats (though I've found upvalley people are more likely to look blank when you say "prosciutto"), but don't even begin to know how to explain how it's made. And when we say "we're hanging a 30-pound ham in our extra bedroom for a year," a lot of people seem wary. You're what? Is that safe? Around the question marks is a lot of fear, and I think the FDA is responsible for much of that fear.
After doing a ton of reading, we decided to go wild on the charcuterie—it is hard not to when you've read Michael Ruhlman's amazing book Charcuterie and have a pig and a half at your disposal. Our goal was to make about 20 pounds of dry-cured bacon, a dry-cured coppa, about 40 pounds of dry-cured sausage, and a dry-cured ham. So, a lot of meat hung in the balance and we went off the deep end to make sure we were going to succeed.
That night, Tim and I spent a while getting maple and savory freezer bacon, cured bacon (air-dried), and the ham going. Each of these processes begins with a refrigerator cure time during which the meat is submerged in a whole lot of salt (kosher salt, as well as pink salt in the case of the bacons) and spices. The cuts sit in the salt in tubs or ziplock bags for a week to ten days, depending on their size, to allow the salt to permeate the meat and start to draw out water. This is a key step in making the meat an inhospitable place for bacteria. For the dry-cured bacon and ham, you want to pull out a lot of water, so we weighed them down: ten pounds per slab of bacon and fifteen for the ham.
And that was it for day two. Bed had not ever felt so good.
