Homestead mailing list

[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

>> I was thinking along the lines of having two adults for breeding, and 
> slaughtering the younger smaller pigs.  Any reason not to do this?

It's a good plan.  We killed a number of pigs at 150 - 200 lbs.  Most of the 
time we had three or more and planned on maturing one or more of them up past 
400 lbs.  Every winter here there is a big communal pig killing.  One of the 
neighbors has a big stainless steel tub with a hypocaust, a plank platform at 
one end, and a section of chain link fence attached so that the whole 
humongous 
pig can be rolled into the hot water and rolled back out with three or for 
strong backs.  There are a couple big tractors handy, big cutting tables, and 
six or seven families at a time kill, scald, scrape, gut, and cut up the 
carcasses as a sort of assembly line working one family's pigs through at a 
time and 
everyone working on them.  The pigless Mexican workers who are helping take 
the heads, feet, intestines, hearts, livers, kidneys and much of the 
leaf-lard 
for their effort.  Of late many of them bring their own pigs or own some 
percent of a pig on shares.

But when we don't want to bring all the pigs to that much maturity, we kill 
them one at a time as our available freebie feed is falling short of feeding 
them all.

As you know, you don't skin a pig.  You scald it and scrape off the hair.  On 
a small pig (don't try this with a huge baconer) you heat the water to 180 
degrees and slosh it over the carcass to loosen the hair and then scrape it 
off. 
 After that, dressing a 200 lb pig is no more difficult than dressing a goat 
or deer.  Different, but no more difficult.  Pigs are put together much 
differently.



>  
> >OK cheap food,,,, would leftover plate scraps from resturants qualify if I 
> could convince a local resturant?  

Yes, and produce stands, grocery stores, school cafeterias, bakeries, etc.  
Many times if you put a box or barrel there and ask that the scraps be 
separated and put there, the institution is quite happy to have you haul it 
away.


> 
> >I don't have a source for milk --- unless I get goats.   Would goat milk 
> do?  How does it change the flavor of the meat?  Sweeter?

You mean milk in general not goat milk in particular?  There'd be no 
difference for this purpose in cow's or goat's milk.  Milk fed pork is very 
light 
colored pearly pink.  The lard is all like the highly desireable leaf-lard.  
In 
grain fed pork the meat is darker red, coarser, and the lard is hard.  It's 
hard 
to describe the difference in taste unless you've had the former.  Milk fed 
pork tastes more like pork than grain fed which sometimes can only be 
described 
as "some sort of meat or the other."

>  
> >Yes, it is common sense that pigs need a lot of water... just like other 
> animals.  
>  

I guess the point people were making is that they don't need water just like 
every other animal, dogs for instance who need water but can go for days 
without it.  Goats scarcely need water at all.  A non-lactating goat in hot 
weather 
will drink only a quart or so a day and do well with much less than that.

Pigs are more like cows.  Cows drink an unbelievable amount of water a day. 
Pigs can't even digest their food unless they get plenty of water to go with 
it.  A fellow nearby from whom we used to buy piglets (he's in jail now) had 
a 
half a 55 gallon drum with tubing welded to it and he used the hay fork on 
his 
tractor to go to the creek and dip it full.  He made four trips twice a day 
for seven pigs.


> 
> >Found out yesterday, my dad has rigged up a hoist thing to pull engines 
> >out 
> of cars.... and I think that will be quite suitable for letting some pig 
> meat age.... if that is needed.  Is it needed?

That's a tricksty question.  Much pig meat here abouts is made into sausage.  
It is not aged in the carcass but ground up with salt and spices, formed into 
links or patties, and those are aged a few days before they are frozen or 
canned.  For ourselves, we eat the ribs the day we kill a pig.  Then we put 
the 
loins and liver in the refrigerator for later in the week.  Sometimes we 
slice 
the loin after a week of refrigeration and freeze it, if it escapes being 
eaten at once.

The rest of the carcass is salt cured.  As soon as the pig is eviscerated and 
cleaned, it is cut into the large cuts of hams, shoulders, jowls, middlings 
(bacon), and such.  These are immediately salted, salt rubbed all over the 
outside, in the cuts, in the bone ends etc.  Salt curing is a race that your 
salt 
will peneterate the meat before spoilage does.  So the big cuts are in cold 
storage (in the basement or outbuilding) in the salting chamber (a barrel) 
"hanging" as it were while the salt cures the meat.  The carcass cannot be 
allowed 
to hang whole in this process because the spoilage would get a head start and 
you'd lose.

After the cuts have cured for three weeks (resalting on a schecule), some are 
sliced and frozen and others are wrapped in cheesecloth and hung behind the 
kitchen stove where they dry on the outside to a preserving rind.  Better 
still 
is to smoke them and the smoke thwarts mold.  Mold isn't a big problem, if 
the cut molds, just trim it away and the rest of the meat is fine ... 
enhanced 
actually.

If I were just going to wrap and freeze the meat, I'd definately let it hang 
in the very cold at least three days.

James