Not a good week...................for the pigs!

Posted by Simon

On the way home from our friends yesterday I was glad I was not stopped by the police. I can imagine the conversation.

Police: Excuse me sir what do you have in the back of your car?

Me: Pig

Police: Now there is no need to be offensive sir, now I'll ask you again, what do you have in the back of your car?

Me: Dead pig!

Just might not go down too well.

But I did arrive home yesterday evening with over 80kgs of pork (176lbs). On Monday the two pigs were slaughtered and cleaned out then left to hang for a couple of days. Yesterday our friends and I butchered them up. It took all day and was extremely hard work - I'd do a week's tree felling any day - but we got it done.

This afternoon Rosie and I had to sort through all of our pork into suitable portions, decide how we wanted the joints etc to be dealt with and bag it all up. We now have a well stocked freezer of chops, mince, a variety of joints, belly, stewing pork. We also have 2 joints to make hams with and some belly to try and make streaky bacon.

I'm now getting fed up with the sight of pork but it does not end there. We have 20kgs of the meat that we are going to make into sausages. It has taken our friends all day today to do their's and they haven't finished yet. So I have a feeling that it will take us at least a couple of days. But I am looking forward to the dinner this evening - pork chops.

And the dogs are anticipating the pig skin which I cooked up into dog chews and, to really hack my sister off, we enjoyed crunching our way through a massive piece of delicious crackling whilst we worked.