They're Going to the Butcher

welcome to wind and rain winds up to 60 miles an hour today this morning we're going to load six pigs and take them to the butcher all right hungry pigs one two three four five six seven come on come on nope not you we got too many come on guys out you go that's the first yeah i know usually it's hard to get enough in good good get up [Music] oh that really makes the truck sink that's some pork on the trailer we gotta disconnect the fence from the trailer and then hook it back up before we pull away they're just eating away in there all right we're ready to go this batch of piglets was born in late march or early april yeah something like that yeah do you remember the weather oh it was really cold yeah was it yeah we had lights up all over the place and 11 there there's 12 in the pasture and 11 of them are reds yeah she might have lost one out of the original batch i think it was just such a good mom and then missy had she had i think she had like 10 or something and then they she stomped on them or weighed on them one survived so we castrate it two to three weeks of age put them back in with their mom and then after they heal up we give them a week or two longer and about six weeks we put them out so we put them in a crate we carry them out to the pasture there and the pasture looked a lot different when we put them out it was filled with bushes and grass and weeds and all that yeah you couldn't even see the house really yeah yeah i remember towing the hut in there with the tractor and then they stayed in the same pasture all summer and that pasture is probably half acre maybe it's a little smaller than a half acre and they stay in that one spot they just eat away at what's in there and root up the roots and he and through the summer it was dry yeah really dry we had drought conditions yeah and it was powder dry and then it started raining in september and it got wet in there and by that time they chewed through a lot of what was in the pen so now it looks like a moonscape that's the way our pasture's always in they start green and then everything's gone by the time it's time to go to butcher we have three pig pastures at various places mostly around where the barns in the house are and pigs thrive best in an edge environment so part of their pasture is treed and bushes and lots of different things to eat and part of it is sunlit field picture a forest edge animal and they like that variety of things to eat we put them in one pasture each summer and we have three pastures so each pasture rests for two years some people move pigs from day to day they have pens like we use with our chickens and they'll pull them ahead daily weekly whatever it is we elected not to do that when we started out because we were worried about the pastures getting torn up all of our pastures are planted we make hay off of the same pastures and if we were running pigs over them even if we moved them every day we'd wind up with rougher fields so we elected to keep them in those designated pig pastures instead of running them across our fields which means that the pig pastures get torn up by the time the pigs are done and that's why we let them rest for a couple years [Music] we do bring a cattle prod for unloading pigs because pig doesn't want to get off we've had to pull them off with ropes before i think it's more humane to use a cattle prod with a quick shock rather than putting through the prolonged stress of dragging out with a rope that's nuts and we can't use feed to lure them here at usda butcher houses so we'll see how it goes [Music] you come in with me and come to the back actually maybe we'll just work the fluid [Music] [Music] quite often if you give the lead ones a zap you get a couple off the rest will follow and sometimes there's a reluctant one like this guy you don't want to get them too excited or else they really lock up on you come on buddy there you go no no getting back on once you're off you're off we've had him get back on the trailer before too so close the door [Music] the leads take man there's a big step right over there and the pigs hate to go down that step it really makes things a lot more difficult i wish it were a ramp it's the worst it's the hardest thing about unloading here so we gotta get the lead one off [Music] it's really not the best before we had the cattle prod sometimes we spend a half an hour here getting down this freaking step [Music] all right this way come in jesus ah pigs are hard six pigs [Music] boy that was these guys were tough we never would have gotten them off without this no way i know people say oh cattle proud bad but the pigs we've unloaded hundreds of pigs here and the first hundred were without a cattle prod and it was it was a freaking nightmare without a cattle prod and you can't entice them with feed and you got this step to deal with just not not easy [Music] the pin card the next thing to do is to fill out the port cut sheets for the butcher because he starts butchering first thing in the morning he slaughters pigs are a little bit more complicated for us than cows there's not as many cuts but since you got six pigs we get them cut in different groups and you've got sausage to deal with and our butcher does hot regular which is breakfast and sweet and we usually get the hot and sweet made into rope we get a lot of ground pork made for some reason since covet hit ground pork's been selling a lot more than it used to you go down the the kind of standard list of cuts sometimes we keep the fat sometimes we don't we don't have anything done with the hawks anymore here's the big thing it costs us about 225 a pound to have things smoke plus we lose 15 to 30 percent of the weight from curing and smoking smoking doesn't really make a lot of sense for us if we can sell the cuts fresh even though people say oh i love bacon and ham and all this stuff it's money loser for us so we don't do a lot of it we'll do some hams for christmas we'll have two pigs or three pigs out of this six cup into bacon and smoked the rest of it we sell is fresh pork belly for folks to smoke at home it sells a lot better and it's more profitable for us to just sell it as uncut pork belly for people to do what they want with in terms of curing and smoking shoulders and most of the hands we have ground into sausage or ground pork spare ribs always loin roasts or chops we have a variety we do some bone in loin roasts in the winter months we do three quarter inch thick chops we do inch and a half thick chops i have to tell the butcher to leave a quarter to a half inch of fat on those chops otherwise he'll trim it all off butt roast three to five pounds um customers don't want seven pound ten pound roast the three pounds sell better than anything else it took a while to get the butcher to understand this is our market and you know we don't want a huge roast so that's our pork cut sheet more complicated than beef but since we've worked with our butcher for a long time now we sort of have a routine down tonight in honor of the pigs we're having pork maybe that's not really an honor i don't know it's my way of honoring them and that's delicious we're going to start out with porky potatoes which have of course lard on them baked potatoes smeared with bacon grease and some sea salt and slow baked in the oven for an hour and a half or so we're having a pork butt roast tonight and you know a lot of people say oh these are great for pulled pork i don't think that's the best way to cook them i call these the prime rib of pork because they have such rich flavor and if you cook the snot out of them to make pulled pork you lose some of that especially if it's smoked and then it just tastes like smoke so i don't do it that way i cook it in a rotisserie and put a nice crust on the outside of it cook the center of it to 140 degrees and it is tender and delicious now i put a rub on it which in this case is montreal steak seasoning i like this stuff for both beef and pork in the rotisserie she is done 140 degrees in the center nice and crispy i know if you're the same age i am you were always taught as a kid that pink pork was something never to eat but when the porks come from your own farm and you know how it was raised there is nothing wrong with pink pork that's 140 i know people that cook it to 130 and eat it nice and marbled juicy got a nice crust with lots of spice on the outside of it and there we go the prime rib of pork even though i always say pigs are a pain to raise this is what makes it all worthwhile i hope you have a great day and i'll see you next time

Channel: Just a Few Acres Farm

Views: 951,881

Keywords: farm, farming, hobby farm, hobby farm guys, hobby farming for profit, homestead, how farms work, just a few acres farm, pigs, small farm life, small livestock farm, going to the butcher, loading pigs, pork cut sheet, pig cut sheet, unloading pigs, cattle prod, pork butt roast, herding pigs, growing pigs, pastured pork, unloading pigs usda butcher, cut sheet how to, family farming, they're going to the butcher, unloading pigs humanely

Id: PpX9qZoTiQA

Length: 11min 53sec (713 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 20 2020