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This is freshly killed pork, homemade wheat pancakes, and fresh farm eggs with little bubbly on a cold Sunday morning. The chickens slack off laying in the winter, but I feed them rye grass, and the eggs are a very dark orange and extremely delicious this time of year.
This is a bowl of chops, waiting to be packed and frozen. I use a large meat cleaver to make them. They are best from a freshly killed animal. Meat like this isn’t available to many people. Like the chickens, only the very best of feeds are given to the pigs. I feed them plenty of fresh hay, acorns, pears, winter vegetables like carrots and brassicas, and fresh grass. We plant rye every year, and sometimes clover, so we have very high quality feed, even through winter.
Butchering isn’t easy, and we sometimes bring the animals to a professional, but it takes some time to do that, it is not cheap, and no one can cut an animal up the way I like it except me. With the time I have spent preparing the animals and driving to the butcher, then again to pick up the meat, I could have done the job myself.
This was a very young castrated male. I had intended to kill him earlier, but work has been extensive and my helpers had been away. Killing even a small pig is a bit of an undertaking, and is best done in the cold parts of the year. Butchers have meat lockers, but I do not. Cool temperatures really help.
The vast majority of my guests very much enjoy sitting at my table, or even walking around the yard with greasy hands, feasting on the bounty of the land.
A quote my sister found about sums this up. ”Meat is murder, tasty, tasty murder.” These animals are raised in large outdoor yards, with plenty of access to sun and fresh air, as well as protection from the elements. They eat only the very best, and these things really show up in their quality.
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