The last porky tales, part 2

The suspense is over folks - here's part 2 of the last porky tales.

So, where were we? Butchering day (as in the day the butcher comes to create all those lovely chops, roasts and so on). It was a fairly long one for our excellent butcher - probably about 6 hours to do both pigs. We had a chat about what I wanted, with the assistance of Hugh F-W's meat book for illustration!

My goal was to use as much of the pig as possible. I admit though that I didn't go so far as to use the caul or stomach or some of the more creative innards - mostly doe to the time available as I had to be in Sydney 5 days later for a uni course. Plus I'd bought myself a home vacuum sealing machine so I was pretty busy this day and the next just packing and labelling meat, as well as making various bits and bobs.

I did however use or keep the livers (more on pate later), kidneys, hearts, heads, tongues (more on that later). But much of the day was spent lugging in tubs of meat from the butcher's mobile workshop and packing them.

 

  So what was the end tally? From 2 heritage piggies 7 months old we ended up with:

• 18kg of forequarter chops - most the size of dinner plates and more than enough to feed 2 per chop
• 23kg of loin chops
• 6.5kg of rack of pork
• 7.5kg of hand of pork
• 11kg of belly
• 8kg of leg steaks
• 10kg of boneless mini leg roasts
• 6kg of hocks
• 600g of fillet
• 3kg of American ribs
• 6.5kg of mince
• 17.5kg in leg roasts
• 6.5kg rolled shoulder roasts
• 2.8kg pork cheeks
• 4kg liver
• 600g hearts
• Forgot to weigh the kidneys but probably about 1kg
• 1.2 kg of meat from the heads
• Bones (lots)
• Trotters (forgot to weigh them - treat for the dogs)
• About 10kg of fat that was either saved for barding, frozen, or rendered for lard (more on that later)

So all up about 135kg of meat plus the fat.  We did a quick back-of-envelope calculation and worked out this cost us about $12 per kilo (including buying the piglets, feed, and paying the butcher). I think that's outstanding value for free range heritage pork.

So if you're at our place in the next year you know what will be on the menu!

The only waste from 2 pigs was 1 garbage bin of innards (went on a neighbours fire), and about 1/2 of a green garbage bag of hair/skin/fat bits that weren't worth salvaging. I'm pretty happy with that.

Stay tuned for more editions of the porky tales, coming soon(ish)

Thanks CFA

A few good men (not being sexist, they were all men) came out in their trucks last night to do some fuel reduction burns for us in the paddocks. Hopefully this is the only time we will have flames and fire trucks so close to the house.

 

The guys were here for about 2.5 hours, and then poor things were back at 11pm cause someone called 000 and they were paged. But it was all fine. During the burn off there were 12 calls to 000 so it's nice to see that people driving by are on the alert.

The picture above is how it looked this morning. It's been a long night for deputy fireman Jerry who has been up every few hours during the night checking on the smouldering bits to make sure nothing flares up, particularly as the grass in our neighbours paddock is waist high. Hopefully there will be a bit more rain overnight to really put it all out so we don't have to call the guys back on Sunday (restrictions start Sunday night so everything has to be out by then).

See the fun you city kids miss out on?!

 

Curing the garlic

I've harvested 185 heads of garlic so far, and there are another 15 or so still in the ground in various spots. As it is so hot here today I have them in the sun to start curing.

I think we will be vampire free for another year :-)

 

The last porky tales part 1

Gosh, it's been ages since I posted. Sorry about that - work and work and study are sapping more energy than I expected! Anyway before the summer session starts I thought I should update you on the final chapters of the porky tales.

In this post I'll talk about the butchering process, and there is a pictures of  meat hanging in a refrigerator. If the thought makes you squirm then I suggest you skip this post and move on to the next one where all you will see is chops, roasts and so on :-)