First Pig Harvest

Getting started....

All of these fresh organs are used to make delicious traditional foods....

We harvested the first of the spring piggies over the weekend.  Everything went so well, and we were careful not to pack too much into one day this time.  The scald water was the perfect temperature, and scalding and scraping only took about 20 minutes.  Actually, we were done with the field-dressing so quickly that we were surprised and had plenty of time for chores and cleaning up afterwards.

This was a practice-run before we offer our spring pig processing classes, and I'm so glad we did.  There are all kinds of little details I am apt to forget in the 6 or 12 months between pigs.  I will share more photos of what we made from this pig through the week.


Last week several of my friends felt sorry for me after my post about being in-between seasons with the garden - on Friday two of them stopped by and gave us vegetables - cucumbers and sweet peas from one friend, and green beans and zucchini from another.  My children attacked and devoured the sweet peas and cucumbers as if they were candy (the devouring factor is seriously upped by the fact that they never eat candy).  I thought it was amusing - how many children say, "I love cucumbers!" and rip into them like that?  But that's what seasonal eating will do for you.  We haven't had cucumbers since last July, and it is something that everyone is looking forward to having again.  By the end of the summer, we will all be feeling slightly ill at the sight of cucumbers, and looking forward to huge fresh salads, stir-fries and long-simmered pots of collards again.

And just so no one will pity us and our children who devour vegetables - we DO actually have vegetables, just not any of the really popular ones.  Collards are delicious, but everyone would rather eat sweet peas or kale chips or freshly-pulled carrots instead.