The time has come

 We knew this day would come. We prepared for it. We geared everything towards it. But it doesn't necessarily mean it's easy.

A fact of life in many homesteaders lives is that the animals they have raised, cared for, loved and fed are one day going to end up on the dinner table. It's pretty much why some animals are chosen, and let's face it our pigs were here for the bacon.

Now, just because it's easy to say we raised them to be pork chops, bacon, ham an other assorted cuts in the freezer doesn't mean that we are cold-hearted or that we won't miss our first set of pigs, but the logic of the matter is that we invested a certain amount of time, care and money into raising these pigs and the money and time was invested with a certain outcome in mind.

So, today we said goodbye to our li'l friends (who, by the way were not so little any more) and although there were a few moments which made me feel like I was betraying my friends, I knew that this is what they were raised for. I got through those moments with the thoughts that these pigs led a good life. They were fed regularly with good food, given treats: watermelon, donuts, salad, plums, other fruits and even marshmallows. They were housed in enough room that allowed them to play and romp with one another and given what they needed to keep their little tails wagging. (Did you know pigs wag their tails? I didn't)

Anyway, the time came today and a very nice man came to pick them up. No, really. He was a nice man. And from what I've heard, he is very experienced at what he does - everyone I've talked to from a variety of towns in this area say that he is the man we want to butcher our meat.

I also appreciated the way he handled them. He backed up the trailer to the door of the pen and got everything situated, then he grabbed the cattle prod out of the back of the truck. This alarmed me a little as I had visions of him poking and shocking them as he yelled at them to enter the trailer. But none of that happened - he set everything up, placed us in the proper positions and they all, pretty calmly, went out of the pen and into the trailer. I soon realized that he didn't even have that cattle prod positioned at the ready; he had only brought it to protect himself if things got bad. I mean when you have 4 pigs that each weigh over 200 pounds running at you, it can be necessary to keep yourself from getting run over.

So, Mr. Peacock closed and secured the doors to the livestock trailer and pulled the truck around front, then proceeded to get out to ask us a few questions.

He asked what kind of cuts we wanted and how we wanted them wrapped and told us that he would call when he was finished.

But, at one point during this conversation, Old Head got quite a shock after spending most of this year raising bacon - Mr. Peacock said that these pigs were just not going to yield any bacon. Well, to be more precise, they weren't going to yield any bacon that was gonna be worth anything. As it turns out, in our ignorance of how to purchase pigs, we picked out pigs that were simply not built for that particular job. Poor Old Head held onto his disappointment, but it was there, looming over him...no bacon.  As it turns out, pigs that make the best bacon have long bodies (ours were pretty short-bodied) and Mr. Peacock promised to show us what to look for when we picked up the meat in a few weeks.

So all in all, our first attempt at raising pigs yielded us some good experience, a wealth of knowledge, good memories and what looks like a lot of pork chops, ham, roasts and sausage.

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