A Hog is a Hog? Sourcing the Pork

Thanks to a loose lipped hog farmer who planted the idea of butchering it myself into my head as well as my overactive miser-glad, I'd decided that this was going to be my next project.  I was going to get a hog, butcher it myself, and do all the processing on my own (sausage, ham, lard, bacon, etc...).  Sounds easy right?

Obviously, the first thing I'd need was a source for the hog.  I wanted a heritage breed, raised locally on pasture.  The problem is that you can't just go to the store and ask for one.  The only place I'd encountered one was at the previously mentioned Farm to Table event put on by the good folks who do our CSA - and sadly Mike and Judy didn't have any that would be ready for my timeline (which was as soon as possible - that stuff was too good to wait for!).  I asked them if they could point me in the direction of another source and they were happy to do so.  That's a neat thing about your local farmer... these folks that are trying to keep things local.  Mike was more interested that I find someone who was active in the local food community and trying to raise their animals in a respectable way, than he was concerned about losing a sale to a "competitor".

Sadly, as with anything dealing with people, there are good ones and bad ones.  After numerous text messages, phone calls, voicemails, emails, websites that didn't work, I'd learned a few things; 

- a good hog farmer isn't necessarily a good business manager

- just because a hog farmer is local doesn't mean he's part of the "local food" movement

- one farmer's interpretation of pasture isn't always in line with what I thought it meant

- not all farmers believe that hogs should be raised on pasture and that this whole idea is bunk

- some farmers will tell you what you want to hear, even when it ain't true

- when you find someone on the up and up, give them your business so they'll be around next time

One farmer told me that his hogs were on pasture.  When I asked him what type of forage made up most of their diet, he said Brand X feed.  Turns out they were "confined" on pasture (meaning NOT on a hog-barn) and fed the same feed that we were trying to steer clear of.

 Used without permission from Mountain Creek Farm

One farmer told me that you can't raise hogs on pasture.  Another said that heritage breeds "ain't good for meat, just for fat".

Another said that he raised purebred Mulefoot hogs on pasture with minimal amounts of supplemental non-GMO organic feed.  His prices were lower than any I'd seen and he could deliver however much I wanted, whenever I wanted it, wherever I wanted it.  Sounded perfect - I asked him where he was located and he replied not too far from me and that he'd be happy to deliver for free if I ordered a certain amount or more.  When I mentioned that I might like to drop by and see his operation, having never seen a pastured hog farm before, the emails stopped.  No replies to my text messages either.  When I finally did get an answer, it was a terse one-liner that said, "Sorry, we don't have any more available."  Wow!  He sold out fast.  My guess is that his hogs were anything but what he claimed they were.

So after all that, here's my checklist - your potential supplier should meet most of this criteria:

- you should expect the farmer to be able to tell you what breeds they raise (not insist that what you are looking for is a bad idea)

- you should expect the farmer to be able to tell you what they feed their hogs and what their pasture is made up of

- you should expect them to tell you if they use hormones or anti-biotics in their herd at all and if they do, for what reasons

- you should be able to visit their farm (there ARE legitimate concerns with contamination and the spread of disease to a otherwise healthy herd and in those cases, you should be able to get some sort of third party confirmation on their claims).

So where do you start looking?  Word of mouth helps.  Get connected with like-minded folks.  Check out your local farmer's market if you have one.  Ask around.  Check with your local butcher shop (if you have one... most people are stuck with their grocer's meat department and those guys likely won't even know what you are looking for - no disrespect to them at all - just outside their scope).  Check with the breeder list at the Livestock Conservancy.

I contacted a couple of the better regarded local meat processors and abattoirs in the state and asked them who was raising the best meat.  Be careful here though as what you consider best may not be what the local 4H judges consider best.  Might be great meat by commercial standards but that's not what I was looking for.

Check with your Facebook contacts - there are several closed groups on Facebook that have been very helpful in my quest - in fact, the farmer I ended up using was referred to me by someone on the "Sausage Debauchery" Facebook group.  Check out Craigslist... 

Point being is that you'll know the right farmer when you find them - just trust your gut.  For what it was worth, the guy that Mike referred me to was willing but we couldn't make the logistics work.

To Butcher A Pig

I have no idea why or where I got the idea to butcher a pig.  I probably started with my wallet, as most things do.  I tend to be somewhat cheap ("tight" as my wife would say) and I'm forever looking to save a buck or two with the idea that the less I can pay for something, the more I get to buy of it.  And when ideas don't originate with my wallet, they almost always can be traced back to my stomach.

Last fall we attended a Farm to Table event put on by Country Gardens Farm near Newnan, Georgia.  We had joined Mike and Judy Cunningham's Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program the previous spring, which provided us with all sorts of fresh seasonal veggies grown naturally (don't get me started on a USDA Organic rant...) as well as raw milk from their dairy and eggs from their flock of hens.  At the Farm to Table meal, Mike served a pork roast that had come from their hogs.  I was floored at the difference in quality as compared to the pork I'd had in stores.  They raise their pigs on pasture, which means that the animals have to work more for their food by foraging and grazing.  Finding grasses, greens, nuts, roots, and whatever else they can scrounge up from their environment runs totally counter to the way that most pork is raised for your grocer's meat case.

Confinement hog operation - used without permission from Bamesberger Farms

Most commercially raised hogs are raised in confinement; in such tight quarters that the farmers remove their tails when they are piglets so that they don't get bored and chew each others tails off all together; and fed mostly commercial feed which contains lots of the stuff my family is trying to avoid (chemical fertilizers, GMO enabled pesticides, etc...).  Furthermore, as America has waged war on fat for the last four decades or so, commercially raised hogs have been selectively bred to be leaner and contain less fat (after all, they even consider it "the other white meat").  And for those who aren't wise to this yet, FAT = FLAVOR!

Mike and Judy raise heritage breed hogs (Tamworth), which are much more happy on pasture than say the pigs you'd see at a conventional hog farm.  Heritage breeds (the American Livestock Conservancy lists 10 heritage breeds of pig) have not had that ability to thrive on forage bred out of them yet.

I have to believe that is what accounted for the difference in taste.  Similar to grass-fed beef, pastured pork has a richer and more robust flavor and the fat is so palatable that I found myself eating it rather than cutting around it and scooting it to the edge of my plate.  Imagine this comparison;  a lean chicken breast tastes like chicken and a chicken thigh tastes even more like chicken.  Grass-fed beef tastes like "beefier" beef.  Pastured pork tastes even more like pork.  I don't know how else to describe it... you just need to get your hands on some!

So all that being said, my appetite was now whetted for better pork than I'd been cooking.  I was salivating at the thought of how much better a slow cooked Boston Butt would taste when it came from one of Mike's hogs instead of from the grocery store.  But... Mike didn't have any available and wouldn't for quite some time.  I had to go elsewhere.

One of the farmers I contacted asked me if I wanted the hog butchered or not.  There was a price difference... it was cheaper to get it un-butchered (a point of clarification here - 'slaughtering' is the process by which animal is killed, skinned, and cleaned - 'butchering' is the process by which an animal is prepared for use by breaking it down from a carcass into something you and I would consider retail cuts).  See my above comment about my wallet being a powerful motivator...

I'd seen Chris Kimble on America's Test Kitchen episodes on PBS stand in front of a model of a pig and point to the loin or the shoulder sections.  People used to butcher hogs on farms, right?  How hard could it be?

And so the quest began...

Me and Meat; An Introduction Of Sorts

I was encouraged to put together a blog detailing a recent home butchery experience (thanks Damian!). That got me thinking that it might be fun to just have a place to post about some of the stuff I do that involves meat in general. So that is what this blog is about.

A little about me: My wife and I got turned onto the concept of better food a few years back when my doctor suggested I watch a documentary called "Food Inc." Since then, we've made quite a bit of progress towards changing what we eat.   We mill our own flour from wheat (and various grains) and bake our own bread. We source locally and humanely raised grass-fed beef (can't recommend Rocking Chair Ranch Cattle highly enough) and pork (Thanks for Josh at Frolona Farm). We were members of a local CSA last season that provided us with lots of veggies, fresh eggs, and raw milk (Thanks to Mike and Judy at Country Garden Farms). We do our best to shop on the edges of the grocery store and stay away from the processed stuff that litters the middle aisles. In a way, we see it as our expression of personal freedom; to check out on the industrial food supply and take control of what our family puts into our bodies.

Some home cured and smoked pastrami I did last fall.

From a meat standpoint, this whole adventure started with a co-worker who was a competition BBQ pit master. He encouraged me to try it on my own.  After the generous housewarming gift from my in-laws (a shiny new sidebox smoker from Char-griller), and my first attempt at pulled pork (which down here in the south is known simply as barbecue), I was hooked.  That was about five years ago.  I've branched out into sausage making and some basic charcuterie type stuff (pastrami, bacon, cured ham) and even want to try pork confit, terrine, and maybe pate.  At the end of the day though, there is just something majestic about adding fire to flesh... and despite my lofty goals of mastering salami, I derive the most joy from just cranking up the grill and tossing meat on there.

I have no idea how often this will get updated.  I do hope that some of the stuff in here might serve as a reference for someone else who is trying to wrap their head around a technique, concept, or recipe.  I know I got a great deal of understanding by perusing blogs.  Nothing beats just diving in though!