P to the I to the Double G-Y, I say PIGGY, word.

 

Nothing like a little farming rap to set your day off right.  We had a good day today.  For a fun little field trip, we ventured to the slaughterhouse to see another facet of that trip from 'farm to table' that so many foods take, that many people have no idea what goes on behind the scenes.   Sadly, a lot of people really believe that their food grows naturally in those prepackaged cellophane trays, and are so removed from the process that there is no respect for the animal, or the person who raised it.

Tiffany and Levi, thankfully, will grow up knowing every aspect of their food production, with home raised meats, vegetables, grains, sweeteners, and the like.  There are so many wonderful things that come from raising your children in an area where being locavores is a real option. 

The big thing we wanted to learn from this trip today was the anatomy of the hind quarters of pigs.  Now, why would we want to know that?  Well, there is more than one way to cure a ham.  The way that many people think of is the Country Dry Sugar Cure method, where a ham is rubbed with a salt/sugar mix, and allowed to dehydrate slowly over the course of 105 days.  They're then trimmed to remove the salt burnt face, and then smoked to add flavor.

Fewer than 10 percent of hams are cured that way.  It takes a long time, which makes them very expensive.  Think about it.  You have to have a facility to store those hams that are curing for 105 days, from day one, and if you slaughter pigs every day for 30 days, that means at one point, you're going to have over three thousand hams curing in your controlled temperature facility.   Smithfield, hats off to you.

So... what about those awesome spiral cut, juicy, honey glazed things in the store?  Glad you asked.  Those, my friends, are typically cured using a Sweet Pickle Cure.  EWWWW!!! PICKLES!?  PICKLED MEAT!?  Calm down.  We're not talking dill here, or really even Kosher, because duh, pork, right?

Pickle derives from the Dutch word pekel which means to brine.  Pickling is the act of preservation through anaerobic fermentation.  That's fancy talk for 'rotting under water' but it's a good sort of rot.   The brine allows the good bacteria to kill the bad bacteria, and essentially, you get a salty sweet food product.  Mmm... zombie flesh.

There are a couple of different methods of pickle curing.  One is the cover method which submerges the goods completely.  The ingredients are pretty mundane, and what you'd expect to find in any cure, except the copious amounts of water, naturally.  You have salt, brown sugar, garlic, pickling spice, pepper, and the miracle pink stuff, which is Prague Cure (a combination of Sodium Nitrate and Red Dye).

Mix it all together, add water, fill pot until full.  And then you just...wait.

Now, what's the downside to this?  Space, nonreactive pot, smell... It adds up, really.  But, it is one method, and it only takes 7 days.  That's much more economical time-wise than the Country Sugar Dry cure method.

Then... there's the pumping method.  . o O (Pumping method?)  Yes, I said pumping method.  This is how 90 percent of hams you buy are done.  The beauty of it is that the cure process is reduced to 3 days.  There are two different types of pumping.  There's spray pumping, in which a needle that has a half dozen holes in it is shoved in various points around the ham, and a brine is then injected into the ham.  Then there is ARTERIAL pumping.  This is where the cure is pumped through the femoral artery, which shoots down along the shank bone, and distributes the cure that way. 

Does that distribute the cure?  The X-rays speak for themselves.  The reduced time, increased flavor and increased weight (as dry cure hams lose up to 30 percent of their weight in the process), has made this method the most preferred amongst meat packers.

So, how does one go about artery pumping their ham?  Well, finding the artery may not seem as simple as one would think.  There's a lot of muscle and fat there, and if you don't know where to look, you'd never find it.

Once you saw your piggy in half, you will then remove the hide quarter, just infront of the pelvis.  This will give you your sirloin section, and your ham, all in one.  You'll then cut between the bones, which gives you your basic ham shape.

 

As you can see, the chunk up top, being held in place is your sirloin.  That would be cut into chops.  The bottom half is the ham.  What we're looking for is the femoral artery.  It's just like on humans, it starts in the groin and goes down the leg.  You put your injector needle in the artery and pump 20 percent of the ham's weight in cure down that sucker.

 

And that delivers the cure throughout our ham.  Total time from kill to cure is 3 days.  This will turn into that juicy, succulent, awesome ham that you have on Christmas day.  At least, that's the theory, and that's what we're trying.  We'll be sure to post pictures of our success or failure.  Wish us luck!

Squealing from the feeling! Squeaking from the freaking! Oinking from the boinking!

Before anyone spazzes, that's a quote from a PG-13 movie called Down Periscope.  We watched it this past week, and were surprised at how this quote seemed to sum up last weekend.   The flu has us all under the weather, and we can't seem to win for losing when it comes to breeding Porkchop again.  She came into season, yet again.  Not too late for Ham Bacon pigs, but too late for show pigs.  Thankfully her daughter was bred to a York boar very similar and did not come back into season, so we'll still be able to get our show pigs.  Disappointing though. 

People have said that when a sow skips a cycle or two, it is harder to get them to be bred.  I don't want to think it's a problem with the boar, so we may end up doing a little piggy douche to make her 'feelin' fresh' again.  We'll see.  I hope this time, she takes.

But, speaking of this time.  Over the weekend, mom casually mentioned to us that Porkchop wasn't eating, and was acting like a lunatic in her pen. 

 

Pigs are not unlike humans when it comes to PMS.  They get crampy, don't feel like eating much more than something sweet and not good for them, and they turn into royal, hateful pains.  They carry on, pissing and moaning, mnyah mnyah mnyah mnyahing nagging like there's nothing you can ever do right, and they're so abused simply by being in your company.  Underlying all of this is an insane hormonal shift that ultimately results in only one thing being able to shut her up...

 

 

Problem is, Porkchop doesn't like trailers... and Schnicklefritz ALSO doesn't like trailers.  They were half a mile apart.   It might as well have been half a world apart, honestly. 

 

 

 

 

None of us were relishing the idea of having to load either of them up to get them to each other.  We contemplated borrowing a boar again, but then scolded ourselves for thinking of that idea.  We had spent good money on Schnicklefritz.  We had to use him, else it was a waste.  Then... it hit us. 

 

 

All that time spent training your pig how to walk with a stick, for what purpose?  Just to show them?  Not all pigs are sold at fair.  Not all boars are sold at shows.  Some pigs are kept, like Porkchop.  So... the question was, did she remember the stick?  We decided to take a risk, and let her out of her pen.

 

 

I'll admit, the immediate results were not encouraging.  Like a rocket, she flew out of that pen and through the gate to the driveway.  At first, I thought this was going to be easy, but as quickly as she had exited, she ricocheted off of a teensy pebble, off the driveway, running along the hillside like a freaking mountain goat, behind the barns, in the opposite direction.  Frantically, I told Kevin to run across the lot, open the gate on the OTHER side, and see if she was dumb enough to come back in. 

 

She was.

 

 

Whew.  So, now we knew she could possibly go through any opening that a cow would go through, and we set up appropriate human barricades aka. children.  Porkchop went out the gate for the driveway, yet again, in a perfect loop, but this time, she started down the long gravel driveway to the road up ahead.  So far, so good.

 

 

 

When we got up to the top of the driveway, Kevin opened the gate, and Porkchop exited into the road.  This was the first moment we actually had fear that we might not be able to control her.  I explained to Tiffany and Kevin that for centuries, drovers in England moved their livestock from one pasture to another by driving them.  If they can do whole herds of sheep, cattle and pigs, we can do one sow.  One very big, very long, very hormonal sow.

 

Ok, so maybe it was a moment of insanity, fueled by the flu delirium that we were all experiencing.  But by God, we were going to try it.  Slowly, a tap here, and a tap there, Porkchop began to traverse Williamsburg Road, plid plodding along, stopping for a second here or there to nibble on an errant corn husk that had flew out of the back of Arnold's trailer on his way to Rem's dairy farm. 

 

Everything was going well, it was about an hour before sunset, we figured we'd have plenty of time.  Then a car could be heard coming down the road, way too fast of course on these country roads, and we ushered Porkchop into the ditch.  Waving the stick in front of her snoot, she just sort of stopped, confused.  She was walking like a good girl, and now we wanted her to stop?

 

When the car came down the straight stretch, they slowed to an almost terminable pace.  The people in the car couldn't believe what they were seeing, and they stopped, rolling down the window.  Inside my head, I groaned.  For crying out loud.  We were trying to move an animal here.  "What?" I snarled.  They were all laughing, and the man chortled out the window, "That's some pig!"

 

We thanked him, and he moved on.  Moving Porkchop back out of the ditch, she happily continued on, not minding one bit the vehicles moving around her.  Another person stopped to say that we were walking the bacon off of her, and then some idiot thought it'd be a good idea to park at an intersection and flick a strobe light on.  Yes.  Because flashing lights and animals always have gone well together since the dawn of the LED...

 

 

 

 

For my friends who are not livestock people, let me explain.  Lights are to pigs what fire was to cavemen.  They don't know if it's God, or fire, or some sorcery, but like most things in this world that have lived to evolve, they have an innate fight or flight instinct.  It is better to run away, and fight another day, than to stay and be eaten by the crazy flashing light.   Porkchop had decided halfway there, after seeing this flashing strobe, that she wasn't sticking around, and began to turn back. 

 

Normally, you can't stop a 600 pound sow from doing something she really wants to do, and this includes fleeing.  However, Tiffany thinking rather quickly, jumped up on her back and she immediately locked up.  Kevin ran ahead and asked the infernal idiot to turn off his light.  We didn't have a wild animal loose, we meant to have her out, and we were moving her, and he wasn't helping matters!

 

By the time Kevin got back, and Tiffany slipped off Porkchop's back, she had forgotten the light, and was able to be turned back in the right direction, and began walking again as if nothing had happened.  By a quarter mile, she had learned that the sound of cars meant we were going to be asking her to go in the ditch, and she did so without us having to ask her from that point on.  Cars that had already passed had begun to pass us again, filled with people and their camera phones.   I have a feeling we'll see her on YouTube one of these days. 

 

 

It was getting dark, and we were turning in the gate of the Camp.  As soon as those squishy toes felt the gravel of the driveway, she knew where she was, and like a mad pig, ran down the 300 yard driveway to where Schnicklefritz was waiting for her.  She locked up when he grunted before we could get her in the pen, so we had to let him out.  They made their greetings... *cough* and then she went willingly in the pen.  High fives were had all around, and a feeling of accomplishment was had by all.  It was awesome.  





A-well-a-Bird Bird Bird, Bird's The Word...

Sorry for the delay in posting, but as most parents know, kids have an uncanny knack for roping us into projects.  I really believe that children are some of the best salesmen in the world.  It's like they pop out of the womb a bald, slimy, used car salesman, and through intensive parenting, we manage to instill ethics, morals and a dash of conscience.   It then takes about another ten years after they leave home to regain those traits that they came by naturally that help them get by in the world.  Boy, we sure do make it hard for them.

 

So, to recap from previous postings, I'm not exactly the most 'with-it' 4-H mom.  I try, I really do.  I just have a lot on my plate, and I keep losing the stupid planner books that EVERYONE keeps buying for me.  I get the hint.  I just can't follow through.  And before anyone suggests that I have ADHD, I don't.  What I have is There-is-just-too-many-fun-things-to-do-and-not-enough-time-to-do-them-all-itis.  Biiig difference.   I try to handle it gracefully.  I see on Facebook all of these perfect moms, and I'm just not one of them.  Whether it be only reading half a message when it comes to a schedule change (as in, I knew the meeting had been moved to 3pm, just didn't notice that it had also moved the day as well), or realizing too late that 90 percent of the pictures I was posting had my son photo-bombing them while picking his nose or having his fly down, I'm just not the parent that focuses that closely on the minutiae of life. 

Somehow in conversation with a friend, I had found out that our last 4-H group that kicked us out a month before the year was up when we told them we wouldn't be renewing the next year neglected to inform us that everyone who was doing eggs for the Ham-Bacon-Egg purchased their chicks in September.  Why September?  Because, and don't feel bad, I didn't know this either, chickens need at least 16-18 weeks to grow before they'll lay their first egg.   So, if you take the End-of-March or thereabouts, which is when the Ham-Bacon-Egg sale is, subtract 16-18 weeks, you land first week in November.   That's not a big deal, right? WRONG.  Because apparently, hatcheries don't sell chicks in November.  Too hard to keep them alive, I guess.  They pretty much stop selling chicks at the end of September. 

What do you mean, end of September!??  It was already October when we were asking these questions!  Frantically, I searched on hatchery websites.  Every single one of them were advertising that their next hatch date was going to be in January, at the earliest.  In bright red letters under the next three months were 'Not Available'.  We had already agreed to letting the kids do chickens.  Someone, somewhere had to be hatching these things out!  We finally found some chicks all the way in California, and quickly ordered twenty White Leghorns.  If calculations hold true, they should be laying by the beginning of March... should. 

Levi also managed to round up a dozen Blue Lace Red Wyandottes.  One lays white.  The other lays Brown.  One chicken is white. The other is all crazy colors.   There should be no arguing in the chicken coop over who's chicken did what.  That's my theory, anyway.

And the chicken coop.  What about a chicken coop?  Well, a great little coop built in the earlier part of 1900's sat on a hill side up from the house which was built in 1921.  Grandpa, who was awesome, always made sure that if it was a building, it had the roof maintained.  Why were roofs so important?  Well, if rain could get in, then the building would rot, and eventually fall down.  So tin roofs were maintained, repaired, painted on a regular basis.  As a result, the chicken coop on the hillside was practically new inside, even though it hadn't held chickens in more than fifty years.  The white wash interior was peeling a little, but it was still remarkably bright inside when we opened the door.  The kids shoveled out dust which I'm sure was at one time chicken poop, and Kevin and Steve set to working on the new nest boxes. 

Roosting poles were needed.  The original ones were gone.  Levi grabbed a handsaw and went out to cut roosting poles with help from Uncle Mo.  Tiffany, his sister... um... she's supervising. Yeah. That's it!

He needed three so they could be staggered.  The first one, Uncle Mo helped.  The second one, I helped.  The third one, he was on his own.  About five minutes into sawing, he breathlessly said to me, "Lizbet, it's true what they say."  I asked him what he meant, and he responded, "The last one is always the hardest."  He was exhausted by the time he finished limbing them, and removing the thorns from the trunk (Hawthorne). 

Helping us was Danny the Lamb.  He loved running in the door and out the clean-out of the coop.  As you can see in the picture, the interior was still whitewashed.  It really was a brilliant solution to the darkness before there was electricity for light.  Common during the early 20th century, buildings were whitewashed inside to make it brighter with the little bits of light that came in.  With an outhouse, for example, you didn't want a lot of windows, for obvious reasons.  With a chicken coop, you didn't want a ton of drafts, so you had like one screened window that would be shut up during winter time, leaving only the light from the door and the cracks between the boards to illuminate the inside.  White was brighter, and the white wash also helped to sanitize the walls. 

See, in the 1930's, while more than 90 percent of people who lived in cities had electricity, there were fewer than 10 percent in the farming and rural areas that had it.  Those that did, had it in their homes, not their outbuildings.  The electric companies argued that it was simply too expensive to string wire out to the farms, so they charged a mint for it.  Only the wealthiest farmers could afford the exorbitant fees, and back then, there weren't as many wealthy farmers as there are today.   So... enter the government. 

Now, I'm not anti-government.  I am anti-government-involvement-in-private-enterprise.  Eventually, electric companies would have caved to their greed, installed electric when it got cheaper to run poles and wires, and gathered up several new electricity contracts, because as it turns out, the rural contracts actually spent more on electricity (production, duh) than urban contracts.  But, FDR wasn't going to wait for that to happen.  Instead, in 1935 the Rural Electric Administration was formed to bring electricity to the farming (and voting) public.  Just like today, everyone freaked out about the president meddling with private enterprise.  They felt it was one step closer to socialism.  And, just like today, the government didn't give a rat's patootie what the public felt about it, and did it anyway.

In more than 25 percent of homes by 1939, the farms were electrified.

Ok, ok... more like:

Anyway, on most farms, they were still doing the tried and true whitewash method in their barns and outbuildings, and continued well into the '60's.  It was at that point when most farms and outbuildings were outfitted with both electricity and telephones.  Written on the walls of the lambing shed are 113 with a mark through it, and beneath it 411 next to a telephone jack. 

So, best as I can figure, our farm had phones and electric as early as 1940.  Anywho, it'll be two months before the baby chicks can go in the coop, and until then, they'll be occupying someone's kitchen. 

In other farm-related news, Porkchop came into season again.  That was a disappointment, as we had hoped that she would have taken with Diesel babies for a January litter.  Regretfully the infection and fever were too much, and like Dr. Farnum had suggested, she missed.  Frantically, we searched the countryside (A lot of frantic searching goes on when you're farming, I'm discovering.) for a quality boar to breed her to.  After a wonderful effort from some friends making phone calls, we located a very nice boar just across the road... from our house.  Go figure.  *sigh*  He was bargain basement priced, and I felt like the farming equivalent of going to Filene's!  I almost decked a farmer to get the boar.  It was not my finest moment.  By the end of the day, Schnicklefritz as he would become known, was at our farm, and had already serviced Porkchop. 

 

So, we'll have February Porkchop babies.  We're going to keep him for a little while and breed back to him in April for our summer litters, before we decide what to do with him.  He's a doll baby, and such a snuggle bug.  Lucy was ultrasounded at 21 days and toned (got piglets).  We'll ultrasound again at 35 days to make sure she hasn't reabsorbed (which can happen apparently with first parity).  Cross your fingers that we'll have January Herefords.

 

Whew, and that's pretty much it for our update.   Will try not to let it go so far in between next time!