Suspecting this isn't really the right place to post these.....but here goes. Last Saturday the 13th we butchered (4) 250 pound hogs and after having the hams and bacons cured for a week, it was time to slice and package. So yesterday, the 20th, we sliced and vacuum sealed the 8 slabs. Forgetting to take a shot before we started, this is 5 remaining of the 8 and the hams are already done. Only doing 4 hogs this year, we only used one of the two slicers. It's no time at all to slice just a few. However when 8, 10 or more are done both slicers get to singing a pretty tune.... Packaged to about a pound to a bag, this is the typical tray almost ready to be sent to the ladies working the vacuum sealers. Done with the slicing, packaging and cleaned up by 9:30 it was time to go back to the woodpile.... Oh.. side note required. Though we for many, many years killed and scalded our own hogs, twenty years ago we found a guy that performs that function for six bucks a head. He kills, scrapes (or sometimes skins), guts, halves and hangs overnight in the cooler and for that price it IS a bargain. Slowly its been raised to $20/head but its still worth it to us. No longer raising our own pork we have the local farmer deliver them to the old boy and we just pick 'em up the next morning and hang them in our own cooler until the weekend. We still kill, skin and butcher the annual 3 beef though. Pics...anyone?? I've got a ton of 'em.....
You have a great setup for processing. Nice to see that someone other than us still do it at home. Nice thick slices perfect for a bacon sandwich!
Good deal. We did 9 on Friday but we send the bacon off to be done. It runs about 7 bucks a hog to have the bacon done.
Yeah, we do too and it costs about the same hereabouts. We salt-cured for years when we only had a smoke house and no adequate long term refrigeration. We also send off the hams to have them cured too. Nothing like boiling the shoulder steaks or ham steaks back in the day....
I know there's probably others out there like crzybowhntr, S. Roche and my own family that do our own pork and beef, but I bet there's also a lot that have never seen lard rendering. This is one of the kettles we use. It was my maternal grandmothers kettle from the 1800's. We've been using it since the 30's or 40's which is actually before even I was born. It is 36" in diameter and used to be fired by wood, but back in the 80's we decided to use a 500,000 btu propane burner and use a makeshift shroud to contain the heat around the kettle. Makes for a lot less smoke in the eyes. In an hour and a half or so it cooks down pretty well, but here it still has 45 minutes to go. We actually got this one just a little too warm at 240 degrees as we like to keep it just at 220 or so. If its cooks too hot, the flavor of the lard is a little different and less desireable for pie crusts and the like. We dip it into a flour sack to strain straight into a lard can sitting in a tub of water to cool it down quicker. This is fairly clean and clear lard becaused it has not gone through the press. This sausage press has been in the family for generations. There is a smaller plate that installs with a rounded screen inside the body that allows the liquid to be squeezed from the cooked fat as it is compressed. Without the screen, a larger plate that fits the dimension of the cavity to act as as actual sausage press for making sausage links. All tolled, we ended up with just about 14 gallons of lard out of the 4 hogs. We did render the 'leaf lard' separately to get the purest lard of all. It is best used for pie crusts and cooking in general. Leaf lard is the fat that forms inside the hogs cavity around the organs and all that other stuff.... It is has a very different consistency than regular pig fat thats under the skin and it cooks down super quick. This year we surprised our last remaining aunt in her late 80's a nice helping of leaf lard and you'd have thought she just won Power Ball. Memories of her bygone days farming, butchering and cooking meals for the crew flooded back !! Wanna see some beef next ????
@tractorman We use the same Enterprise press that came from my grandmother who would be about 125 now. We have her recipe book that is a little hard to get measurements from as most are in white water buckets, not pounds.
Nice to see the old equipment in use and skills being used that are slowing drifting away to more mechanical means. A lot of work on everyone's part.
Well, me and my brother just never learned any better.....and I agree 100%. What's cool is my oldest daughter has taken to cooking with lard AND making homemade soap ...Not the fancy schmancy girlie-smellie-good soap, but some good old lye soap for cutting grease and grime from a person's hands. The same as grandma used to make, it is. I hadn't used it since my mother passed on in the mid-50's and the older sisters and dad just didn't continue making it for whatever reason. I remember the last nubbins of the bars back then being used by hand by my sisters to rub vigorously the greasy knees of my hole filled dungarees after a day working in the blacksmith shop on the farm machinery with the old man. Not just once, but many, many times. Tossed then into the old Maytag wringer/washer they'd go. Then after a double pass through the wringer out they'd go to the washline to dry. Then the cycle would repeat. (On a sidebar note, both my daughters heat with wood too....) Thank you all for the nice comments.
Here's three hanging in the cooler earlier this year. Some years we do four. Gonna make a fine supper for one of us....or three. Here's a little ground beef coming fresh out of the grinder.....so colin.p.....here's the beef !!!
