Here he is. What a life. Last month he was castrated, and this month, well....
Wilbur sneaks a peek at what is happening to his relative.
Pavel killed the pig by cutting his juglar with a knife. He is now burning off the hair with a blow torch.
After torching the hair and the skin, the scraping begins. The scraping removes the top (dirty) layer of skin. It took about 2 hours to get to this point of the process.
The scraping and torching continue until the skin is almost white.
Heather and Pavel's kids have been talking about this part of butchering since we got here. Pavel peels off a layer of skin and scrapes off the small amount of fat on the underside. He then rubs salt all over the piece.
Joshua got the first piece. At first I thought he was jumping the gun. I had only heard of fried pig skin.
Sara with her treat.
Pavel's mom joining in. During the day the workers stopped to enjoy a bite.
Ron refrained.
I did try some (a very small some). It didn't seem to have much taste, but Sara assured me that was because I didn't use salt.
This little guy wanted some, too!
Sara tried to bite off a piece of hers for the puppy, but she couldn't tear off a piece. It is tough, chewy, and pretty greasy.
The butchering continues.
(The girl helping in this picture is Lucika (sp?). She is the 23 yr. old that Heather and Pavel took into their home when she was too old for the orphanage. She is a HUGE help in all aspects of running their home.)
More butchering.
All the pig will be used. The lard is rendered and the skull and organ meats will be used in various dishes. The intestines were wheel barrowed outside the gate, and dumped into a ditch down the road. The local dogs will deal with those.
At times the family will make sausage (Pavel's mom wasn't feeling well, so she didn't do it this time) but they buy casings for that. The casings are cheap, and cleaning the intestines would take hours.
Pavel and Ron load up the car to take it the freezer in Heather and Pavel's home. (The animals are kept at Pavel's folks.)
It took about 6 hours to do this much of the butchering, and the rest of the day to package the meat.
I asked Pavel how often they butcher.
"Whenever the freezer is empty."
We have no complaints. The pork we ate that night was foarte biene (very good).
1 comment:
Great pictures. I remember the process well, and also not being hungry at dinner time on the day the pig was butchered. And like Ron, I pass on the pig skin.
Life is so easy here compared to Romania. Few people know how to butcher a chicken for dinner, let alone a hog.
Praise the Lord that there are hogs to butcher, chickens to provide eggs and meat, and cows and goats to provide milk to drink and from which to make butter and cheese.
Praise the Lord that there are six days to work every week and one day to rest from working. Hard work is not a bad thing.
Elisabeth
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