Bacon palace
Wow, has it been a busy two weekends, all devoted to the two little piggies that we’ll hopefully pick up sometime in the next week or so. Last Saturday, I spent the day setting posts, both fence and shelter. If you’ve never had the joy, it’s backbreaking work. Using the tractor to dig the holes is a lifesaver, but carting 8-foot posts around, followed by an 80 pound bag of concrete for each post, will sap your energy in no time flat.
On the upside, you really sleep well.
Last Sunday it rained hard all morning, which kept the concrete from getting set well, so I worked on other things in the afternoon when the sun was out. On Monday — President’s Day — I went out into the middle of nowhere to a sawmill to pick up a load of rough cut poplar with which to side the pig shelter. I had more than enough wood, and it only cost me $64 to side the entire 10×6 building, an excellent price.
Monday was pretty cold, but I didn’t realize just how cold it was until I got out of the truck at the lumber mill. The wind was blowing at a good clip, and it was maybe a hair under forty degrees. I felt like a moron standing out there in my shorts and t-shirt. Of course, feeling like a moron has become second nature to me, so I was used to it.
“This man’s gonna be a pig farmer, too,” the owner of the saw mill said to one of the men loading the wood into the bed of the truck, and nodded in my direction.
“Pig farmer? Me?” I asked.
“How many you got?” the man loading wood asked.
“We’re just getting two,” I said. “To eat. Not to be a pig farmer.”
“This here’s for their shed,” the owner said, this time nodding at the lumber.
“Where you gettin’ ‘em from?” the man asked, and shoved another plank off the arms of the forklift into the bed of the truck.
“From a man just up the road a piece,” I said. Interestingly, the lumber mill is about five miles from the home of the man with the pigs, way up north in the state, just a mile or two from the state line. “Lemuel Johnson.”
The man’s brow wrinkled.
“Egg Johnson?” I said.
“Oh, ayuh, I know Egg.”
“He’s got a bunch of young ones and I’m getting two of those.”
“I had a sow just drop fifteen this morning. Ain’t never seen so many pigs in all my life.”
“Fifteen? Wow!”
I considered asking the man if I could come over to his house to pet the piglets, then thought better of it.
The whole drive home I fretted over whether or not Jezebel would make it. We’ve never been so far away, she and I, and I worried that she didn’t have it in her. She did, though, and we got home without a hitch.
I spent the rest of the day Monday building the pig palace. First, I hung girts on the posts, to make a simple pole building in the style of a lean-to. Then I started cutting poplar to length for the siding. While I did the cutting and later put the roof on, Robyn sided the entire building herself. If I knew she could be so handy I’d have had her out there helping me on ALL the buildings.
Yesterday I spent the day running field fence around the pig yard, a true nightmare. Field fence is a little different from the welded wire fence that surrounds our back yard and the chicken yard. It’s only 39 inches tall, for one, and the wire spacing is different. The bottom of the fence has openings about 2 inches by 6 inches, and the openings increase as you move vertically up the fence until they’re about 6″x6″ at the top. Field fence is made of a lower gauge wire (ie, thicker) than welded wire fence.
But none of that sounds like a nightmare, does it? What makes it a nightmare is that field fence comes in 330-foot rolls instead of 100-foot like the welded wire, and those rolls weigh 241 pounds. Have you ever tried to wrestle something around a muddy field that weighs more than you do?
I got a little over half of the fence done yesterday, and had to stop around 3:00 to get all gussied up to go to the family visitation for a friend whose father died.
This morning, I hung the 10-foot gate, then made fairly quick work of the rest of the fence. It goes a lot faster when you’ve learned from your mistakes and are working on drier ground. Once I finished the field fence, I — contrary to what I said just last week — ran a single strand of electric fence about six inches off the ground, to keep the pigs from digging under the field fence. This past week, I found out that electric fencing is a LOT easier to run than I thought, and the solar chargers are about $300 less than I thought they were. Everything to do the entire fence (solar charger and all) was less than $200, and I have plenty of wire to do two or three more strands if I ever think I need them. As an added bonus, I won’t need to have the pigs ringed.
Once the wire was run (I still need to connect it to the charger), I used a line tensioner to pull it tight. Then it was time to spread in the shelter the two bales of straw I picked up at the co-op yesterday morning. Those two bales made a layer of straw about a foot deep in the shelter, much more than I expected. I never realized they were so tightly packed.
Comfy, too, as Robyn and I found out later when we laid in it during a rest break from pounding t-posts into the ground. She was mighty helpful then, too, holding each one in place while I drove them almost two feet into the ground with a sledgehammer.
She’s brave, that one. I don’t know if I have the nerve to let someone swing something that deadly so close to my hands and head.
The pig area is pretty much done now, thank God. It was some brutal work, trying to get all that done in two weekends, but it’s done. All I need to do now is rig up a smaller pen right around the entrance to the shelter so the pigs can be closed in for a couple of days. That helps imprint on them where “home” is.
And now, pictures.
Behold the bacon palace, from the south.
What pig wouldn’t love that?
I may actually have to spend the night with the pigs once, just because that straw is
so damn comfortable. Seriously, I about fell asleep laying in it with Robyn this afternoon.
Showing how far it is from the house. Even if it smells out here, I don’t think it’ll reach the house.
The food can, already with 100 pounds of “swine feed” in it.
The gate has a hog panel welded to it. The small spaces at the bottom keep small critters
from getting out. The fence is the same way.
The charger, after a brief rain we had this afternoon.
And the single strand of electric fence, waiting for a charge.
The whole shebang, which is about 90×150. I’d thought it was roughly 80×120, but when I measured it
I discovered I was off. That means each pig gets 6750 square feet of living space.
After much consideration, I’ve decided to do the actual killing and butchering of the pigs myself (with a little help). For some time, I’ve believed that if I’m going to be willing to eat an animal, I should be willing to do what it takes to get that animal ready for eating. Slaughtering the pigs right out back in their home will minimize the stress on them, and it should be pretty peaceful. As peaceful as a death can be, I suppose. It’s got to be better than trying to wrangle them into a trailer and drive them to a strange place to be manhandled by strangers for their last moments.
I have a good friend who grew up raising and killing pigs. One of our two pigs will be his, actually. We’re sharing the costs of the animals and the feed, and then he’s going to show me how to kill and butcher them when the time comes.
Probably you’re feeling the urge to write a bitchy comment right now, about how I’m an idiot for wanting to do this myself, or how we’ll screw it up, or how if I really cared about the pigs’ well-being I wouldn’t be killing them in the first place, or how I won’t be able to kill the pigs when the time comes. Knock yourself out. You know how much I love it when people give me unsolicited advice.
Seriously: If you really think I’m going to go into this half-assed, without having studied the everloving fuck out of it and obsessed over it for months before the actual deed, then you don’t know me at all.
>
Your building has sure improved over the last couple of years, hasn’t it Fred? Whipping out a very nice looking pig shelter (OK, I know not “whipping”) is really very impressive.
Yeah, Jules, Robyn and I joke about how it took me like two weeks to build the wood shed, and less than a whole day to do the pig shelter.
Unsolicited advice?
No way … in my opinion you deserve a lot of respect for the way you are planning ahead for your future BLTs. I think you will have happy pigs who will have good lives. The word “decent” comes to mind …
(and your mad building skillz rock!)
All I ask is that you and Robyn give ample warning and spoiler space about any killing pictures/descriptions!
I don’t think I could do it. I get squeamish and weird if I run over already dead roadkill, so purposefully killing an animal would be very difficult for me. Even if you do it and decide that it isn’t the thing you’ll do again, I admire that you are even considering doing the killing yourself.
I think it’s great you plan to slaughter the pigs yourself. You are so right in that if we are willing to eat an animal we should be willing to fully appreciate where it has come from and how it has gotten to our plate. I think your pigs will have much better lives (and deaths) than the ones destined for supermarket shelves.
Fred I’m sure you’ve researched it thoroughly but if you have any questions my husband would be glad to talk to you, Robyn “knows” me.. he’s a farmboy and a chef and just did the pig killing/processingsmokehousing thing over Christmas.
Sorry for this unwanted advise but ever though of getting something like a Gator? You know the things that look like golf carts but are for more like gardening/hauling things around your property??
Hey Fred - I’ve calmed the holy hell down since ranting on Robyn’s site worrying about the piggies going to waste if something got screwed up. I knew you’d post about it eventually so I waited for this opportunity to say SORRY! I don’t know you, of course, but I have seen your stellar work, and appreciate what’s behind it. I wish you all the best with the pig farming and everything that goes with it. There is a whole fabulous niche market out there for “ARTISAN SMOKED BACON” - I imagine you can have quite a time with the rubbing and the smoking and the curing and all that (hmm sounds almost dirrrty). I love me a good BLT - home-made from bread to meat to veggies would totally rock! Congrats on finishing the big build! Just remember if you get a hankering for sausage that there are two things one never wants to see being made: LAW AND SAUSAGE
I think your results are great! Does the building not need a door; just curious if it’s a problem at night with predators (if there are any that threaten pigs/livestock in your area….even though I live in the actual Greenacres, I’m a total country naif)? If you can find it, check out Gordon Ramsay’s The F Word; he did the same thing for two seasons in the show. He first raised turkeys for Christmas Dinner and then two pigs, both times in his backyard and involved his whole family in raising them and bringing them to table, although he didn’t involve the children, who were fairly young, in the actual slaughtering process of which he was a part, they were well aware of where the dinner came from. It’s really cool and I think you’d enjoy watching (though, I didn’t think he’d make it with the pigs, he was very attached). Oh, yeah, and try some colloidal silver…..
Do people online really give you a hard time that much? I think it’s great you’re growing and tending your own food, and intend to do the processing as well. I think most of society is too distanced from what that neat little package of pork and chicken in the freezer really means, what it took to get it there. Meat doesn’t come from grocery stores. I intend to raise and process my own too when I move to the country.
Now that looks like a great place for a roll in the hay : ) Are you sure you two were just sleeping?
Maria: One of us was too tired to do anything else.
Heather: Not that much, but some things (like killing animals!) are hot buttons, so I try to defuse them by pointing out that I expect them. It’s the ones I don’t expect that get me.
Liz: The only real predators for pigs here are coyotes, and I don’t think they can get over the field fence. I may run another electrified line around the top if I get too concerned.
Kathy: Accepted.
My friend actually has a grinder, and I’m going to try making sausage out of straight meat, but I ain’t putting anything gross in. I’ve already told him he can have the head, feet, lard, and guts if he wants them because all I want is the meat.
Nae: Believe you me, I think about it all the time. As much as I want one, I think our property is too small to justify getting one when I have a truck and a tractor. But boy, would it be nice.
Coppertop: Thankya.
Robyn showed me the pictures just a few days ago, actually (because I was all “She’s farmy? I didn’t know that!”)
Everyone else, thanks.
(Jesus Christ, I use smilies too much)
Imagine this, if you will: Breakfast, featuring eggs from your chickens, bacon from your pigs, and fried green tomatoes from your garden. Could there be anything better?
“come over to his house and pet the piglets”…. SNORT! You crack me up Fred!
Fred — take this as you will, from someone who raises ALL the meat we eat — check around for a mobile butcher. They will come do the deed right at your house, then load the carcass in a refrigerated truck and take it to age and process. You skip all the transport stress and the work. While we do process our own goats, deer, and elk — I wouldn’t want to do a pig. It’s soooo much easier, and it’s really not very expensive to use a mobile butcher — I believe it costs me a total of $20 more for mine to come to the house, and considering we are 50 miles away, that’s nothing.
Oh btw — you probably could have just fenced your pigs in with a single strand of electric after you got them used to it in a smaller pen. Hogs have a healthy respect for an electric wire, and won’t even try to get out months after you’ve turned it off.
I don’t have any moral feelings about you killing and eating the pigs. That would be silly since I enjoy good pig meat as much as anyone.
I just think the argument that we have to be willing to kill something in order to enjoy it is also silly. Not for you, Fred, obviously its important to you.
But, as an argument, it makes no sense to me. I have no ability to kill something so I shouldn’t eat it. We’re a specialized society. I also have no desire to be a sewer worker-should I cease to poop? I may or may not be able to build a computer but I have no interest in doing so. Should I stop accessing the internet now?
There are people with skills out there. I’m happy to pay them with the money that I make from my skills. That seems reasonable to me.
Jackie
Hi Fred,
I have been torn about the eating meat vs vegetarian thing for years. I am still a meat eater, although not much, mostly non meat meals. I buy my food at a whole food store, where it is organic, and free range. I wish all meat were raised and processed the way you are doing it. I think meat SHOULD be expensive. Not cheap… and processed in a cruel way. I would feel better seeing my beef, pork raised in front of me or nearby where I could see that they are treated well and processed the right way. ALthough I would avoid getting too friendly, or I would never be able to eat them!
Hey Fred-
You may have answered this somewhere else but I missed it.. How long does it take for a pig to grow into bacon? Just wondering. I am fascinated by the pigs-can’t wait for them to arrive!
I guess I know you pretty good for a internet lerker - these words where in my brain before I read them:
Seriously: If you really think I’m going to go into this half-assed, without having studied the everloving fuck out of it and obsessed over it for months before the actual deed, then you don’t know me at all.
I still worry you won’t be able to do it - the killing part - but I guess if you prepare yourself, you will be able to do it. Otherwise, you might have to leave while your buddy does that part. Or you could go with Robyn for a short trip.
Leigh: Generally, you want to slaughter them around 200-250 pounds. Any more and you’re mostly getting fat; any less and the pig isn’t reaching its full potential. In the commercial world, they can pork them up that big in 6 months or so because of the amount of feed they give them. The last month (give or take) is called “finishing them out,” where they get nothing but grain, like corn. That process REALLY makes them gain weight. Our pigs will live until a little before Christmas, I expect. There are no plans to do the finishing out process, and I’m aiming for mid-December because it needs to be cold out when the slaughter takes place. It’s a two day process, with the kill / clean / gut the first day, then overnight to age so the rigor mortis can finish, then the cutting up of the meat the next day.
Val: Technically, I won’t be doing the killing. I’ll be doing the stun, which involves a shot between the eyes with a .22. The pig is stunned, and goes stiff. That’s when my friend will step in with a sharp knife and do the “stick,” which severs the carotid artery. I would do the stick, but I want to see where the knife goes before I try it myself.
I guess I’ll be learning why some knives are called “pigstickers,” and up close about the source of the “bleeding like a stuck pig” saying.
Maybe a silly question, so I apologize in advance, but aren’t you going to paint the pig shed to match the chicken coop? And about the coop; the window are beautifull, but don’t you think awnings would complete the look? And be functional???
Sammi
P.S. Liz; the colloidal silever; Did I miss something? Isn’t that the stuff that turned the “Blue Man” well, blue?
Sammi: painting the shed would be like putting lipstick on a pig. Underneath, it’s still a pig. And I’m not too sure how awnings would look on a tin-roofed building.
More power to you, Fred. When I see a pig, I think “Babe!” or “Wilbur!”. When I see a pork chop or rib, I think “mmmmm!”
That’s much in the same way I get queazy preparing a chicken for the oven, and often think that if I can’t bend its wings behind its back, I probably couldn’t kill it, so I shouldn’t eat it. Instead I would go pick up one of the roasted chickens at the grocery, but no more. I’ve seen enough of factory farming to know that I have eaten enough of its products.
Oh, now I’m remembering the 800 lb sow I saw. I really didn’t even know what to think then. She was almost as big as my car. How big are yours going to get? And how long will you wait to slaughter? So, say, if you’ll slaughter these in a year, will you get two more next year. Or will you grow these for two years but get two more next year, so you’ll have a fresh pig every year? Sorry if you posted the plan already, but if so, I missed it.
A favor, please? Someone else may have already requested this but I didn’t read through all the comments (sorry about that). When it comes time to butcher the piggies (and the chickens when it comes to that) I’m hoping you’re NOT planning on posting pictures? I really didn’t think you would, but well, I thought I’d put it out there. I just came across another website who shall remain nameless (you’re welcome) who did post step by step pictures of the butchering process of a calf. I understand the need and I even applaud your willingness to do the butchering yourself. I agree that it’s best to do it at home in the least traumatic way for the animal as possible. Great job with the pigpen (pig yard?) by the way!
“Could there be anything better”? Hell yeah. First, grow you some damn good wheat. Then make you some damn good bread. Then toast the damn good bread, and upon it, put some damn good butter (oooops I forgot, go back, get a cow, milk it, churn you up some damn good butter) on your damn good bread, and then, THEN! All this is merely a conveyance for…some of FRED’S DAMN GOOD JAM. No fine country breakfast would be amy damn good without it! Damn!
Hi Fred, Is there some type of floor in the pig shed under all the hay? Also, what about the flooding problem you had, will that affect the pig yard? I think it is great what you are doing. I have no problem eating meat as long as the animals had a happy life and were killed quickly. Good for you and Robyn!
I do understand what you mean about wanting to kill the animals you eat. I felt that way, and used to raise rabbits and chickens and killed and dressed them out. For me, it was like a price that had to be paid if I wanted to eat meat at all — a kind of demonstrating to myself that I knew where the meat came from, that it came from a living thing that gave its life to nourish me. It felt as if, in doing the killing and preparing myself, I was in some way honoring the animal.
That is SO over-the-top woo-woo I can’t even believe I wrote all that … but sincerely meant.
Enjoy your piggies, Fred, and may they grow fat and tasty for you and Robyn. Save me a BLT!
Well, I’m a meat-eater, so I don’t take any moral exception to you slaughtering an animal to eat (as opposed to, say, a hunter who kills an animal just for a trophy - that bothers me some). However, since I know that little piggies can be just adorable, I really hope you don’t give them cute names. Most of the farmers I know say their rule of thumb is - if it has a name, you don’t eat it.
I personally can’t wait for the pig slaughter pictures! Mainly because since I have been fowling the Anderson’s to the country I am strangely curious how the killing will happen.
^^^^^^ and dammit don’t tell me your not going to post em up, all of the pics you’ve posted in the past and you’d deny these to us…don’t make me google the site and find your ass or nut sack pre vasectomy pictures Fred!! LOL
Stephanee: See comment #20 for some answers. Most likely we’ll get more pigs next year, because we’re only keeping one of the two we’re getting this year. We *might* consider raising a couple of calves, but I’m not sure if we have enough land for them. I kind of think we don’t.
Laura, Dave: You both should know by now that I’ll probably post detailed pictures of turning a pig into its meat cuts…unless it feels like killing a pet, in which case I probably wouldn’t.
Linda: There’s just dirt under the floor. When Robyn posted her ‘flood’ pictures, she thought that was where I was planning to put the pigs. They’re actually on the other side of the field. There’s a soggy area over at one edge, but there’s a ditch for most of the runoff. The shelter is on the highest spot of land in the pen and shouldn’t get wet at all.
Marian: I understand the woo-woo.
I told my friend I’d probably thank the pigs for giving their lives before I shot them, and he told me to wait till after because it would make him get all sentimental and he wouldn’t be able to stick them. And he grew up doing this.
Elizabeth: I want to name them “Lunch” and “Dinner”, but Robyn’s pushing for actual names. “Ham-ione” might work.
Just don’t cut their heads off with a chainsaw and put it on YouTube.