weighing pigs

Sometime ago, I asked on someone’s blog how you weighed a pig.  We weighed a lamb once.. and that was hilariously amateur… it involved the bathroom scales taken out to the field,  and himself holding said lamb in his arms whilst the ewe glared and bleated  at him furiously, until we put him back down again. but pigs… well.. they are loads larger. 

Obviously you can invest in a weighing crate, but as with all things on a smaller holding, it’s not really worth buying all the gadgets.. best to make do etc.., or it all becomes too costly to be worth doing.

It seems there is a method that involves measuring the pig in various proportions, and doing some sums.  That sounded a lot easier!

So this is what we did.. we followed the instructions on the pig site.  We went out with a tape measure and measured their girths (around the armpits!) and length – ears to base of tail, in inches. Obviously that wasn’t quite as easy as that sounds..the pigs wanted to play.. and charged about… when we did it the second time we waited until meal time!

Then the sum goes: (girthxgirthxlength) divided by 400.  This gives an approximation in pounds of their liveweight. After a bit more maths, we got the figures in kilos.  Then the pig site goes on to estimate the deadweight of the pigs to be 72% of the liveweight.  More calculator jabbing and we arrived at the estimated kill out weights of 74.2 and 75.7 kilos. So we thought that was big enough an off they went.

The actual weights were 71.2 and 75.6 – so it worked out pretty accurate.

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michaelmas food and drink

Goose is traditionally eaten at Michaelmas, but I’m not really a fan. They are pricey, and very little meat.  The crispy skin though..  but our budget does not run to goose on a Tuesday night.  So I considered ‘poor mans goose’ – there are lots of variations it seems, but  it appears to be essentially the stuffing, minus the goose.  My mum has fond memories of her gran making it with the leftover roast pork, mixed with sage and onion, baked in the oven – and that sounds very tempting.

But tonight we ate cold roast pork, sweetcorn fritters and ratatouille and right now himself is making hazelnut cookies.  Seems apt and autumnal to me.

My family tradition is to start making beers etc for that winter festival thingy on this day.  Stocks are looking pretty good though – we only recently bottled some real ale – from a kit, this one is called ‘crusader’ from  milestone, and definitely rates as my favourite.  I really must get around to making beer from  actual malted barley, but these kits are great – a far cry from my student days, when cheap kits made beer with only the one merit.. it’s cheapness. These complete kits, with no need to add sugar are excellent and still good value for money.

Still I think I should start another one – just to be safe(!) maybe ‘Norfolk Nog’ again, which is more of a porter – besides I lit the rayburn tonight and we need to make the most of that warmth.. well.. that’s my excuse.

Wine stocks are looking good, I have mead, elderflower, apple and elderberry and apple bottled and ready, and I really should do some racking and bottling some of the demijohns too.

So, lots of stock in.

hmm time for a hazelnut chocolate chip cookie..

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14 in the cockerel run

We recently moved the 14 ‘chicks’ into the cockerel run, and they are having a  whale of a time – they have their old home, the growers coup in there too at the mo, and they like to perch on the top of it, they are dust bathing, flying and generally doing what chickens do.

It’s nice to have a lot, and so many different colours – our own eggs produced mixed colours, we have a blue, a buff, one that looks a bit welsummery and one that looks like a cuckoo maran.  They were all fathered by our welsummer cockerel.  We also have the bought in hatchings – the solitary cream legbar is a hoot with a bit crest on its head, the exchequer are nicely speckled and the Australorps are a lovely black with a green sheen.

It’s amazing how much different in size they are: the Australorps and cuckoo maran ish one, are all much bigger than the others.  One of the exchequer leghorns is crowing, a comical baby crow.

But apart from the few that give away their gender so obviously – it is still not clear how many boys and girls we have.

Mother hen is still with them – we tried to chuck her out twice, as in our experience they are usually more than happy to abandon their offspring by now, but she wants to stay, and as we figure she wont come into lay again before spring now, we are letting her.  We shall turf her out with the girls later.

So all we need no is a bigger house.. as we now have a bigger incubator..  you see how it follows.  Himself has made a start, thank goodness for all the pallet wood we have!

 

edit to add a picture of an Australorp as requested by Sandra:

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Saffron and Shawn

I was in the sheep field today, gathering just a few more hazelnuts.  Saffie, our Zwartbles cross ewe came to see me. She’s a very affable sheep, and likes a bit of fuss. 

This made Shawn wake up.  Shawn, the borrowed ram is with us for a couple of months, and he is knocking on.  Which means he spends a lot of time lying about the place looking like a dead ram.  To the point, that I have stopped stressing about him when he is looking dead, only if he looks dead in the same place when I check the sheep later. 

However, he feels protective towards his girls, and likes to make his feelings known should a person be harassing one of them (i.e me patting Saffie).  Course, he knows I’m not frightened of him, so he makes his stance from a distance.  Unfortunately, the ‘girls’ are not impressed with him and his protective nonsense.  They regard him as an unwanted old letcher. 

So Saffie had lots of pats and chats and wandered off, and Shawn came over for a hopeful sniff of her rear end.  She treated him exactly as she did when he first arrived: with disdain, and a hasty dodge.  He persisted, and did the sniffy curl lip inside out thing.  Then was very interested, pawing her etc. But it seems, specially for an old codger like Shawn, the ewe has to  be willing.  And Saffie walked away.  I thought: bum, guess she is in season again, and not letting him tup her..

Then she suddenly thought it would be a good  idea after all.  She stood.  She waited.  She waited a bit more.  She turned her long neck around (zwartbles have giraffe necks) and gave him a hard stare, she waited some more.  The problem was, I could see, is she is fairly tall – nearly as tall as him.  He was bracing himself trying to develop some spring in his old bones.  Eventually he managed, and in fact found some youthful spring a couple more times.

Then she lay down, and he flumped down next to her, and they shared a little silent cud chewing time. Poor old boy – I will probably find him looking dead in the field again  tomorrow .

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first fire

Cold today, and this evening we lit the wood burner for the first time, since spring.

We also ate the first of the pork – tasty!

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butchery day

Today himself had a day off, I set up lots of stuff for our son to do home education wise, and we spent most of the day cutting up pigs.

It was lots of fun, and very very satisfying. It’s not too fatty (apparently normal for first time pig keepers) and there is certainly lots of meat. 

The butchery side of things was fairly straightforward, though we were helped with this useful thread on the downsizer forum and a really good website with videos from quality meat Scotland.

They killed out at 71.2 and 75.6 kilos, and we cut each side into:

2 large leg joints, 1 chump joint, 3 loin joints, 1  spare rib joint, 1 hand joint, 2 slabs of belly, 1 hock, rack of ribs and a smaller spare ribs, along with the trotters, and heads.

All of the joints are large but this leaves our options open, we can cut the loins and chump into chops later.. we can make bacon from the belly if we wish, we can bone and roll the shoulder etc. 

Next time, will definitely butcher it ourselves, and yes, judging from the amount of meat we got back, I do see there being a next time!

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equinox and foraging

Today is the autumn equinox, and despite the pleasant warm weather we have been happening – there does seem to be a seasonal change going on.  the leaves are changing on the trees, we are nearing the end of harvesting our veg, we have culled animals for our stores (well freezers), and the foraging is coming to an end. 

This year has been great for hazel nuts, and thanks to our cat’s timely removal of a certain squirrel, we have gathered lots.

yum.

They say the blackberries are no good after Michaelmas (which is a few days off yet) and I can see why.. they are coming to an end too.

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the pigs are gone

Loading them up was a little difficult – our cunning arrangement of outer gate meets inner gate, forming new path to the waiting trailer worked a treat, and not having been fed before they were well up for a few scattered pig nuts, but the ramp of the trailer put them off. Note to self: cover ramp with something grippy next time.  So eventually, himself heaved them up the ramp   – not easy when 90+kilos of pig (an estimate) puts the brakes on, however once in they were happy to throw the new clean straw around etc.

I then worried we would have trouble getting them out at the abattoirs.. you know, with lots of knowledgable farmers smirking away.. but we were last in the queue, and no one but the slaughter guys got to witness our attempts at reversing the trailer, and they have seen us bodge it many times, and the pigs strolled out and joined the others waiting quite happily.

So that was that.  Just have to hope the meat is ok.

We do feel a little sad about it, not at parting with the individual animals.  I’m afraid,(with the exception of Shirley the ewe that went for mutton (I feel bad cos she trusted me…)) we are only too anxious that something will go wrong when we take the animals to slaughter.. you know.. the trailer gets jammed in our very narrow greenlane, or the animals take off through the village, or …well you get the picture; that having safely delivered them, at our allotted time, we are only too elated to have somehow ‘got away without disaster” yet one more time.

Only later when I picked up a windfall apple and remembered we don’t have pigs I felt a little sad.  Whenever we have taken any sheep, we still had some at home, but this means we no longer keep pigs. Well..until next time. – That decision is based on working out our final costs, and tasting the pork.

One slight change of plan: after a couple of weeks of studying those pork diagrams in cook books, and reading up the subject and finally understanding which bits of pork come from what part of the pig (not helped by there being at least two names for each part), and drawing up a cutting list as requested, the butcher came out to check we were really sure about not wanting any sausages or boned out joints.  We explained we are keeping costs down etc.. and then somehow.. and I’m not sure at what point this happened, we agreed to have each side cut into three.  We shall have to cut it further.  This could result in many unidentifiable lumps of pork..  or three seriously big joints… 

So a busy day today – we delivered the pigs, started home ed (whilst himself, having a day’s ‘holiday’, cleaned out the trailer etc), then we went swimming, then back to the abattoir to collect the plucks, then a little indulgent time in the local posh yarn store and a coffee and cake in a cafe, then back to harvest the mountain of baby sweetcorn that has sneakily grown whilst we were busy with pigs… and the beans, and the courgettes.. then an hour plus of bean slicing and sweetcorn peeling, before blanching and freezing.

A pigs pluck is massive compared to a lambs, which is what I am used to dealing with..  this evening we have made two meals of faggots, set aside a kilo of liver to make pate with( once we have more pork for the recipe), put some liver in the freezer for another meal, and had liver for tea.

So mission accomplished, and the first pork based meal consumed.

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