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!
