The day had finally come for our first little pig to "graduate". I kept myself reasonably detached from the process and we arranged for the home-kill guy to come while I was at work. I'm sure eventually I'll be ok to be there but for our first pig I decided to turn a bit of a blind eye! I gave him a good pat before I left for work and when I got home he was gone. Josh reassured me that the whole process was very quick and professionally done so that made me feel better. We had also watched a documentary recently on the state of some pig farms which was hideous, so knowing that our pig had lived a good life in a big paddock with a nice shelter and clean hay to sleep on erased any guilt I was feeling.
It was still a strange feeling though and the paddock looked a little empty with only 1 pig but the prospect of home grown bacon, pork chops and roasts was pretty exciting!
A week later Josh went to collect our meat - wow! When we spread it all out it looked pretty impressive. We ended up with 36 kilograms of meat in the form of roasts, chops, strips and bacon and it looked amazing. So much better than the pork you buy in the supermarket...this was real meat!
It is a great feeling knowing that we are making progress in our attempt to become self-sufficient. The meat looks amazing and tastes even better! I love knowing exactly where it has come from and what went into it and it is hugely satisfying knowing that we raised it ourselves.
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