Harvest day comes with a lot of preparation: sharpening knives, preparing the tractor, pulling out the meat grinder and cleaning every inch of the kitchen in preparation for a full day of chaos.
All of our pork processing is done at home for a number of reasons. Primarily, we like knowing we were responsible for putting pork on the table from start to finish, rather than outsourcing the less pleasant parts.
In a years time we get very close to our animals, and perhaps I saw Old Yeller too many times as a kid, but when the time comes, I’d prefer the moral responsibility of shooting my own pig.
We’d also rather not put undue stress on any of our animals in transporting them to a processing facility. Since all of our meat is consumed by us rather than sold, there are no legal issues with home processing in Vermont.
A 350-pound pig hanging from a tractor bucket to bleed out before processing.
How to Slaughter a Pig
Our pigs are first shot to stun them, and then throats are cut. I’ve heard that the European method is to just go right in for the throat cut. I can’t imagine how hard that is, and how much skill that would take.
Even after the pig has been shot, there are somewhere between 1 and 2 full inches of hide and fat before you reach the arteries in the neck. It takes all the strength I have to cut the throat quickly even with the pig stunned by the bullet.
After the throat is cut, a pig needs to be bled out. The easiest method we’ve found is to hang them by the tendons on their back hocks from our tractor bucket.
This process was a lot harder before we had the tractor, as the pig below weighs between 300 and 350lbs. Our first pigs we pulled up by hand, which is a process I’m not eager to repeat. This time, it went a lot smoother.
Scalding or Skinning
Perhaps scalding and scraping a pig is an easy thing to do, but it’s something that still intimidates us. We don’t have a way to hold or heat enough water to scald a full-sized pig. Our neighbor built a fire under an old oil drum, which though probably fine in reality, just seems not quite right to me.
Anyhow, our current process involves skinning. In the end, you lose a bit of fat to the skin, but for the most part, the end result is the same.
A skinning knife really helps with this process. It has a rounded edge the allows you to cut with the leading edge without puncturing the skin. The pointed end on most knives will pop right through and you won’t get a clean skin.
A fully skinned pig.
Butchering and Sausage Making
Bleeding out, skinning and gutting a pig takes about an hour. Once the pig is skinned and gutted, the hard part is actually pretty well over, but the work is just beginning.
Cutting the pig into 1 to 2-pound packages and vacuum sealing, along with chopping sausage meat into small pieces to fit through the grinder takes us 3-4 hours in total.
The first time we made sausage, we used the meat grinder attachment on a KitchenAid stand mixer. It got the job done, but really that attachment was designed for a hobbyist that’s planning to grind up a pound or two. We timed it, and the KitchenAid attachment took a full 5 minutes to grind a single pound.
This time, we invested in a LEM 3/4 hp meat grinder and were really impressed with the results. Not only did we get really clean sausage, without the mashing or emulsification from the KitchenAid attachment, but it was really efficient.
Instead of 5 minutes per pound, we were able to grind 7 pounds per minute. You read that right, 7 pounds of meat turned into sausage in just 60 seconds!
A rope of homemade chorizo before it was pinched off into individual links.
This year we heavily biased toward sausage because, well, it’s delicious and we felt like we didn’t make enough last year. Instead of leaving whole bone-in shoulders, I boned everything down to small roasts and cut a bulk of it up into sausage chunks.
This is the first year we experimented with making cased sausage, and it came out beautifully. Truth be told, cased sausage is a lot easier to make than you’d think and very much worth the effort.
Perhaps someday we’ll go through the process of cleaning our own sausage casings, but for now, we buy natural sausage casings ready to use. They come pre-packaged in salt. Soak them to remove the salt and moisten them, and they’re ready to use in about half an hour.
The actual cutting of a pig takes a bit of practice, but to anyone with a bit of knowledge of anatomy and skill with a knife, it’s easy enough to pick up.
If you’d like to learn, I’d suggest watching the Scott Rea video below. Scott is a true artist, and all of his videos are well made and informative:
How Much Meat Does a Pig Yield
For the most part, a pig yields roughly 50% of its live weight in marketable cuts. On top of that, you have oddments like lard, bones and organs that are still usable and tasty.
We make and can pork bone broth for our winter soups and stews, and the organs make a tasty organ stock. A single pig yielded enough bone and organs to pressure can 42 quarts of stock.
That’s three full batches of 14 quarts each in our 30 quart All-American Pressure Canner.
Related: Estimating Pork Yield: How Does Live Weight Compare to Cooked Yield?
Beyond meat and stock, we were able to render 5 full gallons of lard. Yes, that’s right. Five full gallons of rendered lard.
Pigs are usually harvested much younger than 1 year old because feed conversion is better. We planned to breed this pig, but plans changed and into the freezer she went.
Related: How Much Does it Cost to Raise a Pig?
We first grind the fat to make it easier to render, and then slow process it on the stove at low heat. It’s an all-day process, but the finished product, if done right, tastes clean enough to bake into a pie crust without the slightest hint of pork flavor.
Grinding the fat before rendering lard increases surface area, which dramatically improves lard yields.
Here are the final cut weights from our pig at nearly 1 year old. We estimate that her live weight was roughly 350lbs, and she yielded about 175lbs of marketable cuts.
90 lbs Sausage
40 lbs Ham Roasts
15 lbs Shoulder Roasts
15 lbs Ribs (with bone)
8 lbs Chops
5 lbs Shank (with bone)
4 lbs Tenderloin
42 Quarts Stock
5 Gallons Rendered Lard
What do you think? Are you ready to try processing your own pigs at home?
Tomasz
Do you inspect the meat for Trichinosis?
Ashley Adamant
No, and I wouldn’t trust my health or the health of my family to my being able to detect and identify it. Rather than trying to check for it, and potentially falsely identifying something as safe, I just make sure my food is prepared in a way that would neutralize them in the unlikely even that they’re present. As a rule, all pork in my household is frozen for a few weeks before use if it’s going to be used in any type of cured meat. Otherwise, it’s all thoroughly cooked.
Alan
Trichinosis has not been reported in farm-raised pork for like 60 years. It’s not an issue.
Kerra
My husband and I butcher our own deer, and the first year we ground it up we used a kitchen aid attachment also, and it was terrible!! the person who let us use his kitchen aid ended up giving us his older electric Grinder (not kitchen aid) because he was convinced the kitchen aid was nicer. Needless to say the next year we got all our meat done in a couple hours vs over 24 hours!
Do you use the lard for cooking only? And how do you store it? Have you ever used it for candle making?
Ashley Adamant
A dedicated meat grinder is the way to go for sure, we don’t use our kitchenaid grinder anymore at all, even for small batches. Once you have a real grinder the difference is profound!
We store the lard either in our basement (which is cool) or in the freezer if we have space. I actually just wrote an article on making, using and storing lard just a bit ago here: https://practicalselfreliance.com/leaf-lard/
We haven’t tried making soap with it, but I hear that works really well.
Rodrigo Baeza
We make our own lard soap which turns out to be the best option for washing our clothes… just make sure not to use fried lard… our first batch of soap did have a hint of bacon aroma in it! XD
Justin
Do you let them hang for 5 days or week?
Donna Jean Ingram
How did you render your lard? I’m doing it in a crockpot. It is quick and easy but does have just a slight pork snell to it. Good for biscuits and cooking but not real sure about baking and pastries
Administrator
It’s more about the kind of lard that you are using. Pigs have different types of lard. You want to use leaf lard for baking and pastries because it does not have any pork smell or taste at all. Here is an article that might help. https://practicalselfreliance.com/leaf-lard/
Pete
Trichinosis is always a concern.
When you say that it hasn’t been detected in many years, that is in a controlled commercial farm environment where what they eat is very
Regulated.
In your average home farm operation pigs can have access to to rodents that carry tric.
You definitely want to treat your pork like it does have trichinosis.
The university of Montana has a great study on trichinosis, it’s definitely worth a read.
Not hard to protect yourself from.
But a real pia to recover from once you get it.
Administrator
We happen to believe that livestock raised in a healthy manner on the homestead is actually much better than commercial farming practices. The animals are much cleaner and much healthier and therefore are much less likely to carry disease. I’m also pretty certain that they most likely have access to rodents in a commercial farming application as well. Thanks for the information. We will definitely check it out.
Bianca
Hello, this is my first time indulging in fresh pork processing so I have some questions. I live in Albania and just purchased a 20kg piglet, well actually my cousin did 🙂 at an animal fair and had it cleaned. He brought it home and we cut it up into various pieces, which look fine but after seeing your video I see where our methods might need improvement. The concern in any Balkan state when it comes to fresh meat is that they want to boil everything to ensure the meat will be free of any possible contamination, which I can understand. However, I’m not sure if that’s necessary when I want to roast it. I just would like some advice on the handling of farm-raised pork for cooking. Should I boil it all before roasting or cooking on the stovetop? Any suggestions you have would be greatly appreciated it. Thank you and I love your site. I have also started making homemade cheese from fresh cow’s milk, and jams. Originally from a city, in NY and Rome, I feel out of sorts when delving into homemade foods but am beginning to appreciate it!
Administrator
We typically do not boil the meat before cooking it. One factor that you might want to take into consideration is where the pig was raised. When we’re raising our own meat, we know that the animals are raised in a healthy environment which can affect the quality of the meat.