Building a Homestead in 100 Days - Day 58

What do you have to do to set up for butchering?

Build a gambrel for me to use and then get your gambrel set up under the other— Okay.

All right. Yesterday's nightmare was not being ready on time. Today's would be not finishing on time. Yesterday we harvested a steer and 2 hogs. Today we need to take them to the butcher, but we need to add 5 sheep to them. The butcher is like a little over an hour away, so we try to knock out as many birds with one stone as we can. The goal is to be butchering no later than 8, and this is going to be a bit of a tricky situation because, well, we got to catch the little lambs. Hey, I didn't think you were making a wooden one. Do you think a wooden one will hold?

Yeah, remember the first sheep you ever butchered? Yeah, that was wood.

Okay. Hey, he's making a homemade gambrel.

Is it not?

Well, well, sure.

I just think the welding—

you can try it—

would be all over the meat. I don't like that. I would have to sand it and, uh, I don't have time to make a metal one. Okay, we just take too much time.

He's gonna make another gambrel so we can have two. We need two little ones. The big one that we have for the pigs and the cows yesterday is going to be too big, I think. Or can it be used?

Too big.

You ready to milk? Alfalfa, check. Pans, pans, check. Two of them are out there. Down below, check. Brush. Ooh, good one. Found the brush. Josiah, what's your duty now? Okay, then you come help us. All right. I have no idea where Mr. Brown is. He's suspect of the kill yesterday. Can't say he's not stressed out about it. Definitely don't want to get pulled the cows away. I'm jumping. Be careful. Definitely want to put my back to him. Uh, you definitely don't want to pull the cows away and separate them because he's just picking up on this blood, because, uh, stresses them out even more. Maybe he's stressed after. These guys could care less. These ones, they were— they came and got his alfalfa that we lured him over with. On the other hand, Joey looked like some of the best beef I've ever seen in my life. It's that Jersey American Milking Devon mix. It's phenomenal. I'm not so sure about you. We're doing good on time. They even get started before 8, but we gotta move the water.

Usually this is done in the afternoon.

I think Josiah was having too much fun with his buddies. You know what they say, one boy, one brain. Two boys, half a brain. Three boys, no brain. We're about ready to start, and Jonah tells me the hide has been ripped down. I hanged the hide yesterday to let it dry out. We had to wash it off. I hate this because I had already kind of cleaned it. I'm thinking we're gonna have to get that to this afternoon. You got your gambrel?

Yeah.

All right, you think that'll work? Yeah, I'll show you the little paracord trick that Ben Holler taught you. Okay, you got these little hooks screwed in. Did you test the pulley to see if it worked? Okay, and then we've got our small metal one. Okay, we're gonna try this two at a time. I think there's too many bottlenecks when there's two people and you're working on one lamb. Jonah seems to think that we'll be able to catch them without the pig panels. So there's Buddy, there's Hope. That's Hope right there with the missing fur on her nose. 1, 2, 3, 4.

I could even butcher the one that's in, uh, what's his name, Luchador Ram. Yeah, because he has the two little ones now.

Okay, then we have five. It's gonna be kind of hard to kill Buddy because this is hard, Buddy. This might be the hardest one. Definitely more special when you use a knife because you definitely more intimate, definitely feel the responsibility, which I think is important. The gun, you have a bit of a disconnect. We use the knife on the sheep because one, they have really far hard foreheads, and they're— they don't really keep it still. Kill lamb how nature would kill it. And that's—

I still like—

oh, you're not gonna kill? You're not gonna do the kill? No. Okay, but it's best to get them off their feet.

I'll just come help you. Take your flight.

Well, then come help.

I sharpened them last night.

Okay, that's good. It's good and sharp.

Strong, isn't he? Yeah, he's very strong. Gosh, that's gonna be a lot of meat, Papa.

Come on, come on, hold him down.

Did you get him?

Yep. That was the hardest one for me yet, emotionally. But as a meat eater, I'm gonna eat meat. I gotta do the deed. I gotta feel the weight. I gotta feel the sadness.

I feel like there's a different connection with sheep.

Yeah, you feel it?

Kind of.

Sheep, one reason they're ultimate homestead animal. You can handle them. Well, you get attached to them. It's a nice relationship. And then the meat is delicious. Oh, you like to start with it on the ground? Yeah. Ellie just said she doesn't know why, but she's sad when the sheep go, not a cow. That's interesting. Now, when I go to harvest Flossie— oh yeah, that's definitely gonna be sad. You'll be sad when Flossie goes.

Maybe it's because I take care of the sheep. Yeah, maybe it's because sheep are less annoying than cows.

Hmm, that's probably because you took care of them.

Yeah, me and my friends petted him when he was little.

I'm remembering now. We'll do better on the next one. I was supposed to only zip it to about right there. That keep— I mean, it doesn't matter, but it just keeps the carcass a little more clean. Then we got to loosen this up enough to where we can pull this off. Just pull the skin down. There we go. We just got to get it down to where we can hook into that. There you go.

lamb.

You could do like this. I guess we could keep this here. You kind of cut at the skin, okay, just right there where it connects to to the meat. Okay, thanks.

What a pretty high, thick, too— I'll probably say pretty big hut. Yay, we finished!

Fish. Wow, it just comes right out. Hacked into the leg there. Hacked into the leg here. Here's Winnie. Hey Winnie, you want some snacks? How about an esophagus? Here, give me that, Lily.

Let me cut her a liver.

Here's a kidney.

Kind of hard, isn't it?

Now we should take these Shoot, is it really 9:42? Uh-huh. Okay, so we need to get breakfast. I need to look at my notes. There's 5, so do you want to do one while I'm doing that? Yeah, y'all have to kill it for me, you know, because this is going to be some dead space with me having to do all that. Go ahead and wash Buddy's hide while it's still wet and you can get the blood off. Yeah, it's coming off nice. We do have a nice size one right there. Nacho's buddy, but you got other buddies now.

Oh wow, he's fast.

Yes. Did you get Buddy washed off nice, both sides? Joe's gonna do this odd sheep alone. I'm gonna go review my notes. Got me some breakfast and I need to look up some notes, notes which are in Abundance Plus, a master class on how to do this too. I really should have reviewed that last night, but anyway, got the notes. Really should have took these with me for the first one. It's not that big of a deal, you end up getting it skinned until I did cut off some chunk of that leg. This isn't for sale, so it doesn't really have to be beautiful. So taking the pressure off of me and yourself. This is Homestead Butchery. Uh, we are a jack of all trades specializing in none, or we wouldn't get it done. I think we're doing okay on time, depends on how Jonah's doing here. The goal was to finish by lunch, noonish, so that we could have lunch and get over to this butcher at a reasonable time so that we can get back for dinner. Zip it. Yeah, here down the middle. Okay, all the way to the neck. Do your hands in here. Don't get the middle.

I'm not gonna do my hands. I'm just gonna do it in any way.

Well, you can do right there and then reach your hands all the way in.

I don't like it.

Sometimes you need that— I hate to say ignorant, that's a bad word for it, but that's what I mean— that ignorant confidence. Who cares? And I'm just gonna do this and just get it done because Yours turned out better than mine did. I gotta get some of this ignorant confidence sometimes. It could be the difference in our personalities. I'm definitely a step-by-step, follow a recipe kind of guy, so I really want to learn this recipe. I do have the keel down, and that's definitely where you don't want to mess up.

This is Hope. See, she has a clump of— okay, she has a clump of missing— Need help? Definitely a little harder than the last one. I don't know why.

Oh, really? Yeah, places I went wrong last time. We're gonna go ahead and get the, the hook ends going, and then from there on the inside we zip it. Yeah buddy, already going a lot smoother. All the way down to the hoofs. We keep the hoofs on so we have something to hold on to. I circumcise the skin. Look, you leave the hoof on.

Oh, I wish I'd done that.

You circumcise that. We can get our fist in there.

What smells so bad?

We cut out the vent without piercing it. Zip tie. Now we zip down the middle. Now we start skinning the belly.

Let's go!

We're gonna get this down to the foot. Loosened up the back. Ready? We should be able to pull this. Oh wow, yeah, it's a lot easier. Wow, that was so much easier. Yay!

Oh, look at its size! That first— that— guess what? He grabbed it.

You're gonna wash this one, Ellie, and keep it?

Yeah, we're gonna keep it.

Okay, hopefully I'm an example of just taking the time out, giving a review, getting a little bit of instruction. Even the best of us need reminding and learning sometimes. I'm pretty sure I'm just gonna carry it like this on this damn braille. It'll balance. Yep, yep. And then I'll come back to the other one. All right, that works.

Shoot, that's not what I wanted. Will they wash it?

It's fine. I think I might be just about as excited as these pigs are about to be. Putting down wood chips, giving you a clean plate. I wouldn't have went that way, but yeah, they're spoiled. They've been eating grain all day. That's no fun. They'll get it though, won't they? Oh my word, call the Inquirer. Haven't seen that ball of fire in a week. I think I've been depressed, so I'm very happy to see that. I think we'll take lunch outside. Why do you get out if you just want back in? It's warm in there. New mama pig loves this stuff. Pigs are excellent, excellent partners on the farm. Getting rid of that butchering waste, turn it into delicious pork. Insane. All right, we got to open up this other side. Crush the lunch and just confirmed with a butcher we can bring them. Henry, we gotta go hook up the trailer. Wanna go? The Suburban has been an amazing little farm vehicle because, uh, well, it's a truck and like right today it's gonna be a box truck. We have an assortment of trailers. Another day it could be a long bed truck. Another day it could be a cattle truck and we could take the whole family with us. Super cool. I don't know how this is gonna work.

This might fall. Okay, now we're good.

So 5 sheep are a lot less heavy than 1 pig. Look at this! You might be a homesteader if you call a date going to the processor by yourselves. We got a day date.

I know, it's exciting.

And we get to meet Maria at Vandoff Farms. This is usually Brew-Beth's duty. Brew-Beth is a combo between Bruce and Beth, Rebecca's parents.

Yep.

Um, this is their duty. This is their duty, but they're, uh, they're gone. They're, they're in Florida. Hey, nice to finally meet you.

Where do I go? You're gonna go straight ahead.

Okay.

And there's a loading dock.

Here's Belle. Belle, you smell that beef in there? You know what's up. It's a beautiful farm over here.

Doing fabulous.

Yeah, good to finally meet you.

It's about time.

Neat. How cold is it? 34?

32, 34.

Okay, nice.

So what he's doing right now, this is inspected beef, so he's gonna hang yours away from the inspected beef. Yeah, okay. Cool.

Look at this old school weighing machine. 75 lbs. That will be a—

oh, I'm going to say 100 lbs. 105.

That's 85, right? 85. I was closer. I was going to ask you how you kept everything separate, but there you go. That way I don't get somebody else's meat.

Each quarter gets a tag when it comes in.

Nice.

Just like if it's an inspected meat. Yeah, each one that comes in gets tagged as it comes in.

Hey, we got a bigger one here, Beck. I'm gonna say a 90. Probably close to 105.

105. Who was closest?

She got 101. Good job. See how much Buddy weighs.

At least 55 pounds.

Then he's, uh, 40 pounds in our freezer, give or take. There you go.

He has a lot of nice fat.

That's a month of eating for us. The pigs were perfect, weren't they? 125 each.

Perfect size.

So 250 hanging weight.

That's a perfect hanging weight.

Yeah, so that'd be 200 pounds in the freezer-ish.

That is perfect.

Everything is so nice here. So when we sold those 10 pork and they came— customers came pick it up, they came right here? They came here. Okay, good. You took good care of them. Everybody was very impressed.

I like this little thing.

We got no complaints. She's shopping.

Oh, darn it, I can't buy it.

It's gonna stay separate. That's for your shop.

That's for the store.

Okay, here we go. Here's where the action happens.

Grinding, sausage making. Okay, okay, this is the meat cutter.

It's where the action happens. This is where the action happens.

So see that door? Remember the door you came in?

That's the cooler. What? It's a vacuum sealer, Rebecca.

Could do a lot of green beans in that.

This is the final round right here.

Freezer. Then this is where all the stuff is.

Nice.

Everything goes. This is where you're always breaking ice.

Marie, beautiful farm. Aw, thank you for showing us around. It was good to meet you. We've probably come here half a dozen times, not met you.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, Beck, we saw it through.

We did. We watched Joey be born. Not all the lambs or the pigs, but we took care of them from birth.

One of the pigs was bred, born, harvested there, and we took them ourselves to the butcher. Both pigs.

Both pigs. So the pigs, the lamb, and Joey were all bred, born, died on our property.

Proud of that.

Yeah, that's really—

it's—

I feel like it's an accomplishment.

It's a good feeling.

And then like they're taking it out of the barrels and hanging them up, and I'm looking at him and I'm going like, that's something to be proud of. Like I know that animal's story, like I know everything about it.

We heard that. So it's a good feeling, you know, going away with an empty trailer. Now it's in some professionals' hands, and next time we see it, it'll be in frozen packets like we're used to seeing. Like, we're used to working—

I have to say, the week we went on that tour, yeah, I was like, oh, I'm glad that we're having them do it. Oh, because I'm very tired.

If we were to break down all that ourselves, we'd be busy for the next 2 weeks, and there would be no clearing and no easily keeping up with the farm and no new projects. And so, like Brandon Sheard would say, say, well, we've picked our battles and we haven't picked to break down the breaking down battle. Don't like it. Some people like it, so power to you, do it all day long. We like expanding the homestead, clearing the homestead.

Well, I mean, I think it's important to know how to do it.

Oh yeah, we know how to do it, but I don't want to—

I mean, we've done it enough that we know how to do it, and should they not be available or any other butcher not be available, we could do the whole process.

No process.

I'm glad that They're down.

I'm glad to support the community. All right.