How We Get Ready (for a Pig Butchering)

I woke up this morning at 5:45. I got up and got ready. Don't mind the dehumidifier in here. Somebody left the sink on yesterday. We have a crack in our sink and you do the math. It overflowed down in here all out and it was coming all the way out to here. So now we have the dehumidifier going. I took a bath at 6:30. I got out about 7. It's still It's still dark outside. I'm on time to go farming and then it hit me. Of course, I didn't go to bed with my clothes on, but let's just mimic it here. Nor did I take the clock with me, but let's just roll with it. And I said to Rebecca, so tired, am I lazy? And she said, you're not lazy.

You're just recovering. And isn't there that saying too? It's, um, you're not lazy, you're smart. Cuz you're giving your body what it needs, which is sleep. You slept like 11 hours. So I would say that you probably needed that. I checked on you twice because I was like—

And I slept till—

Did you die? Cuz this—

Till 9:45. I feel like a college student. I haven't slept that long since I was in my 20s.

To repair, your body needs sleep, and so I think it's good. It doesn't bother me any.

I mean— That's an interesting Sleep is the greatest healer.

I would rather you sleep for a week like that and be better than to push yourself and take a month to get better.

Yeah. Good morning. Good morning. You miss me even if I sleep late.

I can't even sleep until 9. I can't even sleep until 8.

And you're the sleep-inner. You're our best one.

Sometimes I can sleep until 7:30.

Yeah.

That time I'm lucky.

What about you, Mr. Henry? Can you sleep in? No. Something or all of this stuff in this kitchen sink we're using on this reactive arthritis is working. I am starting to feel better. So how am I doing? Well, that's always been kind of a difficult question to answer because like it's kind of up and down. How do you describe pain to somebody else? Pain? Is a lonely thing. If I wanted you to look out there— oh, look how fun! Willie is in the— we can pull it right up to our place, and that, that could be a nice one. Just look at that, Becky. Look at that out there. Isn't that a nice sight? Yeah. And she can look and she can see it. We can share the experience. Not so with pain. Even if she's had— even if she's had reactive arthritis, it's different. Everybody has different pain tolerances. Everybody has different levels of Severity.

No, that's very interesting. I never thought about that because you've never had a baby.

I'll never know fully what that's like. I actually— I'll never know at all what that's like.

No, you won't.

Daddy, scale 1 to 10. 1 is me running the Barrel Wall of Beast, coming in 12th out of hundreds and feeling good at 24 years old, no pain. 10 is how I felt after— soon after Salatin left, and it went to all my knees. Straw tier. And stress, that's a 10. Probably the worst— well, the worst pain I've ever felt in my life. Normally I'm at a constant 3 with my Lyme disease, so really I've got to kind of do a measure in between here because I can actually walk on my feet now. I'll be slow, I can actually walk on them without excruciating pain. There's some there, and I certainly don't have flex in my ankles. I'm gonna give myself a 5-ish. Okay, so we're making progress, guys. We're making progress. Well, how come you draw Mom at the 10? Oh, she's stressed with me. I like that stress. Smile. That stress mouth. What's for breakfast, my guys? Or lunch, whatever this is.

Spaghetti.

Thanks for doing chores, my man. I didn't even tell them I couldn't go. Did you tell them I couldn't go? What'd they say? They're probably happy they don't have the inspector. No, because I've turned into an inspector, and that's no fun.

We like giving you breaks.

I'm not much help but to inspect. Nobody likes the inspector. So I'm gonna start carrying you, so then they won't be so upset if I come. I've got to listen to my feet starting to act up after that bit there a little bit. You gotta listen to the pain, gotta listen to the pain as soon as possible. Is that right, Henry? Inside I feel better, I feel this energy, I want to get going, and that's the curse. It's like I've been doing too little too long, but don't— been trying to be careful not to overdo it. We do have to get the pig stuff ready today. That, guys, okay, butchering tomorrow. What does that mean? We gotta find all the things and get it all lined up. So we'll show you what it takes to get ready for a pig butchering, all the supplies you need, which isn't that much. That's what's really cool. About a pig butchering, you get a lot of meat without really that many tools, unlike a chicken butchering if you have all the things. Mama is cooking up some epic amount of broth and some tomato sauce. We are gonna can broth for the very first time. Meg Holler coming tomorrow to help us with that. What the heck? What are you doing? Okay, the name of the game is getting ready for the pig butchering. But more importantly, keeping the kids together to help get ready for the pig butchering. When you guys are done with that computer, come help, okay? Trying to think in order of actions. First we shoot the pig. Actually, we don't. We act— I mean, come right here. So we'll do this first. We actually give the pig skin milk, but we're here, so let's, let's get this ready. Let's do a little target practice, make sure it's working. Find us a halfway rotten or ugly pumpkin, maybe one of these pumpkins without a stem. Yeah, do those. Those are like mixed breeds. They're not even white or yellow. This is the first obstacle, getting everybody's shoes on. The destination is all the pigs to pig supplies together. The journey is going around and getting that. Let's keep this moving, guys. I'm trying to get this done within an hour, trying to take breaks along the way not to overdo it. This I found to be the secret to peaceful butchering. Get it all ready before the day of. Okay, I think I have, uh, full metal jackets in here, but we need— but that's the ones we're going to use, but we have less of those than we have hollow points. So we're going to save these, and we're just gonna— we're just gonna do a round just to practice, make sure we're comfortable with the gun. This is nice. You ready for this? So how do you get your kids used to this stuff? Well, they've been around it all their life. That's one way. I realize a lot of you, your kids haven't— you haven't had the privilege of having your kids around it all their life. So just be normal about it. Act like this is the most normalest thing in the world, because 100 years ago it certainly was. And, uh, don't force them to be a part. Invite them to be a part and let them take— participate in as much and little as possible. But do insist on them coming around. Even if it's kids just swinging on a swing nearby and you're harvesting, they're going to be curious. They're going to come over and they're going to have fun, and they're going to associate this with something good. It might take some time. This has got to be the coolest gun ever. I guess it's a Savage.22 Magnum. If you could only have one gun on the homestead, it would be a.22 Magnum, not a long rifle,.22 Magnum, a little more powerful. So we're going to use a solid point in the kill on, on both the beef and the pork. I used to do a.410, but that's so— I can't get any slugs. I would use a.410 slug, but they're just not available right now. That's the gun you got me back for, for Father's Day. Yeah. Do you want to know how to keep a pig's Head still. Don't feed it. Boy, they, they moved that head around. Give it, give it something to drink. So let's just try to get the— well, it looks like whey, but they'll drink that. Hey, I failed to show you guys the chicks. We got chicks the other day and this is the latest we've ever got them. Funny, ain't nothing dying in this thing, not from rats anyway. So they're all, they're all here. What'd we get, 65? Few died. Right, like 60.

Yeah, there was some shipment death, and it's from McMurray Hatcher.

Thank you, McMurray Hatcher. Yeah, and, uh, this is the latest we've ever ran them. They will be out on the grass in the frost date. One time we did, but they'll be older. That was the one that—

the year that they all— 100 died in shipping.

Yeah, we lost 100 to rats this year, and then we lost half to cold weather early on in the spring.

It was the rain, not the cold weather.

I feel like you can get sea monsters and they go past your last frost date, which for us is October 10th. They'll have all their feathers. I think 2-3 weeks past—

oh, this is gonna be—

your frost date is okay.

We're gonna butcher.

That's pushing it. That is—

we did once with friends, they weren't our chickens.

That's pushing it. I don't think you want to do it any later than that. I would bet money She's gonna be fine with just the weight. Look how still she holds her head. Perfect. She loves it. She never knew it was coming. One bad day, they never— they never know it happens. We've got her head still. We've gotten the shot off. We need to— we need to slip the throat. All right, I'm gonna be smart about this. I'm gonna have to go a little out of order. Just so I'm not walking all over the farm. We're down here, let's go ahead and get our pallets out. Hey, we might not have to get any out. There's— look like there's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. All right, we'll just come get them in a minute on Willie. Those pallets serve as a table so we can scrape the pig. Hey, are those working?

No.

Homemade stilts, why don't they work?

Wow, they're too big and clumsy, and plus I don't want to fall.

That would hurt. You maybe don't have a Good grip. Yeah, if you had a good grip at your top, it'd probably work. Guys, come on, you guys get stuff for fire, okay?

Can I put my phone?

A lighter, paper. Do we have firewood over there? We do, stacked against the barn. All right, I need to have a sitting down break, check something on the internet. Word on the street, our vlog didn't post on Friday, so I'll rest. And see if— see what's up with that. Sure enough, it didn't post. All right, mucho scrapers. My, uh, Japanese knives recommended by Brandon, the Farmstead Meatsmith. This time, no Sawzall. We're gonna do the Zen of the Saw, as Brandon calls it. We're gonna use the handsaw. Where did I put that thing?

Aha!

By the way, you want all this stuff that we use for pig butchering? I've got a kit for it. I'll leave a link down in the description. You got that up? Next comes— there's something.

Is it strapped? Oh. This—

here it is, Josiah. Make sure your hands are out of the way.

Okay.

All right, let's get the pallet. 100-gallon scalder. We've got this Hurricane 5 scalding stand.

Steel.

We got our flame torch. Jonah, do we have a lighter for this? What's going on with this? Can you get us a lighter for it and trash? That's going to be our chain for hauling the pig up by the tractor. Let's put that gambrel on the tractor too, ready to go. We've got our hoist ready, our beam. Yeah, that's fine, that'll work. So what we're going to do is take the carcass over to the butcher, who also happens to be a pig breeder of Old Spots. So we're going to pick up a replacement. Uh, yeah, I don't like that big chain. Let's do the little chain instead.

I mean, I guess that could be poison ivy.

The boys are filling that up. We'll also need a metal bucket to be able to pull hot water out if we need to.

Can we swim in that?

I don't know.

Please, Papa.

I would maybe let you swim in it if it wasn't on the stand. Why don't you just swim in the creek? We've got all the tractor stuff. Need some fuel. That was shocking. Started on the first try. That's it, we got us a table. Let's go ahead and hose it off. We'll have a fire under there. That needs to get started first thing in the morning. Let's get us a wooden paddle. Use that as a stirring paddle. Sure, just distribute it.

Rinse it off.

Yeah. All right, we'll take that thermometer while we're down here. Okay, so we got a barrel. Look, it's going good, Becky! I see a barrel and I see a lid. I think we need two though.

I'm keeping it for wheels.

This is for transporting our carcass. We're gonna rinse this, rinse this out, let it sanitize in the sun. Where's the other one? We got the other one. We are back inside. I've got some chicken going. We're gonna add the veggies now. Look at that, those were two big birds, like 6, 7, Rebecca. And I wish we would have remembered before now, put the veggies in. What are you doing there? You're just making sure?

I'm trying to just get it kind of down here.

How is it, guys?

I ate one.

Faith likes it. We got potatoes from the land, onions, and chicken.

And she said we scored.

You're eating broth and a chicken bone. You're in heaven. Farmer Henry is in heaven.