A Butcher, 50 years ago and now

I know, by now, you have all fallen off the edge of your seats wondering how we got on with our butchering and meat processing plans and I apologise for the delay in this post.

I have 2 excuses for this, most recently, a week of long days and limited internet access in Turku, and, 200Kg of Pork.......

So now, I finally have both time and an internet connection at the same time. All this in a hotel room in Krakow, Poland.

Unfortunately we do not have a accurate measurment of the total carcass weights, the educated eye of the slaughter man put the male pig around 120Kg and the female around 90Kg. All in All, I think it is fair too say, perhaps a little too large.

As mentioned in my previous post, my Father-in-law was the master butcher with myself acting as butchers boy. A remarkable feat and a tribute to the fitness of a man who is a shade under 80 and butchered his last pig over 50 years ago, when he was younger than I am now.
His rustiness showed only briefly. A slightly too tight circle around the first back leg, not quite locating the joints on the trotters first time.The second side was almost perfect and the second carcass went like clockwork. All this in my "lower garage", complete with its newly cleaned, painted and disinfected floor.

By around 4 p.m. on the Saturday we had our Carcasses dealt up as desired. Chops, Hams, 1 enormous back leg for Curing as Prosciuttio, pieces for Sausage meat, fillets, Norwegian "Ribbe", Spare Ribs, Belly Bacon, Back Bacon, trotters, 1 head, 2 ears and much, much more. If any of you out there would like our full detailed plan, please apply through the comments, we'll see what we can do.

All the meat that was not destined for further processing was kindly packed, weighed and labelled by my dear wife, my mother in law and my sister in Law. And very gratefull we are to them. This whole procedure took pretty much the whole day, other than putting a few hams in their respective cures and cooking our celebratory feast (see next post) the day vanished.

Hugh Fearnly Whittingstall describes it as a "Pig Weekend", you will see from the next few posts that, for us at least, this is more accurately a "pig week".