Em Nau Farm BLOG

There are photos of animals being butchered below so if you are squeamish or offended by animal carcasses please refrain from viewing them.

May Begins

With the beginning of May we had a couple of big things happen at Em Nau.  Firstly we had the home butcher come in and dispatch the two resident pigs on 01 May.  The butcher was due to arrive at about 0630 so by then I needed to have the fire lit and the water in the bath heated for the sow (more on why later).  We also enlisted the help of our neighbours to assist in carrying both the boar and the sow from the pig enclosure to the point of dressing.  The neighbours arrived at about 0625 with the butcher not far behind at 0630.  The butcher set up his tripod, checked the bath water for temperature, and then as a troop we went down to inspect the pigs.

After a quick discussion we decided to walk the boar up to the tripod before killing it.  This was to save us pulling/dragging/carrying an expected 100kg deadweight uphill about 50m.  The boar followed the food bucket up the hill and whilst it had its head down eating it was dispatched with a 22 shot to the head.  It was then bleed and carried over to the tripod to be hung ready for butchering.

The butcher started at the backend and skinned the boar finishing with cleaning out its insides.  The dressed weight of the boar was 75kg. There are some photos below so if you are squeamish please refrain from viewing them

We then went down and walked the sow up to the tripod area and, once again, whilst she was feeding was dispatched and bleed.  The sow was then placed in the bath of hot water so we could remove the hair.  This was done so we could use the sow for bacon and ham, thus we needed her to have her skin left on.  After a few minutes the hair started to rub off and we went through the task of scrapping most of it off in the bath/over the side of the bath.  Once most of the hair was removed the butcher used a gas torch to singe the remaining long hair off before finishing the carcass with a close shave.  The sow then had her head, feet and her insides removed and she was hung next to the boar in the portable cool room.  The dressed weight of the sow was 60kg.

The total time from arriving to clean-up and leaving for the butcher was about 2 hours.  The butcher was then to come back on Sunday 04 May to cut the meat into the various cuts and take away half the sow for bacon and ham production.

On the Sunday, as for the kill day, the butcher arrived at about 0630 and proceeded to cut up the meat into manageable portions.  He cut whilst heather packaged and after an hour and a half was on his way to enjoy the rest of his Sunday, leaving us with about a hundred kilo of pork to refrigerate (the other 30 odd kilo went with the butcher for bacon and ham).  The rest of Sunday for us entailed packing some of the meat, such as roasts, chops, ribs etc into the freezer, mincing some of the meat so we could make sausages then making strings and strings and even more strings of sausages, and deboning and cubing meat for casseroles, stews etc and finally cleaning up the mess we had made.  If the police had raid us at this point it would have looked like a war zone with all the bits of mince laying on the floor, bench and in the sinks.

The other big piece of excitement that happened over the weekend was a little ram lamb being born on 03 May.  We awoke on Saturday morning to find the newest member of the family happily suckling on his mum.  We are not going to name the little ram as he is destined for the freezer in about 6 months

*dressed weight is the deadweight of the pig without head, feet and insides.  In the case of the boar it was without skin and with the sow, due to the fact we were using her for bacon and ham, it was with her skin intact.

There are some photos below so if you are squeamish please refrain from viewing them