The time finally came for me to bite the bullet, and recognise that the pigs have reached a certain size. Actually, their appetite began to suggest that the time had come - they have always eaten well of course, but had recently become insatiable. Buckets of food were just disappearing, and the insistent grunting would soon recommence.
So I assembled a team. Or rather it assembled itself, as such teams do - a pig killing is not everyone's cup of tea. Folk began to arrive on Thursday morning, some obviously unafraid to get their hands dirty, others less so...
Tempting one animal away from the other turned out to be tricky. We took a section of the electric fence down, and despite their not having eaten for 24 hours, neither was keen to cross the line. After 20 minutes or so of rattling the food bucket, one of them began to make slow progress out of the pen and down the path. I dropped a pig nut every foot or two, slowly, slowly down the hill towards the waiting hoist, hanging ominously in the barn like an executioner's gallows. But we never made it that far. Clearly she was anxious being off her turf (or rather lack of it), and kept turning back. And there is no pushing them around; with pigs it's all carrot and no stick. So after playing this game a while I decided to get the job done. Close your eyes at this point if you are sensitive to these things.
Actually all went pretty smoothly. Having made an imaginary cross between eyes and ears I held the rifle just off that spot, held my breath and pulled the trigger. The gun went click - the safety catch was on. Having released it and taken aim once again I slowly exhaled and squeezed again. The pig was down, suddenly on her side a great hulk of an animal. A second bullet to the same spot made sure the job was done. A few moments later I stuck her (that is, pushed a sharp 10'' knife blade from throat to heart) to get the blood flowing. Some we collected there, and the rest once we'd dragged the body down to the barn and hoisted it up by a back leg. A mistake was not to stir the blood sufficiently after putting the salt in, so that some turned to jelly. We still had enough, however, for Hannah to make several pounds of beautiful boudin.
The next job was scalding to loosen the hair. A wheely bin had been filled with (scalding) hot water, and the pig was lowered into it - all most undignified for the poor beast. After 5 minutes or so of holding down those hams that were otherwise not quite submerged we hoisted it out and began scraping away. It was a semi-success, and we went for a second scalding. This stage of the process is hard work and not simple - we'll get it better next time, but the trick seems to be to get the water really scalding (70ºc) and scrape like mad when the pig comes out.
Gutting was next, with the pig still head down from the hoist. The insides surely took after their name - offal, or off-fall.
Then the better (in my opinion) bits of the offal (heart, liver, lungs, kidneys) were put in brine before being frozen. Except, that is, for enough liver to be fried up fresh for a well earned slaughterers' supper.
Apart from a fairly lengthy clean-up (where's Winston "The Wolf" Wolfe when you need him?) that, in short, was day 1. Day 2, butchery day, will have to wait for the next posting, as we had to wait overnight for the carcass to cool...
