Yesterday was meat cutting day at Mooshum and Kookum's. We covered and hung the pig on Sunday morning and it has been in the rafters of their walk-out for four days. Normally Mooshum hangs the meat in the tractor shed, but our temperatures have been anywhere from -12 to +12 and it could have frozen solid. The temperature in the walk-out, however, hovers around +3 (the perfect temperature), so that's where it hung and that's where we worked today.
Tim, the local butcher arrived late morning and set to work turning a beautiful creature in to beautiful food, all the while leading the blind (speaking for myself) in a lesson on meat cutting. At one point, Tim handed me his metal glove and knife and allowed me some hands-on experience. With my eyeballs so close to his work, I'm sure it was a relief for him to have me working rather than spectating - don't ever fool yourself, a butcher's knife is sharper than a razor. And as you can see, he's a hand-talker so it was also a bit of a relief for me to have the knife!
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| Tim, in teaching mode (ha! it looks like he's being watered!). |
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| Talking about where the loin ends and the ham begins. |
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| At the meat saw, with uncovered side right foreground. |
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| Beautiful meat, ready to be cut into chops. |
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| All in a morning's work - blade, centre, loin chops and a nicely fatted roast, ready for the oven. |
Because there has been so much interest in the pork, Mooshum and Kookum are considering having a couple more pigs next year. The meat is delicious - fed on a wee bit of hog ration and the fat of the land.
It's an amazing learning experience to watch from start to finish, and a long cry from the foam backed slabs shilled at the supermarket - healthier for our bodies and a life and death free from stress and pain.
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