Porky the Pig – Raising Our First Hog for Slaughter

I was looking around some of my files and found this brief write-up about my first encounter with the slaughtering of a hog.  Both my father and husband are deer hunters so I have seen animals cut open and “processed.”  Tommy and I have also processed our chickens if they were roosters or when they no longer laid eggs.  But the experience of raising an animal with the sole intention of killing it for the meat I would never eat (vegetarian for almost twenty years) somehow didn’t settle well with me.

Our pig “Porky” was very friendly and pet-like.  He was our first but not our only.  Having one animal of its kind, with a name no-less, really does create the feeling that the animal is more than just dinner.  My views have changed, a little, over the few years since I wrote this.  We raised pigs again.  The next time around we had a litter of six.  Having a “herd” lessened the feeling of pet-ness and increased the sense of food production.

I hope you enjoy this article titled “Porky.”

The phone rings early this morning.  “Is this Tommy?” says the voice on the end.

“This is Tommy’s wife,” I reply.

“Well, this is Bobby Bristol and Tommy called about butchering a hog.”

The two of us spoke for a few minutes and after a couple of phone calls to my husband, Mr. Bristol was scheduled to come out to our farm later that day to perform a task neither one of us were interested in undertaking.

Bobby arrived an hour later than expected.  Pausing momentarily, his truck idled at the end of the drive.  I step out onto the porch with the baby on my hip and waved in his direction motioning him toward our house.  His rusty, two tone, red and blue truck gently bounced and swayed as it rolled up the driveway.  An older gentleman steps out from behind the wheel.

“Am I at the right place?” he asks looking around at our modest homestead.  His hand extended toward mine as I said, “You must be Bobby Bristol.”  Looking downward as his hand reached out for mine, I had hoped I had been mistaken but undoubtedly so; his hands were covered in blood.  I silently gulped and shook his hand just as if it were any other.

The hog was around back, I told him that he could drive his truck down, I would meet him there.  It had been a cold January but today was unusually warm.  I bundled up our one year old daughter, Bella, and buckled her in the baby backpack.  I then threw on my muck boots and headed down to the pig pen with baby in tow and cat following behind me.  Billy had already parked and was out of his truck inspecting the hog. “What’s he weigh 250, 300 pounds?”

Looking around he notes there’s no good limbs to hang him from he’ll have to use his “poles.”  He glanced back toward the pickup and I saw three long metal poles sticking out of the back of his truck.  Moments later, Mr. Bristol is fumbling though the front cab and pulls out a gun.  Rummaging some more, he finds some shells.  After loading the rifle he raises it toward his eye to sight in the pig standing only six feet away.   He made comment, “I’m not very good at this part; I hope I get him on the first shot.”  And before I could even fully turn my head, “POW”; the beloved animal, Porky, was down.  No remarks were made to the great mother earth, to God, or the universe.  As far as I could tell there was nothing spiritual about the process.  Just another pig; pork chops, sausage, and bacon waiting to happen.

I could not look directly at the scene; I could only hear the wailing of his body on the thick and softening ground.  The large pink creature was then slit at the throat and I listened to the gush of viscous liquid spill onto thawing earth.

Sayings that I had always heard came to life.  “Bled like a stuck pig” had never been truer.  The pig’s movement began to cease and the poor boar lay with eyes open and jugular exposed.

Bobby pulled a long chain from the truck bed, hooking one end around the pig’s back legs and the other end to the hitch on the truck.  The pig was pulled a short ways to a small clearing to be field dressed, but first the poles must be erected.

Three long poles connected at one end were yanked from the truck to the ground.  “I might need your help with this,” he said.

I wasn’t planning on “helping,” that’s why we hired you, I jokingly thought to myself.  Bella, resting comfortably in her pack, was placed on the ground away from the action.  Billy gestures for me to come over to the work area.

“Just get on this end of the pole.  And what you’re going to do is lift and grunt and lift and grunt until we get ‘em up a little.”  Thankfully, I was dressed for the occasion in old Carhart pants and vest.  I proceed to wrap my arms around the greasy pole to hoist it upright.  Once the poles were partially up the contraption was able to stand independently as each leg was adjusted.  Bella watched with curiosity from a distance.

Porky was then slit above the rear hooves and a metal triangle was inserted connecting the two hooves to a chain that would suspend the hog while it could be skinned.  The skin was taken off slowly but efficiently; little by little, from bottom to top all in one piece.  Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, the sound of the steel blade brushing against a stone; Billy continually sharpened his knife throughout the process.  With razor sharp knife he then cut open the stomach.  The internal organs: intestines, stomach and bladder, flopped out.  Bobby pulled on the liver and sliced it from the mess.  “You eat the liver?” He asked with an agenda.

“No sir,” I replied. I didn’t have the heart to tell him I was a vegetarian.

“Well if you don’t eat the liver, then Martin down at the shop would like to have it.  He’s always asking me to get him a pig liver, ya know.  He don’t eat cow liver, just pig liver.”  He set the edible organ aside and kept working.   He threw the heart on the ground along with several other unidentifiable entrails.  Moving his way down, the front two hooves were cut off and cast aside.  One rolled under a bush.  The cat chased it enthusiastically.

As Bobby prepared the meat for the butcher he told stories of our small town long ago.  His father had a meat market beneath the old hotel in the 1930s.  A bowl of beans with corn bread could be purchased for a quarter.  He ate there several times a week.  The hotel had closed sometime ago; it became a bank and is now a real estate office.  We talked as he continued working on the pig.  I almost forgot what he was even doing…almost.

We raised one pig this year, just to try it out.  I can’t say that I would do it again or at least anytime soon.  Despite my discomfort, I enjoyed meeting Bobby and witnessing the task at hand.   For now, we’ll stick to growing vegetables.

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Category: Animals, Food, Simple Thoughts, TreeStone Farm