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Getting to try our home raised duroc pork.


Had some side pork this morning after chores.


Going to cook some chops for supper.




Good color. Good marbling.


Flavor is out of this world. No comparison at all.


Currently taking orders.....

Lo9ks go9d, Jam. Thinks

I just bought a half of pig that my buddy raises, no comparison to that store bought crap. Yours looks great Big Jim.

Dang bruh,

Wish I lived nearby, I'd get me some of that.

Those chops look really good !
Salt, pepper and some garlic powder and throw them on the BBQ !

Do y'all scald and butcher them in house?

We just took 3 more in to get butchered.


That will make 6 we have killed.


Got 5 good ones left. 4 we might just sausage and 4 weaners.

We messed up and didn't get the side pork sliced....but luckily I have a bacon knife.

Nice

No. We hire it done.

No one knows what happened to grandpas scalding pot.

Nearly everything up here is skinned.


I want to try scalding and doing some whole hog cooks. I am curious how the red pigs look scraped and cooked.

I suppose the skin is just darker on the cooked pig? Would that turn someone off?

I was wondering the same thing, I've never raised hogs or scalded anything other than my nuts in the shower.


That pork is beautiful.

Looks good

Can’t wait to try it!

looks to me like you have a decent butcher there.

Home raise meat taste better than store brought meat.

I grew up doing ALL THAT !! I don't miss it one bit. After butchering, any animal, game, I just cannot eat any for a week ot two !!

Looks good Big James.

If you have any colonies close by, you can get any weight you desire scalded and ready for the smoker for a little cash and a handle or 2 of Jim Beam. At least in SD anyways. My group of friends does a 120lb whole hog every year. Plus, you can get their buns which are baked with duck fat.

Fresh pork on a charcoal grill is awesome. Including sausage.

Our colony prefers Busch Light!

We've had a small herd of KuneKunes for a couple years...butchered three last spring ourselves. Tremendous flavor but the various parts are a bit small and buried in fat. We should probably transition to real pigs like that duroc or IPPs. Those duroc chops are probably quadruple the section area of ours.

Kune's yield a lot of lard, and we use that for EVERYTHING.

The pigs are a personable lot, and they get along well with our herd of chickens: they share a shed. I presume there are less-civil pigs afoot but we've not had them. Will adapt when needed; for now our elevated nest cubbies are working fine.

The pigs are useful this time of year for rototilling parts of the yard. We walk them daily into a portable electric fenced pen and they tear it up. They're easily the most entertaining livestock I've been around, but that's not saying alot.

Got a smoke stack, table, and lifting rail to go yet but our new scalding tank will be done shortly. Got a 350 pounder to put in it in a couple or three weeks. Skinning wastes too much fat.

Wife’s uncle scalds theirs

When your pork steak looks like a beef rib eye, yum.

Which colony, Bon Homme?

Moses was right.

Spring time was buying wiener pigs through the county extension agent litter secretary.
In Snohomish WA in the 1990s I did a hampshire / duroc cross and finished on more wheat than corn. This made the fat layer thin, and hard to skin.
The slaughter guy would show up and shoot the pigs in the head with a 22 and take them to the butcher.

My grandfather in Bristol VA in the 1920s through 1950s would get a guy with 22 to show up and shoot them.

Back before we had kids, the wife would soak a 5 gallon bucket of feed wheat to feed the pigs.


The fat was white...I don't remember how much there was.


We always considered wheat and oats to be a grower, barley and corn to be a fattener.


Dad didn't like the flavor on wheat fed.



We have a grinder now and grind our own barley and a store bought vitamin and mineral pack together.


We don't use any of the additives outfits like Tyson use to produce lean, non marbled pork really fast.

Which colony, Bon Homme?[/quote]

Probably Heartland. I can see the smoke from here.

We buy show hog’s that don’t make it to shows, they are fed out and taken good care of just like rest, our local butcher is in with 4-H kids, and buy’s them, butchering to a cut sheet per your request, not that expensive either, we get two 200 hundred pounder’s a year.

Jim, trust me on this, taking them to the locker is the better option. I’ve been in on the scalding and processing of truck loads of hogs. It ain’t all that much fun!

Durocs are the hardest breed to scald and scrape well. The red hair seems to root deeper or something.


Raise the pigs on dirt?

Yum! Are you going to do them over charcoal?

We bought a whole hog from a local commercial outfit that was selling them cheap a few years back. NASTY NASTY stuff. What we didn't give to our kids we threw out and I think they threw out the stuff we gave them too.

Home raised is 100 times better.

Yep. Dirt.


Our old bachelor friend won't buy one unless it's on dirt.

We have a west wind today so I could cook them outside.

Jim;
Happy Easter to you and the rest of your fine family sir.

As a lifelong eater of pork and most of a lifetime cook of same, perhaps not qualifying yet as a connoisseur, but certainly a bit of a pork snob, Oh My!!!

I can only imagine the flavor of that, seeing the colors.

Oh my, Jim, just Oh My.....

Happy Easter and Bon Appetit as they'd say way out east.

Dwayne

Down home good. Glad I got to witness an ol' timey hog killin'. All except the killin', 4 or 5 years old. Overheard hog killin' tales all the time. It was a big deal to country folk. Hog killin' weather references all the time.

Kick azz looking chop.

How many can ya stuff in a flat rate box🤔

Good marbling on those chops, Jim. Gonna beat the Hell out of anything you can buy in the store!

Those look fantastic.

All the focus on fast growth and low fat ruined commercial pork a long while ago.

Now that’s what pork is supposed to look like.

How old when you slaughter? Weight?

(drool)

This one got away from me....it weighed 360.

Been a while since I had pigs and had trouble estimating the weight.


It was 9 months old. Older than it was supposed to be...but we weren't feeding them right early on.


We were packing them feed and apparently not enough. They grew really slow.


We then set up an old self feeder and they really took off.

Still slower than commercial pork, I think because of the feed and breeding.


The other pigs were 7 months old and 322.

Those are beautiful chops, similar to the mangalitsa pigs I’ve had.

Ever salt jowls or side meat?

Way back, our neighbor farrowed his sows out of little A frames set in an alfalfa patch. Those hogs were raised on dirt eating home grown grain. I always liked going over there for part time work because we usually had big thick Iowa chops for dinner.
They looked a lot like yours Jim. Looks great!

They must still farrow on pasture, they make, and sell Porta huts near us

About what?

The hogs kids raised for 4H JML were slaughtered commercially. The ones we kept for our own selves were skinned. My son wanted his first pig hide tanned, so we did. I still have the hide. Dunno what to do with it? 🤷‍♂️

ETA: Tanned hog is/was a duroc.

I make bacon...that's about it.

Am going to cure a ham with this pork.

They say a good rootabaga goes well with pork

How thick do you guys like your everyday eating chops?


I got these cut at an inch.


Wonder if I should have had some cut a 3/4 and some at 1 1/4 instead of all one inch.


Inch might be too girthy for breakfast.

I like thin chops to fry up or shake n bake. Bigger ones are good in the crockpot.

1" suits me for about everything.

I'm not real fond of thin ones, if I want thin I'll go for cutlets instead.

What is hog-tied?

Well, you drive two stobs in the ground farther apart than the hog is long. Tie a rope around a back leg and another to the opposite front leg. Pull tight 'til the hog is on the ground. Those ropes are wound around the stobs to hold fast. A man sits on the back and holds the head still. Two knives are used. One cuts a slit in the neck skin and the other goes in and severs the carotid artery. The heart is beating fast and the pig bleeds out pretty fast. The knife technique is two handed. Takes some two seconds and the blood is gushing.

Leastwise that's how Pawpaw did it. Made his knives from a sawmill blade.

3/4

I like them about 1 1/4" same as my ribeyes. If frying in the house, maybe thinner.
Thick ones for grilling outdoors.

If frying in the house I add about 30-40% sugar to the breading. Might sound weird, but give it a try. Caramelizes up great.
First time I did it, was by mistake. I dumped sugar into the flour container when topping it off. Wife tasted hers and asked what I did differently.
Best pork chops I ever made by mistake. Now I do it on purpose!

Jim, I'm with Cecil on the thickness. 1 1/4" for outside grilling is great, that or 1" is fine as well.


Let me know if you're ever headed this direction.

I got a half for you to be butchered.


Will need cutting instructions.

Sweet!

Does the butcher make any grilling brats? That and breakfast meat and the chops would make me happy!
(ammo will be available for trade on any extra butcher charges...)




I'm a simpleton when it comes to butcher directions, just ask the man that does our beef to keep it to steaks and burger. We don't cook many roasts.

All that stake drivin' and rope tyin'......

Quicker to bust a regular velocity 22LR from a pistol between the eyes an inch high perpendicular to the skull. This stuns the hog but doesn't stop the heart. They drop to the ground, flop on their side, and run 100 miles per hour and not go anywhere. Somebody grabs the ears from behind and pulls the head back. One knife, stick the carotid artery, turn knife 90 degrees, and slash on the way out. All you need to do is hit one and it'll bleed out like a fire hose. Let go, back up, and wait for the thrashing to stop.

Looks great


I usually get 1" chops, 3/4" butt steaks, and 3/4"-1" ham steaks

1" or thicker suits me fine, but I'll mostly grill chops.

Thinner cut and stove top prep I prefer a pork steak. YMMV.