nogsland

Well, we just had a record breaking weekend on the farm, not Guinness Records type records but certainly a record for us. This weekend was sadly the last for one of our two young boars. Capey, imaginatively named because his white stripe is not quite a stripe, rather a dapper looking cape, lives to fight another day. He has a beautiful temperament and is very tactile, Chris has decided he is going to try and teach him to sit…..Anyway, we have decided to keep him as Diggary’s replacement for when Diggary gets too old to do the job and to get him a young girl pig as a new best friend. Not so, Big Boy, who incidentally did not have that name until last Saturday afternoon....

All started out as a normal Saturday when we are going to kill a pig. I got up and lit the fire until the oil drum which has the water for the bath. The two boars both came up to see what was happening and then got bored and went off for a nap in the sunshine. A few hours later with the water boiling, they woke up and Chris went in and separated them and fed them snacks and was very quickly able to do a good clean shot for a kill. Throat cutting and cutting off the pigs manbits then followed and then we brought in the digger to lift him into the bath. 

It was then that two things happened which were slightly out of the ordinary. Firstly we realised he was a much bigger pig than we had originally thought. This meant he was taller when hanging up and so Chris had to hold the digger arm higher to swing him into the bath or hot water. That was when the digger arm hit the overhead very heavy wood beams that have been put in place to line up to where eventually a roof will be for the slaughter area. The beam dislodged and was then being held up only by the digger arm. I was underneath so in a slightly precarious position trying to grab Big Boys leg to swing him into the bath. So we had a bath full of hot water fast cooling, an enormous pig hanging down and a beam balanced precariously overhead making it impossible to do anything without certain death ensuing for anyone standing underneath....

On the TV we would now cut to a commercial break. Luckily for you this is not TV and suffice to say, after a temporary hiatus getting props and clamps and such like, we finally got Big Boy into the bath. Slightly cool which was a bit of a problem in terms of removing the hair and skin, more so because he was so big he wouldn't really fit into the bath.  We finally got him sorted, got him onto the gantry and after gutting and cleaning him up moved him towards the cold store where he would hand overnight. Chris proudly got out the new winch the butcher had built to make it easier to lift things up into the cold room. We got him half up and then the winch snapped - he was too heavy !  After a few back breaking minutes we improvised and got the two halves hanging up and left him to cool overnight.

When we weighed him the next day he dressed out to around 120kg, which at 9 months is huge. He beats our previous record which was Whitey the pig who was 2 months older and 90kg by a considerable margin. It took hours to butcher him, but should be worthwhile, monster pork chops, wonderful looking bacon and ribs and joints in abundance. He truly was a swinus giganticus !