{"id":4029,"date":"2014-03-13T14:17:11","date_gmt":"2014-03-13T18:17:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gastronomyatbu.com\/?p=4029"},"modified":"2018-03-28T17:49:54","modified_gmt":"2018-03-28T21:49:54","slug":"getting-hands-on-learning-to-butcher-hogs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/2014\/03\/13\/getting-hands-on-learning-to-butcher-hogs\/","title":{"rendered":"Getting Hands-On: Learning to Butcher Hogs"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Bethy Whalen<\/i><\/p>\n

\"1890988_10152203830574568_563579801_n\"<\/a>The picture that I sent my mother and sister was captioned: \u201cI made a new friend!\u201d\u00a0 It was a picture of me, holding up a massive hog\u2019s head in a plastic bag.<\/i><\/p>\n

On February 15th<\/sup>, I joined my friend Sarah and her family in Ruckersville, Virginia for their annual hog butchering.\u00a0 Every year, they purchase whole hogs from Buffalo Creek Farm<\/a> and carve them into delectable portions for the year to come.<\/p>\n

Early that morning, Sarah\u2019s parents arrived at the house with two massive hogs in the back of their pickup truck \u2013 both split down the middle with heads off and organs out.\u00a0 We dragged the halves onto a tarp-covered table and got to work.\u00a0 My first job was to process the heads.\"Nov<\/a><\/p>\n

It was amazing and strange to hold the head of a recently slaughtered animal in my hands.\u00a0 This hog still had its eyes in its head, and the first time I looked at it, all I could think of was the terrifying animatronic pigs from the 1999 movie version of Animal Farm I had watched in my high school English class.\u00a0 I had never been that up close and personal with a hog before.<\/p>\n

<\/b>Sarah\u2019s family had decided not to make pon haus this year (known in different parts of America as scrapple<\/a> \u2013 a loaf composed of, amongst other things, meat scraps from the boiled whole head), so my job was to take the hogs\u2019 heads, cut out the jowls for bacon, and remove the rest of the head meat for grinding into sausage.\u00a0 Step one of this process was to cut the heads in half – not the job for a dainty knife, but rather, a hefty axe.\"Nov<\/a><\/p>\n

I\u2019m definitely no woodsman; trying to split a hog head down the middle with an axe is pretty difficult. Thankfully, I\u2019m not squeamish either, because by the time I was done, there was pig brain splatter all down the front of my overalls.\u00a0 Once the heads were processed, I helped trim the cuts which were being carved off the body.\u00a0 It was incredibly fulfilling to take the large pieces and make them look like something you\u2019d find in a grocery store.<\/p>\n

All in all, it was an incredible day.\u00a0 We started with two hogs and ended with an abundance of gorgeous meat cuts and plenty of sausage.\u00a0 It was a great adventure to process these magnificent animals, and fascinating to see exactly how the other white meat goes from animal to food.\"1010107_609086520066_389161179_n\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Bethy Whalen is a second year Gastronomy student concentrating on food policy. She is an enthusiastic food activist and avid supporter of the school breakfast and lunch programs.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Bethy Whalen The picture that I sent my mother and sister was captioned: \u201cI made a new friend!\u201d\u00a0 It was a picture of me, holding up a massive hog\u2019s head in a plastic bag. On February 15th, I joined my friend Sarah and her family in Ruckersville, Virginia for their annual hog butchering.\u00a0 Every […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14625,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[22,27],"tags":[139,297,781,823,905],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4029"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14625"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4029"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4029\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8326,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4029\/revisions\/8326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}