Backwoods Home has a good article online and in the magazine about butchering pigs by skinning, not scalding and scraping as in this post.
You don't want to be dependent on anyone for your food.
I'm not. The above is my oldest FFA project for this year. She caught a calf at the San Antonio Scramble this year and placed 21st out of 1500 at the Houston Livestock Show for Sr. Livestock judging and recieved a $1250 certificate towards a steer or heifer.
This enabled her to buy a animal with a good base of genetics. She is a Beefmaster and is bred for the Texas climate. Somefolks new to this arena need to remember this. Breeds, animal or plant, need to be acclimated to that regoin. what grows good here in SE Texas, might not in Washinton state.
This years project, we had bred to a huge beefmaster bull and she will calve next March for the freezer. She is 14month old and 1000lb.
Bill continues to preach this. Many haven't taken his advise. He started this venture to help us and himself. Now he is forced to go a route with it he didn't intend to.
Goes to show you you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.
Same goes for some in the community.
Oh well...
I will continue to diversify and expand my capabilities. I will buy, trade, sell, apprentice, whatever needs to be done to accomplish this.
We always skinned ours. The whole scalding and scraping thing was an all-day affair. Skinning them out took an hour or so, and then we started butchering. Then again we didn't try to save the hides for anything. Perhaps if we had been I might have used more finesse...but I've always been a butcher instead of a surgeon.
ReplyDeleteTim