Moms, meats, and monsters

Piglets are the way of the world

Here at BOTL Farm, we sell things like bacon. Lots of people buy bacon and so we must make more bacon. Good news, one of our sows (pig-moms) farrowed (gave birth to piglets) this month and therefore we are making more bacon. Perfecto. When a sow is about to farrow, we provide a human-made wooden shelter with fresh hay bedding. Sometimes the sow will choose this posh pig palace for her nest, but just as often she shuns our human efforts at comfort and does some wild landscaping to make the nest of her dreams. This month, the sow decided to make the nest of her dreams but it was actually pretty poorly planned and she nested in an area that flooded about 12 hours after she farrowed. With our crazy weather, it happened to be a relatively cold day and we were worried about how soggy the area was for newborn piglets. We set up a tarp to cover the nest area, moved the newborns to slightly higher ground, and had a serious talk with the sow about nest placement in the future. 

After a week of bad weather, the sow finally moved her group of piglets up to the cozy shelter we had provided, about 600 feet from the original nest location. Delightful.

Monsters?

We sometimes get asked how we can possibly raise adorable, happy animals and then bring them to slaughter? Aren’t they like pets? Are we some sort of monsters?

Historically, much larger percentages of people were farming and raising animals for food production. Slaughterhouses were more centrally located in cities and butchering was much more visible and public. Since industrialization, less people farm and slaughterhouses receded to the edges of cities or to rural areas. Meat now shows up in scentless, sterilized, plastic packages in brightly lit stores and is completely removed from the living animal it once was. So, we don’t think farming animals for food in the most humane way we can imagine makes us monsters, but perhaps it makes us old-fashioned. This is why we became livestock farmers in the first place: if we’re going to eat meat, we want to know how the animal was treated from birth to slaughter!

We both firmly agree that our farm animals are not pets. They don’t live in the house with us, socialize with us throughout the day, or snuggle with us for warmth in the evenings. Instead, the animals live in family groups out on pasture, socializing with their siblings, and snuggling with their cousins for warmth in the evenings. Our job as humane livestock farmers is to facilitate this lifestyle for them, giving them the opportunity to lead rich social lives with each other, right up until the point where we eat them. Yum. Okay, maybe we are monsters

Bologna is not just the 7th most populous city in Italy

One of our customers recently sent us an article about how pork is possibly the oldest domesticated livestock animal. The breadth of products that can be made from pork is huge and historic – cuts, salted muscles, fermented sausages, smoked, cured, ground, chopped, homogenized, and dried. As you may know, we started hand-making sausages for sale last year, but we’re always thinking about the latest and greatest thing we could add to our repertoire.

Lately, we’ve been thinking about bologna, Spam, and other fully emulsified (don't worry, we will explain) meats. There’s a big difference between pork sausages that are ground vs. ones that are chopped. The texture of the resulting product can be wildly different even if the ‘particle’ size is about the same because of the differing mechanics of grinding vs. chopping. Are you still with us? Just a few more technical things and then we’ll be back to it. Most sausages are made by grinding meat, where an auger turns and pushes meat towards a grinding plate under pressure. This ‘crushes’ the meat cells as the bulk meat is ground into smaller chunks. The alternative is to chop meat instead of grind it. Choppers make smaller chunks by applying knives (by hand!) or blades (by machine). These machines are typically called bowl choppers or buffalo choppers. Choppers can chop and chop and chop until the size of the chunks become imperceptibly small, turning the meat mixture into a mousse-type mix, a paste… an emulsification! Examples of common fully emulsified products are hotdogs, pates, and some bolognas.  

We recently convinced someone to loan us a bowl chopper (thanks, Twin Beaks!) and we’re in love. We can’t tell if the love is directed toward the loaner or the machine, it’s confusing. We’ve spent the last month testing recipes, playing with the bowl chopper, and torturing our friends with bologna samples. Keep your eyes out for a production-ready version in the next few months.

Rent our stuff

Now is a great time to remind all our animal feed customers and backyarders that we rent chicken slaughter equipment, including scalder, bolt gun, kill cones, and plucker. Since chicken slaughter equipment, including pluckers, is expensive but not needed very often and we’d like to see more cooperative use of specialty farming equipment in the world, we’re happy to offer our chicken slaughter equipment for rental to our animal feed customers for a modest fee. If you’re breaking down a larger animal, we also have bone saws and instructional slaughter books about breaking down carcasses. We have things and want them to be used!

Find us this month

On farm store: Tuesdays noon - 2pm, Saturdays 1 - 3pm. Pre-order 

On farm self pickup: Everyday 8:30am - 8pm. Pre-order only

Assawaga farm market: Every Saturday from 9am to noon from now until the weekend before Thanksgiving. We’re there every other week. Dates we’ll be there in September: September 07, September 21. Pre-order 

Sturbridge Farmers Market: Every Sunday from 9am to 1pm until October 13. We will be at Sturbridge every Sunday! Dates we’ll be there in September: September 01, September 08, September 15, September 22, September 29. Pre-order

It's too many numbers! Save me!