Knowing Where Your Food Comes From

Vegetarians... Look away, this post is about a lot of pork meat! On the family farm, they raise pigs for family consumption. The main reason they raise pigs is because they were concerned with where their food comes from. When they raise their own pork, they can ensure the animals are raised ethically and organically. The pigs have a good life, they have an indoor and outdoor pen where they can roam as they please, and they eat organic feed and organic farm raised vegetables such as pumpkin, squash, corn, fruit and greens.  This makes a large difference in the taste of the meat.  The meat has lots of nutrients because of what the pigs eat, and it has less fat content.    The fat that the pig does have, the lard, is also used to cook with since it's full of nutrients.  My husband and I recently saw the movie Food Inc. and it really was an eye opener.  We've been thinking a lot about where our food comes from, how it's raised, and how safe it is to eat.  It's the main reason why we've started our vegetable garden and is the reason we bought a pig to be raised on the family farm.  My husband teasingly named him "Yummy" and it was!  Yummy was brought to the butcher in December, and we split the pork meat with the farm.  My mother-in-law cooked a smoked ham for our first dinner.  It was cooked in the woodstove.  Oh, my, the taste was YUMMY.

As we were eating dinner, my husband exclaimed, "everything on this plate was grown or raised on the farm!"  On the plate next to the smoked ham were sides of dilly beans, pickled beets, and roasted root vegetables of potatoes, sweet potatoes, and turnips.  The hubs and I thought this was so fantastic, to have everything on our plate come from the farm.  My in-laws were amused by our excitement because this is an everyday occurrence for them.  Most of their meals come from the farm!

We brought back two large boxes of pork meat.  The farmer (hub's dad) said Yummy was about 275 pounds when he was brought to the butcher.  "A good size" he said, although "250 pounds" is preferred, because that is the perfect meat to fat ratio for a pig.  Can you believe these two boxes only contain half of the pig?  So much meat, totally amazing!  One box contained smoke ham, ham hocks, ribs and pork chops.

The other box was filled with smoked bacon and italian and hot sausage.  Totally drooling!

 

We bought this freezer chest on sale at Lowe's to store all the meat.  This was a good investment for us, since we plan to store veggies and fruit that we grow in the garden in here too!

The freezer chest has these nice hanging baskets in it so it's easy to organize.  The two sausages and bacon got their own basket!

I'm already dreaming about what dishes I can make with these beauties!

Lots of thick cut smoked bacon!  Just heaven!

Bottom of the freezer is holding all the smoked hams, pork chops and ribs!  I'm not sure how long this meat will last us, but I am so looking forward to cooking with it!  We figured out the cost for the pork meat was about $3.00 per pound.  The price was factored by the cost of the pig, the cost of the feed and veggies, and the cost of the butchering.  $3.00 / per pound for us is a good price, because we've seen organic pork in our supermarket for $5.98 a pound!  To be honest though, knowing how this pork was raised makes it priceless!