Well today was the big day. The day to put the hogs out of my misery as George said. It's been an all day event and I'm whooped. Forget about mixing cob, doing two pigs in one day by yourself will kick your butt.
The two girls were over 300# each. I ended up with about 65-70# of unusable organs that I don't care for. Some parts I save for catfishing and I saved all the bones to boil and pick to make confit. All in all, I'm still over 500# of meat. This puts me at $0.94 a pound. The great thing is that this isn't the $0.99 a pound confinement pork at the grocery store. This is the real deal, fattened on squash, apples, and acorns.
The barrel scald worked great (Thanks Matt)! I was able to scrape the Berk in about 30 minutes. Unfortunately the Tam was too big for the barrel so she got skinned. I didn't have a propane burner so I just but the barrel up on some cinder blocks and got a good wood fire going under it. My neighbor was nice enough to let me use his tractor to hoist.
I've already got a ham in cure, though it's 32# and will probably take 2 years to dry out. Also got some Canadian bacon curing and blood sausage in the poach as I write. There's something poetic about frying up some onions and apples (what the pigs were often eating) and mixing it with their blood and putting it back into their intestine for a black sausage.
That said, it was a hard day. I got pretty attached to those two, especially the Berk. It was really hard to put them down. Such is the circle of life, though. I'm not complaining about the grilled tenderloin I'm eating right now. It was kind of a good feeling sewing rye, oats and alfalfa down in their pasture this evening. Getting it ready for next year.....