The family. We are a strange little band of characters trudging through life, sharing diseases and toothpaste, coveting one another's desserts, hiding shampoo, borrowing money, locking each other out of our rooms, inflicting pain and kissing to heal it in the same instant, loving, laughing, defending, and trying to figure out the common thread that binds us all together.

- Erma Bombeck

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Hog Heaven

Well, Hammy Fae Bacon went to Hog Heaven this morning.  I was not present for her departure...she has been a bit too much of a pet for me and I didn't think that I could stomach the mobile slaughter truck.  I know that her death was swift and she is now wallowing in that great mud puddle in the sky.

We sold her "on the hoof" (which means alive) for $350 to a local gal.  It was a steal for the meat.  Her "hanging weight" (after they gut and cut off the unusable parts) was 322 pounds.  That's a little more than a buck a pound.  I usually sell my butcher hogs at $2.25 a pound on the hoof.  It just didn't make sense to try to sell her that way.  I don't know any family that can afford to spend 800+ dollars for a hog.  I try to balance our profit with keeping a reasonable price available to local families.

As much as I was sad to see Hammy go, it sure was a nice quiet feeding time tonight without her there.  That pig was the noisiest gal I've ever met...and pushy too!  From the minute you walked out to the shed, she would bark and squeal until you put the grain in her bucket.  RIP Hammy Fae...

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