kirby and zelda

we said our goodbyes.

i scratched both of them in their favorite places and loaded them into our friends stock trailer. they are now at the local slaughter house and we placed our order. their combined weight was over 700 lbs we'll likely get 60% of that back in meat. that's 420 lbs of pork in our freezer. luckily we just bought another freezer. although, we bought the second freezer because we bought half a grass-fed beef from tabitha's father queued for may.

there are several great reasons for this large acquisition of meat. first the kids are huge carnivores especially while living without milk. they need the protein and nutrients. second, we plan to put-up plenty of spaghetti sauce using the meat. finally, i am a ridiculously huge carnivore and plan to grill large slabs of meat throughout the summer.

this was a large step for us. our next pigs will hopefully be butchered on site. i'll beg ron to re-post his pig slaughter post and maybe visit for a little hands on instruction. that is a year off though, since we really like the winter pig. the summer is reserved for the chickens. they eat our food and garden scraps all summer long. i must admit that pigs meet our needs more fully than chickens. pigs will relish and eat broccoli stems while chickens scoff at their very sight.

tabitha just told me that our butcher said that we'll likely get closer to 70% of our hoof weight. they were long lean pigs. i'll miss them. they were such big pets. we gave them a good life and now they are going to sustain us. we love you kirby and zelda.