Today was the day.

One of them there pigs is my half. Which one? Don't know. They all wrapped the same!

That's what I did today for a few hours. This is how this works. ( I think)

A guy ( I don't know him but he's friends with my friends ) bought 16 pigs that were at market weight. If you bought a whole pig or a half of a pig them you showed up at the guys house that has a part of his shop set up to take care of the pigs. They (the pigs) were killed yesterday and hung off the forklift.

There were some tables set up for butchering with meat saws and all that stuff. Your pig would come to the butchering table and it would get cut up into ham, chops, steaks, ham steaks, side pork, roast and stuff. ( I didn't get a big ham, that's a big chunk of meat for a single person )

Then the men would bring your cut up pig to the wrapping table. There you would be asked how much you wanted to a package. ( 4 chops? 6? 2 steaks? )

One person pulled out the plastic warp, 2 other people would place meat on it and wrap it and then pass that on to the people that would then wrap it in butcher paper, then that was passed on to the ones that would write on it what it was and the year and place it in your box or cooler.
Or your laundry basket if you were me!

I was at the wrapping table. We got there at about 10.30am and we were done by 1.30pm. I think we did 8 whole pigs in that time. There was about 20 people there and I think that some started earlier and then when their pig was done, left. And like us, people showed up later on and stayed till all done.

The guy that set this thing up also had a big grill going, he would toss some fresh ground meat on it, or liver or heart and then you could go over there and have a bite to eat if you wanted too.

I wanted to and I did and it was good.

There was also a table where they made sausage at. All the meat scraps were taken to that table and spices and barley were added to it. My friend doesn't like the hocks and I don't like the sausage so I gave mine too her and she gave me her hocks. They will be smoked and I will get those later on. I had hocks from last year and they are nice ones. Not the kind you get at the store, these have meat on them.

I came home and put my pork in the freezer. I wish I would have weighed it out. But I'm not going to do that now. My laundry basket was very heavy and full and cost a total of 75 bucks. I'm pretty sure that I got a good deal.