To market, to market....

This evening we loaded up our pig, not called Halle, and took her to be butchered.  In the past, we have raised pigs as part of a co-op for neighbors and friends who wanted locally-raised pork but didn't have the space or desire to raise a pig.  So, we have had 7-8 pigs at a time.  It's really not a lot more trouble to have 6 pigs as opposed to 1 until it comes times to load them up in the truck once they have reached close to 300 lbs.  It has been quite a trying fiasco in years past.  So, this year we decided just to keep a pig for ourselves.  When the pig came to live with us, Lila started calling her Halle.  We immediately curtailed this, as it's our farm policy not to name anything we plan to eat. 
 
Lila accompanied Cam to the butcher to drop the pig into her overnight pen.  We've been very open with Lila from the beginning about why we are raising the pig.  In fact, we eat a lot of the animals on our farm, and to date, she's very okay with it.  While she was munching on some baked rabbit the other day, she commented, "This is YUMMY!..... It sure was cute, though!".

I rarely shop in the meat section at the grocery store.  We eat our rabbits, pig, and chickens.  Cam is also a hunter and fills our freezer with venison, squirrel, and turkey.  Cam doesn't fish much, but our neighbors sometimes share their catch.  We've also done purchased some local beefalo (part buffalo, part cow) in the past.  It's really great to know where our meat came from, what it ate, and that it was happy and well-taken-care-of while it was alive. 

We were talking with Lila about what will happen to the pig tomorrow morning at the butcher.  She wanted to know a lot of detail, which I will spare you here, but we answered all of her questions honestly.  She came home tonight explaining to me again what will happen to The-Pig-Who-is-not-called-Halle tomorrow.  She told me how they put her in her pen and wide-eyed with a big smile she told me, "She made friends with the other piggies!"  I guess better to have friends for a short while than to never have friends at all.  Here's hoping for some yummy bacon in our future.