Part of my motive for getting involved in the smallholding was to understand, and gain some experience of, the process in which animals are reared and processed to produce the steak or joint in the butchers. With this in mind, we recently took the pigs to slaughter at a local abattoir.

I wasn’t really sure how emotional this was going to be, since I had been seeing the pigs almost daily for months, watching them grow from little piglets to full grown porkers. The abattoir we used didn’t slaughter them on arrival, as many do, but bedded them down overnight and killed them the next day, in theory making the process less stressful for the pigs but also meaning we didn’t actually get to see the kill ourselves. When we came to pick up the carcasses the next day it was certainly a strange experience; to think these now skinned lifeless halves of pig were running around in their pen just a few days before. The abattoir had left the heads attached which made the transition much more acute, once the heads are off they look much more like giant joints of meat than dead pigs. From an emotional perspective, I didn’t really feel much. I didn’t feel guilt at having killed these animals, I always knew that they were there for meat, and I knew that they had lived a full and comfortable, if short, life. It is strange now to look at their pen now as it becomes overgrown, but soon there will be new piglets, and so goes the circle of life.

The butchery was a much more practical and physical activity, I would never have imagined there was so much hard work involved in cutting up a pig. It was interesting to learn all the cuts and processes involved, I certainly gained a better understanding of the way in which different parts of the animal are used and the ingenious ways to preserve the meat long term - absolutely vital for the smallholder using the hog to feed his family. Compared to most of my skills which relate to academic knowledge and technology, it’s good to get a chance to try something much more ancient and close to nature, butchery must be one of the oldest skills developed by humans.

We also killed a group of the cockerels as we had some new hens arriving and wanted to cut down on any potential fighting in the run. Unlike with the pigs, the whole process was done ourselves, there was no abattoir to handle the dirty work. We have a special device for breaking their necks which is blunt, and so breaks the spine without cutting through the flesh. The first thing I learnt was that breaking a neck is a fair bit harder than expected. These were full grown birds, maybe six months old, as opposed to standard shop birds which are killed at 10-12 weeks old. This means they were pretty strong, and it took our whole weight on the lever to break the neck. When a chicken dies, it flaps around for a good minute or two (like a headless chicken) as all the muscles in the body spasm. This was a new and somewhat alarming experience for me, I had never killed anything bigger than a spider and to have an animal that is technically dead writhing around in your hand is certainly bizarre. Once these death throws had finished however, I found it quite easy to view the chicken as a carcass, a future meal, rather than a now dead bird. The change felt less profound with the chicken, as opposed to the pig, since a chicken is a pretty simple creature, whilst a pig is more like a dog or a horse, they are surprising intelligent. Of course, there is still the utterly fundamental transition between life and death in each case.

After the chickens had been killed, we had to pluck and gut them - something else which was done by the abattoir for the pigs. This was also quite bizarre, ripping the feathers from the skin, thinking about how these hard feathery things had grown from flesh/tissue which in turn had grown from little grey pellets and bits of corn. Growth is such a remarkable thing. After the plucking came the gutting, which was certainly the most unpleasant part of the process. Food in the supermarket is so clean and sterile, I think it’s important to see that an animal is a being with hearts, lungs, kidneys, just like us, even if it means getting your hands dirty.

I’m glad I had the opportunity to learn these new skills. I’ve been reading a great deal about food production processes recently and it’s fantastic to gain some real first hand knowledge and experience, not to mention some meat that tastes fantastic from well looked after animals.